Colin Farrell and Joel Schumacher: the wild-side-walkin', potty-mouth-talkin' lad chats with the director who held him captive in a phone booth and got one of the all-time great performances out of it

Interview, April, 2003

COLIN FARRELL: How are you, darling?

JOEL SCHUMACHER: So this is what it takes for me to talk to you?

CF: This is what it takes for me to answer my phone.

JS: Listen, I want you to think back for a minute. Go back two-and-a-half years. We're at the Toronto Film Festival with Tigerland [2000], and I say to you, "I want you to be in this movie that's about a guy--it's all in a phone booth and we're probably going to shoot it in 10 days." Do you remember your first instinct when you heard that?

CF: It was something along the lines of, "Fucking nice one! When do we start?" You had another actor lined up originally, right?

JS: Well, I had suggested you for it several times, but they [the studio executives] didn't see Tigerkind until the festival. After they did, they said, "Okay. You can make it with Colin. Here's a dollar." [both laugh] So, the first day of shooting, when we were driving down to the set, I said to Jeremy, who was my assistant at the time, "I've got this sort of sick feeling in the pit of my stomach." It wasn't the usual before-movie jitters at all. It was this cold, sick feeling. You know when you haven't studied for an exam in school, and you just know you're going to fail?

CF: I have no idea what you're talking about. I was a straight-A student.

JS: Straight A for Asshole. [Farrell laughs] I was one of those, too. So I literally turned to Jeremy and said, "Outside of putting a needle in my arm for five years in the '60s, this is the most insane thing I've ever done in my life." But, of course, I wasn't going to show any of you that.

CF: [laughs] What you didn't know was that it was written all over your face.

JS: Did you ever have a moment where you thought, What are we doing?

CF: I shit you not, J, every morning. It wasn't the pressure of "I hope I'm good." It was "Can I do it? Can we actually get through the day?"

JS: But you barely missed a line.

CF: But I say fuck about 150 times in the film, and only about two of them are scripted. [laughs] Talk about art imitating life.

JS: We crossed that a long time ago. [both laugh] You know, on the first day, I bet every person in the cast and crew was thinking, Can we really do this? And I think because we made the first day, and then the second day, we became the little engine that could. We were on a roll.

CF: Absolutely. As soon as we got over that little hump on the first day, the fight was on.

JS: You know, I always get asked about the length of the shoot. For the record, it was 12 days. The phone booth section is 10 days, and there was one day in New York and one day at the end for Radha Mitchell and Katie Holmes and all the people who talked to you [on the phone].

CF: Yeah. The film wasn't a marathon. It was 100-meter sprints. And the thing I've never been is a long-distance runner. I've always been faster over the 100-meter dash. So I was in heaven with you on this one.

JS: Did you enjoy the two weeks of rehearsal?

CF: Yeah. You never get to do that. It was great to sit around our table and hash it out.

JS: I think that helped everybody, and it certainly helped the camera, too. Another part of the challenge was that we had to stop shooting at four o'clock every day because winter was coming and we would lose the light. You'd get there at 6 A.M. and we'd be shooting by a quarter to seven. Your big confession scene was the first take one morning.

CF: I know. If I ever did surprise myself, it was that time.

JS: I could see it. By then we were on our ninth day of shooting. Do you think you were--

CF: --I was very broken. Tired. Yeah.

JS: Don't you think that helped in a sense?

CF: Completely. I play the tough guy and all that, but I'm a big old softy, as you know. About three days into the shoot, when we wrapped, I got the feeling that I just wanted to go back to me trailer and have a little sob. [laughs] To have someone on the other end of the phone, bullying me all the time... by that ninth day, man, I was so tired. I hadn't been sleeping, because I couldn't shut my brain off. And, of course, I had just met Millie [actress Amelia Warner], who had moved in with me three days before I started shooting.

JS: Millie is the woman you later married.

CF: Yeah, who I was madly in love with.

JS: And whom you're no longer with. Don't you have a tattoo of Millie's name?

CF: I have it on my finger. But I hadn't gotten it at that stage.

JS: Right. Will you keep it forever?

CF: Yeah. I'd sooner skip laser treatment and all that and just keep it. It's part of me past. But, you know, if I fall in love and it's a problem for someone, or I ever do get married again--God forbid--I'll have a look at getting rid of it.

JS: You've worked with some really big stars now, like Al Pacino and Tom Cruise, Kiefer Sutherland and Forest Whitaker--do you ever think back to when you were a kid in Dublin and watched those people in movies?

CF: Yeah. I remember having a huge love for videos. Your movie The Lost Boys [1987] was the first video I ever bought, and that was with-

JS:--That's the only reason I ever hired you.