Dog hair is not a miracle cure. Colin Farrell knows this from experience.
The Irish actor learned about the limits of the folk remedy years ago while filming Minority Report, director Steven Spielberg's tech noir based on Philip K. Dick's sci-fi novel of the same name.
That fateful day on set, as Farrell recounted on Tuesday “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” was perhaps even more unsettling than the surveillance setting in which the 2002 film is set.
According to him, it all started on the eve of Farrell's birthday. That night he “did all sorts of nonsense” and returned home in the wee hours. At the time, Farrell was struggling to break a long-term substance abuse habit.
“I remember getting into bed and as soon as I turned off the light, the phone rang,” the Oscar winner said. He was 10 minutes late to pick up the car at 6am.
“I said, 'Oh my gosh.'
Farrell said he had barely gotten out of the car when he was intercepted by assistant director David H. Wenghaus Jr., insisting, “You can’t go on set like that.”
In response, the young actor asked for six bottles of Pacifico beer and a pack of Marlboro Reds.
“Look, it’s not cool because two years later I went to rehab, right?” Pharrell told Colbert. “But in that moment it worked.”
But did he do it?
In the end, Farrell said it took him 46 takes to deliver one line, albeit a long-winded one: “I'm sure you've all grasped the fundamental paradox of crime-fighting methodology.”
“Tom wasn't very happy with me,” Farrell said. Fortunately for Cruise, he received a consolation prize in the form of a Saturn Award nomination from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. Plus “Minority Report” $35.6 million domestic market opening didn't hurt.
Farrell finally got sober a few years later, shortly before filming In Bruges (2008), he said on Dublin International Film Festival 2021.
According to Farrell, the transition was difficult at first: “After 15 or 20 years of drinking like I did and drinking like I did, the sober world became quite scary.”
But “to come home and not have the buffer of a few drinks just to calm my nerves was really amazing,” he said.
