Colin Farrell once outlined exactly how much alcohol and drugs he was taking before he turned his life around and got sober. Here's the trailer for his most recent film, which you've no doubt heard quite a bit about:
The 46-year-old actor is currently raking in the praise for his role in The Banshees of Inisherin, in which he stars alongside Brendan Gleeson.
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The film – directed and written by Martin McDonagh – has been an absolute smash and already cleaned up at the Golden Globes last night, with Farrell taking home the Best Comedy Actor award in the process.
It’s expected to fare well at the Academy Awards as well, with particular praise reserved for Farrell and Gleeson’s portrayals of two friends living in 1920s Ireland.
However, in Farrell’s earlier days, it has been well documented that he had issues with substance and alcohol misuse.
Obviously, he’s now turned his life around, and it seems as if it was not before time, given how much he was consuming over the course of a week.
Farrell revealed in an interview with Radio Times in 2003 that he was ‘going only one way’ as a result of his ‘self-destructive’ behaviour.
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In that interview, he said: “I was only going one way – down.
“I was self-destructive, still am. Boringly.
“I ended up on a shrink’s couch and he told me to write down how much I did in a week – 20 Es, four grams of coke, six of speed, half an ounce of hash, three bottles of Jack Daniel’s, 12 bottles of red wine, 60 pints, and 40 fags a day.
“He looked at me and said, ‘do you wonder you’re depressed?’.”
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In the end, the will to change came from within himself, but helped along by the fact he gained a new purpose after having a child.
At the time, he said: “I love kids but worry about bringing a child into the madness that is my life.
“Will it be fair on him? Will I be able to stop thinking about myself long enough?”
Well, Farrell has now been sober for a good while.
It isn’t easy still, as he outlined in an article in 2021.
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He said: “After 15 or 20 years of carousing the way I caroused and drinking the way I drank, the sober world is a pretty scary world.
“To come home and not to have the buffer support of a few drinks just to calm the nerves, it was a really amazing thing.”
Despite his troubles in the past, The Banshees of Inisherin seems to be set for serious award season success, with Farrell already scooping the Best Comedy Actor award last night.
Accepting his gong, he said: "I never expect my films to find an audience, and when they do it's shocking for me.”
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If you still haven’t seen it, the film is available to watch on Disney+ and NOW TV, as well as in cinemas.
Topics: TV and Film, Celebrity, Golden Globes
Tom Wood