Los Angeles , July 21 (Reuters): Put aside the drinking, smoking, cursing and womanising, and consider this: Irish actor Colin Farrell has a soft side.
He said he does. At least, sometimes.
Farrell’s A Home at the End of the World, opening in major cities on Friday, could help reshape his bad boy image into that of a soulful actor, albeit one who still likes to party, make no mistake.
“Is there another side to me? Of course. I can be serious when I need to,” he said in a recent interview. “I’ve read where they say: ‘He’s an animal.’ But I’m a fairly gentle soul, and I get it from my mother.”
The film’s director Michael Mayer agreed and called the 28-year-old “incredibly lovely, warm-hearted, generous-spirited.” However, Mayer is quick to add that the wild guy Farrell is depicted to be in the media “is also a part of who he is, but not all of who he is.”
In fact, throughout the interview with Reuters, Farrell is drinking a beer, smoking and cursing. He needs a shave, too.
He said he doesn’t like to do interviews, doesn’t like to go to movie premieres, and in the past five years has mostly lived in hotel rooms while working on one movie after another. Farrell said he missed his home in Dublin, his family, friends, baby boy, fish and chips and the pub.
In fact, it was at home in the pre-dawn hours that Farrell, alone on his couch, read the script for Home at the End of the World and was struck by the love that exudes from its emotionally wounded character, Bobby, whom he plays.
The role is far from other roles for which he is known, such as his rebellious soldier in Tigerland, CIA agent in The Recruit, and assassin in Daredevil.
Home at the End of the World, Farrell said, “is about about breaking down barriers but not with a hammer and sickle but with the feather of love, and I just adored that.”
The movie is based on Michael Cunningham’s 1990 novel of the same name about a boy, Bobby, growing up in the 1960s who loses his family in a series of deaths and moves in with his best friend, Jonathan.
As kids, Bobby and Jonathan experiment with drugs and sex, and eventually, Jonathan falls in love with Bobby. But college calls Jonathan (Dalls Roberts) to New York and after his undergraduate years are finished, Bobby joins him. Once there, however, Bobby falls for Jonathan’s roommate, Clare (Robin Wright Penn), and the pair have a baby.
Jonathan, who still loves Bobby, can't allow the triangle to last. Or, can he? Home at the End of the World challenges conventions of relationships, family and the places people call home. “It is unabashed in its belief in love and its hope for the future,” Farrell said.
Unfortunately for the film's makers, however, advance media coverage and Internet buzz focused less on the movie’s message and solely on Farrell's brief frontal nude scene.
