PLAYBOY: Room service just brought you six cold bottles of beer. We're sitting on the terrace of your hotel room because it's a nonsmoking floor and you want a cigarette. This isn't typical health-conscious Los Angeles behavior.
FARRELL: I have two fucking beers at lunchtime in Los Angeles and I've got an edge all of a sudden. Two beers at lunch and, suddenly, you're a "drinker." I understand the obsession in Hollywood. It's a hard fucking town. So much importance is placed on the physical, the image, how you're doing in life. Salads are huge here. Sushi is huge. It's not how much love you have in your life, it's how much money you get paid. Bottled water is huge. For women, it's the French manicured nails and the Brazilian bikini wax, the one that gives you the landing-strip pussy. It's not for me.
PLAYBOY: Do you feel out of place here?
FARRELL:I was with my brother at the Chateau Marmont the other night; it's about two in the morning and we're having a couple of margaritas. We're fucking steaming drunk from drinking all day, and three guys, 30 to 40 years old, sit down at the table beside us. When the gorgeous little Filipino barman comes over and says to them, "Would you guys like anything?" one of them says, "You know what? I think I'll have a large Pellegrino, please." I swear to fuck, I'm not one for going, "Come on, man, drink more -- do shots!" but then the other guy with him went, "I'll have one of those as well, actually," and the third guy says, "You know what? That sounds really good. Make it three Pellegrinos -- large." At two in the morning, how the fuck can a bottle of water sound really good? I understand it's a health-conscious city, but life's too short.
PLAYBOY: Does your being a chain-smoker alienate you, too?
FARRELL: My brother and I were having a cigarette outside a hotel when a woman got out of a car with two little boys, six or seven years old. One of the little fellows looked up at my brother and me smoking and said to his mother, "What's the fire those guys have in their hands?" I shit you not. His mother said, "Oh, nothing. That's bad, bad." She was right. It is bad. But he had never seen a fucking cigarette at six or seven. Isn't that amazing?
PLAYBOY: Your fingers are pretty scraped up. Are you now or have you ever been a brawler?
FARRELL: Last night I was opening a bottle of fucking beer but couldn't get the top off and my fingers slipped. In my younger years in school, I scrapped, yeah. I remember my mother getting a report when I was very young, which she still has: "Colin is getting in too many fights." Playboy: What were you fighting about? Bullies? Girl troubles? Farrell: Girl trouble, for me, is when you fall in love -- that's fucking girl trouble. If you have a bad lay, that's not girl trouble. A girl not returning your phone calls or spreading rumors about you, that's not girl trouble, just a pain in the ass. But to fall in love -- that's girl trouble.
PLAYBOY: When did you first get into that kind of trouble?
FARRELL: I was 16 when I fell in love with a girl named Amelia, who came from this big Portuguese family we were friendly with in Castleknock. Her two brothers, Tony and Chico, are still my best friends, and Amelia married another of my best mates. Am I painting a fucking picture of Dublin as an incestuous fucking place? Because it is. She was the real deal for me. But this one Halloween, I'd gotten into a bit of a skirmish at school and the next day I heard that 20 blokes were looking for me. I was already not getting on great in school, and boarding school had been suggested, so I thought, Fuck it, I'll go to boarding school for a while and get out of Dodge.
PLAYBOY: Did that put a damper on you and Amelia?
FARRELL: I was in love with her and besotted by her. I'm so soft about these things. I found it very hard because I only saw her once a week, on Sunday. I wanted to spend every second with her, but I was in boarding school with a bunch of fucking dudes, playing table tennis and bartering for fucking bottles of Coke.
PLAYBOY: Was she the first sexual experience you had?
FARRELL: No, my first was with an Australian woman. I had this friend in school who was a big e-head. I used to be a fucking e-head. I used to smoke fucking puppies like they were fucking candy for two or three years in the Dublin club scene and got completely into it. You'd be fucking doing 15 of these a weekend, and you might pop them on Wednesday as well. It was your scene. It was really a way of life, not a weekend-warrior thing. The mates you were hanging out with were all fucking e-heads.
PLAYBOY: So you're saying ecstasy played a part in your losing your virginity?
FARRELL: I had a really good mate, Eliot, who was a huge fucking drinker, popping back Guinnesses to beat the band. He knew I was a fucking e-head, and he'd always say, "You're with all them fucking wankers doing pills, you fucking tosser. Who the fuck do you think you are? Why don't you have a fucking drink?" I said, "We still drink. I tell you what. Some night I'll go out with you and I'll fucking do what you do and someday you'll go out and do what I do." So one night we went to the club I'd always gone to, a gay club in Dublin called Shaft. After one or two A.M., when the other places closed down, Shaft became gay, straight, whatever. We went there and danced into the wee hours.
PLAYBOY: With each other?
FARRELL: It was close on the floor, but there was no gyrating -- or geez, he would have started throwing fists. There would have been killings. It was about four A.M. and Eliot was nearly comatose, so I put him in a taxi and sent him home because I'd met this Australian woman who was 36 and had basically said to me, "Do you want to come back to my house and fuck?" We went to her place and were lying on her bed kissing and she opened a bottle of champagne -- which I fucking hate. But I took a sip, and as I did, she reached under the bed and pulled out a wicker basket with about 400 condoms in it -- different flavors, colors, ribbed. She said, "Pick one," and I said to myself, "I am in fucking trouble here."
PLAYBOY: And were you?
FARRELL: For about four hours straight. I thought I'd found the holy fucking grail.
PLAYBOY: Which condom did you choose?
FARRELL: Oh, God, I didn't choose anything, fucking idiot that I was.
PLAYBOY: Was that the first time that you thought you might have a way with the ladies?
FARRELL: I still haven't figured that out. I know I'm a fairly fucking affable bloke and all, but that doesn't always equal charm or a ticket into a woman's pants. Sometimes you just end up being "the nice guy" or "cute." I remember being 14 in summer school and fancying the fuck out of this beautiful blonde bird named Lisa. I looked like I was 12 years old with a baby face. I remember asking one of her mates to put in a good word for me and she came back with, "She thinks you're really cute, but you're just not her type." Fucking bastards. I have never from that day forth felt I had any great understanding of how to charm women or anything like that. But I've done OK.
PLAYBOY: Would you say that you were precocious?
FARRELL: I didn't start too early, though I caught up pretty quick. I see no fucking harm at all in people enjoying each other's bodies in a two- or three-hour or 20-minute period. Two people in a bathroom in a nightclub when they both know what they're doing and are both fucking enjoying it -- if it's on those terms, even the sleaziness of doing it in a bathroom or someone's hotel room can be one of the funniest things. I've always been a firm believer that casual sex is a fucking good thing. There is far too much fun to be derived from it for it to be anything but good. Just put a fucking hat on.
PLAYBOY: Which you've done ever since the Australian woman who had the 400 condoms?
FARRELL: One gets drunk and one is a fucking dickhead from time to time. We all forget. But I try, all the time.
PLAYBOY: If you were to start your own line of condoms, what would you name it?
FARRELL: Don't Forget.
PLAYBOY: Is your success rate with women better since you've become well known?
FARRELL: It's easier for me to get laid in Los Angeles, for sure. When I first came here three years ago, I put myself up at the Holiday Inn in Santa Monica and used to go on my own each night to the Third Street Promenade. Some nights I'd come home on my own, some nights I would come home with a girl, some nights with a room full of fucking strangers and we'd get pissed and stoned and have a laugh. Those were great times, particularly because anyone who was nice to me or gave me the time of day was doing it because they wanted to. They were either bored or lonely like I was. They laughed at my jokes because they thought I was actually funny. Now the lines are crossed. Are people treating you the way they are because of your name or position, whatever that may be? I'm a good judge of character. I can look into someone's eyes -- I hope I'm not being too naive -- and know if they're a good or bad fucking egg.
PLAYBOY: Have your pickup lines changed much since those Holiday Inn days?
FARRELL: I wish I had something like, "Shall I phone you or just nudge you for breakfast in the morning?" That kind of shit. I'm not very good at chatting up or making my way over to someone and going, "Hey." If I'm introduced to someone and the conversation progresses, fine. Next thing, an hour later, I could be saying, "Do you want to go have fucking dinner or drinks or whatever?" I'm a fucking nerd when it comes to that shit, man, like fucking approaching women and stuff. I leave that to my mates.
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