Colin Farrell may or may not be the true detective, but he is certainly a gentleman and a scholar, as he proved on last night’s episode of Tavis Smiley. Midway through the half-hour interview, Smiley backed into a question regarding the 2004 box-office disappointment Alexander, and Farrell took up the subject with uncommon candor:
It all happened really, really fast. Alexander and then Miami Vice, which were films that were very big and that didn’t work so much critically and didn’t work so much financially and I was made to feel aware of the fact that all of a sudden, things that I was in weren’t working. So it just made me go, “Wow, OK.” So I can’t believe in the lie that’s being presented to me anymore that I’m a movie star and that everything is great. I have this No. 1 movie, that one. Everyone is telling me now that that’s gone. So it was kind of like, ugh...all of it’s a delusion. Telling me it’s gone is a delusion. Ever believing that it was there in the first place is a delusion.
Thanks in no small part to the casual and conversational tone of Smiley’s show, Farrell continued self-reflecting:
Life works in such contradictions, you know? Don’t get me wrong, I really want everything I do to be appreciated, to find an audience, I want people to think I’m good at what I do, I want to feel good at what I do. We all have a self-worth in our lives that unfortunately and by virtue of being part of human existence we look outside ourselves and see how we’re doing with our peers. So, I’m there very much. But at the same time, I don’t relate to the importance of it all with the depth that I used to—when I used to say I didn’t care about it. When I used to go, “I don’t care about any of it.” I really cared then. I just didn’t know how to acknowledge it or express my caring. I didn’t understand it. Now, I still care, but I care less really. And it’s freed me up. That’s the irony, it’s freed me up.
One day in the future, he’ll care even less than he does now and he’ll be that much freer. Rooting for you, Farrell.