By Rene Rodriguez, McClatchy Newspapers –
MIAMI — This is how rumors get started: Colin Farrell was on French TV promoting “Total Recall,” in which he plays a man who discovers his wife (Kate Beckinsale) is an agent assigned to kill him.
Beckinsale happens to be married to Len Wiseman, who directed “Total Recall.” When asked if it was uncomfortable having to kiss an actress and then later hit her, Farrell replied “Kissing her is much more uncomfortable.”
“And then the interviewer was all shocked and goes ‘Are you saying it’s more comfortable to hit a woman?’” Farrell recalls, laughing.
Fortunately, Farrell, 36, has had plenty of experience defusing — and surviving — media scandals. “I very calmly explained that in films, you don’t actually hit each other,” he says. “But you do kiss each other! Kate hitting me and me hitting her wasn’t so bad. But locking lips with the woman? While her husband is standing just a few feet away? It was a bit funky. There’s no lying that wasn’t a bit funky.”
“Total Recall,” which opens Friday, marks Farrell’s return to the blockbuster arena, his first starring role in a big Hollywood production since “Miami Vice.” That movie came out in 2006, the same year a sex tape featuring Farrell and a Playboy model hit the Internet rounds — just as the actor completed a stint in rehab for drug and alcohol abuse.
Instead of retreating into career-rebuild mode after the avalanche of bad publicity, Farrell kept working. Since “Miami Vice,” the actor has appeared in 11 movies, sometimes in memorable supporting roles (“Horrible Bosses,” in which he sported the world’s worst comb-over, or “Crazy Heart,” in which he served as a humane foil for Jeff Bridges). Other films he made for the opportunity to work with a revered director (Woody Allen’s “Cassandra’s Dream,” Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” Peter Weir’s “The Way Back,” Neil Jordan’s “Ondine”).
But the actor says he never made a concrete decision to stay away from big-budget movies. Instead, big-budget Hollywood was avoiding him.
“There weren’t as many offers for huge films as there used to be, because I had a couple of big films (“The New World,” “Alexander,” “Miami Vice”) that didn’t perform well at the box office,” Farrell says. “And then the offers that did come in, I didn’t like.
Wiseman, who directed “Total Recall,” says he offered the film’s starring role to Farrell because the actor has “a very rare combination of someone who comes across very vulnerable and very dangerous at the same time. The characters in this movie are playing head games with each other all the time. So you need an actor who can play both of those notes. What surprised me about Colin is how open and real he is. There are plenty of actors who have built a barrier around themselves, because they’re so used to playing a different persona in public. But you talk to Colin for an hour, and you feel like you’ve known him for years.”
That open-book approach to life initially led to trouble. Farrell was 24 when he starred in Joel Schumacher’s “Tigerland,” a gritty Vietnam War drama that earned him critical respect. But it also brought instant celebrity and the attention of the tabloid media, who couldn’t get enough of the brash young actor’s antics, such as the time he strode into a strip club in full view of the paparazzi during the Toronto International Film Festival, almost as if he were daring the press.
Today, Farrell does seem happy and content, even if he sounds a bit cautious when asking your opinion of “Total Recall” (“I haven’t seen it yet,” he confessed during a promotional stop in Miami in July). He is fit enough to be the current cover boy of Men’s Health, and he has already completed several eagerly awaited films, including “Seven Psychopaths,” which reunites him with his “In Bruges” director Martin McDonagh, and “Dead Man Down,” a crime thriller co-starring “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s” Noomi Rapace.
But the actor doesn’t refer to this current phase in his career as a rebirth or second wind. For Farrell, all the ups and downs are part of the same long, exhilarating ride.
“I don’t really like the idea that hardship and pain are the only real things, and good, superficial, bright, shiny times are bulls–t,” he says. “That idea doesn’t suit me. I prefer to respect both — the light and the dark. I’ll have 30 or 40 guests at movie premieres. My uncles and my aunties will fly over from Dublin, spend the day at Universal Studios and get sunburned, and then they’d arrive to the red carpet. I’ll see my uncle standing behind me on ‘Entertainment Tonight’ sometimes! That’s one way for me to break through the illusion of it all and make this stuff seem real.”
