Colin Farrell with Jessica Biel in Total Recall

What sort of man is your character, Quaid, in this version of Total Recall?

We were following the short story, and in the short story he is a working-class member of the proletariat who is living a life that seems to be mundane enough for him to be having fantasies about going to Mars. In our film it is not necessarily dreams about going to Mars, but he’s having a recurring dream and it has a great significance. So really he’s just a normal man, he’s just an everyman. That’s the construct of the character and in his own life, he’s feeling a great disconnect to his wife, to his work, to his friends, and he decides to have a memory of an experience implanted. He goes into this place [Rekall] just looking for something.

Did you feel any pressure stepping into Arnold Schwarzenegger’s shoes?

No, honestly, I didn’t feel any pressure. And I’m not trying to give a rehearsed answer, but it really felt like a different film. I am a huge fan of the original Total Recall. I was a big fan of Arnie’s stuff as a kid, I’m talking Red Heat, Commando, obviously Terminator… and Predator is, till to this day, one of the best action films I think I have ever seen. I loved his stuff, and love his stuff, so thank god I didn’t feel the pressure to fill those shoes or compete with that ability to throw out a one-liner. Maybe I could do Predator next! (Laughs)

Your vision of Total Recall is darker and more serious than Arnie’s, presumably?

I wouldn’t like to say the original is cheesy, but it was a bit camp. You put a bullet in your wife’s head and you say (imitates Schwarzenegger): ‘Consider that a divorce!’ I mean, that was good, that was very good. But this film is tonally very different. I really approached it more as a drama, set against the backdrop of these magnificent cityscapes and these really elaborate action scenes.

Did it feel unusual having to fight the director’s wife (Kate Beckinsale is married to Total Recall director Len Wiseman) on screen and, well, beat her up?

I loved it! (Laughs) Kissing her was a bit tricky. Beating her up was okay. Then there’s the fight between Jessica (Biel) and Kate and that fight was a bit (adopts posh female accent): ‘Oh sorry, I caught your hair.’ A bit of that was going on, which was funny. And then Kate one time, she gives me a shot in the neck and when we shoot, she turns around and really chops me. She kept checking on me while the camera is still rolling. (Adopts same posh female accent) ‘Sorry, darling. Sorry, darling! Ohh!’ I’ve hit guys in the face by mistake when making films and you feel like crap afterwards, so you are very cautious. But these two are very strong women... they are well able to take care of themselves.

So you’ve been battered yourself a few times across your career?

I got a few good bumps and grazes on this film. I don’t remember the worst ones. There was a good jump I did with Jess (Jessica Biel), though it was more a drop. It is a bit weird when you’re 80ft in the air on a wire over a car park and there are 150 people beneath you and they’re going to drop you! Over the years, though, horses have probably hit me more than anything else. And Alexander, I got battered on that, man, by the horses, by the women. I limped out of that film!

Did you work out specifically for Total Recall?

I worked out consistently for three or four months, for five or six days a week, with weights. And I ran a lot. There’s a background to the character that is touched upon in the film where he might have had some military training. I knew it was going to be a physical shoot so yes, I worked out quite a bit.

Jessica Biel looks well-toned too…

She was a dream to work with. All of us, from Len down, were all doggedly pursuing as much dramatic integrity as we could in the film. We rehearsed more than you’d normally get to rehearse on a film of this size. We spent time talking about character and backstory. There are a lot of complicated plot points in the film that we had to be clear on. Jess is funny and she is tough. I came in one morning and I heard someone hitting the mitts in the corner and it sounded as though they were giving them a merciless beating, and it was Biel.

You seemed to move away from blockbusters for a while before taking on Total Recall…

I had a few films that were big but that didn’t do so well, and I wasn’t getting offered that many big blockbusters either. Then this came along and I read the script. I was initially dubious when I heard that they were remaking Total Recall. I thought, ‘Is it worth it and what are they going to say about the original?’ But I read it and it was such an excellent script.

Did it feel good then, returning to a huge movie like this?

Actually, Total Recall genuinely felt more intimate than some of the smaller films I’ve done. It just happens that way and it defies explanation. It was like 100 and whatever million dollars, but I worked really, really closely with Len Wiseman, and with the other actors. The crew was really, really cool and I lived in Toronto for five months. There were all these grand action sequences and these beautiful epic worlds, but on the day it was just a bunch of actors on set, trying to figure out what the other person was feeling and doing and thinking, and trying to figure out what you were feeling and doing and thinking. Ideally, I would mix it up, go from one genre to another. I’d love to do big films and small films for the rest of my life.

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