Colin Farrell quotes:

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  • I mean, we are tribal by nature, and sometimes success and material wealth can divide and separate - it's not a new philosophy I'm sharing - more than hardship, hardship tends to unify.

  • My Dublin wasn't the Dublin of sing-songs, traditional music, sense of history and place and community.

  • The sea always offers up incredible stories of survivors' fortitude. Myths of a lot of countries have variations on that.

  • Anything that's different from your own realm of experience as a human being, whether it's driving a car or a boat, or using guns, anything that separates you from yourself and leads you more towards this character's existence is a big help.

  • The first time you hold your baby in your arms, I mean, a sense of strength and love washes over you. It washed over me and I never thought that possible.

  • I will say that as I get older and calmer and quieter in my own self, the one quality in a woman that I find more and more attractive is kindness. A sense of adventure and humor is important too, but I truly find kindness and consideration for others to be the most attractive thing in anyone.

  • I've realized as well after five years of being on the road that if I'm going to four or five months of my life to something even if I'm overpaid, it's four or five months of my life away from home, away from my son, away from family and friends. I better believe in it on some level even if it's a big movie.

  • I do enjoy reading some science fiction.

  • Yeah loads of bruises and welts, usually around the hip, arse, thigh region and elbows. Elbows got knocked up big time, but it was so much fun. I hadn't done a meaty action film in seven or eight years, so it was fun to explore that aspect of storytelling again.

  • Being Irish is very much a part of who I am. I take it everywhere with me.

  • I know what the important things are in life. I know that just because I pretend to be someone else for two hours on the silver screen doesn't make me a better person than the next man. So, I mind all those things. Simple things.

  • I'm not going to lie, there are more interesting ways to spend your time than answering questions about yourself. But if there were no questions to ask me, I might have a beef with that.

  • I'm not keen on cars and motorbikes. I tried to be a biker, but it wasn't me - I bought a Harley-Davidson and dumped it.

  • What my first son James did was allow me to care for something in this world when I couldn't care for myself. James saved my life.

  • Vampires have always held a very seductive kind of lore and have always been some variety of attractive, whether it's attractiveness that's born of just the physical attributes that they have - this kind of ethereal beauty or translucent pallor - or whether it is more to do with the way they carry themselves.

  • Life is apogee, apex, decline; life is death - and everything else is open to discussion.

  • You have the upmost amount of energy because you're not just having a cocktail at the end of the night. You're actually not drinking alcohol and you're keeping your body really clean and it's an amazing feeling to be getting out all the toxins.

  • I've got plenty of love in my life already in the form of my sons and a few good friends who I value dearly.

  • I couldn't care less about who sees my bits... My friends asked how I could do scenes like that and not get excited, but it wasn't like that. My bits looked the size of a cashew nut!

  • I'll be in Los Angeles for two weeks and I'll have a laugh, get battered and have a buzz, but at the end of the day, I'll go home. It's just me earning a few more stories to tell everyone at home and all.

  • I love my kids. I'm crazy about them.

  • I personally just want to do as many different things as I can do, whether it's comedy, drama, science fiction, horror, narrator... You've got a documentary, I've got a voice. Animated films. Big films, small films.

  • Pain seems to be easier, or melancholy seems to be easier to portray in a character. I don't know if that's because I'm a human being or because I'm an Irishman or both.

  • I'm just a true Irish boy at heart. I'm just myself, I stick by my guns and I treat people the way I think they should be treated, regardless of their status. And I just have a laugh.

  • Initially, less appealing to me than the idea of a vampire that is drawn by some misgiving or drawn by some sense of longing that he can't quite satiate.

  • I like to go for a little drive up the California coast.

  • You spend so much time in your head in life. And what yoga does is, it asks you to allow your head to be quiet, to allow it to be still, just for an hour and a half. Just deal with your body and your breath. And it's a great workout. I love it.

  • I get excited about room-service menus! I really do.

  • I've never seen a moon in the sky that, if it didn't take my breath away, at least misplaced it for a moment.

  • You consciously look after yourself, whatever that may be to you, whether it's going out for a few drinks and a bit of dinner, or just hitting the couch and watching TV, or going to the gym or yoga class. Just being aware that there's a potential for you to be in it and respecting wherever you find yourself is good enough.

  • But we're born as children and we look at the world with open eyes... And we don't judge and we don't betray. We're not jealous. We're not envious. We're not even weary, which is a danger also as kids. They have to learn a certain amount of awareness.

  • Her Majesty's Secret Service wouldn't have me on the payroll.

  • I hadn't really met Colin [Farell]. It's really weird to say: 'Oh, hello, I'm Kate...I'm Colin.. shall we?' That's a bit strange. Len was fine with it. We've gone through this experience with Scott Speedman before on the first Underworld move. It was our little version of swinging. We survived that.

  • The original WAS a fun film. [Paul] Verhoeven made a couple of 'Robocops' that were so great, too. I think the level of excitement is great and Arnie [Schwarzenegger] was particularly charismatic with that chopped up English, and the size of the man with his confidence and sense of humor.

  • You're scrutinized all through your life - you're scrutinized by your family, by yourself, by society, and your friends in a certain way, shape, or form.

  • I think there were six or eight weeks between 'Total Recall' and 'Seven Psychopaths.' I was at home in Los Angeles for 'Seven Psychopaths,' so it was the first time I had worked from my house here so it was great to be around the kids.

  • I was never an A student, but I was really well behaved until I was 13 or so.

  • I think I'm still trying to find my feet as an actor. And I know it ain't brain surgery, but it confuses me and it comes between me and my sleep a lot.

  • I'm in no hurry to get anywhere. I don't have any plans. I don't have a map. If you did in this business, you'd destroy yourself.

  • You know. I'll try anything. I'll do anything. I'll explore. Try different takes. All that kind of stuff to do sometimes, to do good performances, but always conducive to having a good time creatively.

  • I'm not painting myself as a down-home, modest guy.

  • I love the grandiosity, how sweepingly entertaining films can be. And I think there's a place for films that pry more into the human condition.

  • I'm just a true Irish boy at heart.

  • Every week a tsunami rips through poor towns and villages all over the world. It claims 25,000 lives a day, 175,000 a week. It sweeps children from the arms of their mothers, robs hundreds of millions of any hope for the future. That tsunami is hunger. Help us end it now.

  • You have a certain objectivity, as a member of the audience, and you can come away maybe being provoked into a certain discourse or a certain arena of questioning, regarding how you would deal with things that your character has to deal with. Whereas when you're doing a film, once you start asking, "What would I do?," you're getting the distance greater between yourself and the character, or you're bringing the character to you, which I think is self-serving, in the wrong way. The idea is to bring yourself to the character.

  • You move on. It's work. Yeah, I'm privileged and paid handsomely and it's not exactly being in a coal mine, but you still work your ass off and you work as hard as you possibly can and you hope that people connect to it and enjoy it.

  • I think, as human beings, we at times overvalue the intellect and we undermine the body. I don't mean a body externally and the shape of a body. I mean the intelligence of a body, the memories that a body can store, how a body feels emotion, and how a body processes emotion.

  • You dream to eat whatever you can and get away with it and then when you're told you have to eat, it loses its fun straight away.

  • Beauty is undefinable in language. It's something that you see when you see it, or you feel when you feel it, or you hear when you hear it. It usually encompasses all five of the senses. It can't exist without it being a somehow sensorial experience. But, I don't think it's quantifiable. Nothing is really quantifiable. Nothing is certain in love and friendship. We all try to understand these things.

  • I got to work with Jared Leto. Jared's cute. Oh, I'll tell you. Jared will make you doubt about your sexuality.

  • When I read the script it was extraordinary and to work with Yorgos [Lanthimos] again was amazing.

  • I'm not optimistic at all, nor am I pessimistic.

  • Desperation will allow you to do incredible things in the name of survival,

  • I've done far too many things that I felt were going to be genius that weren't and I've done some things that I didn't think were going to be much that really connected with people. So expectations are left at the door. But hope exists all the time.

  • One of the great things about the film being so unusual and provocative is the filmmaker to me doesn't seem to have a definite opinion on the rights or wrongs or the immorality of behaviors and systems, he just presents a set of very unusual circumstances and asked the audience to partake in the judging of what feels right or wrong or what feels natural and unnatural.

  • I am thrilled with my fan base. For some reason some of them are quite young, so they are quite frightened. I remember when I did 'Click' and I'd see Adam Sandler's fan base. He's the guy that people feel that he's their best friend, so he's walking down the street and people sort of high five him and want to tell him a joke or invite him to come home and have a sandwich with them. Mine are not like that. Mine tend to go: 'Argh,' and look horrified. They shake and take a picture from a really long way away. I do feel I've got quite good, respectful ones though.

  • I have hope. I have no expectations.

  • Women tend to immediately take responsibility if somebody messes up with both of us saying it's our fault. Men are quite happy for it to be your fault it seems like.

  • Making a film, you're in a really dark tunnel and the only kind of illumination is the shared experience you're having with your fellow cast and director.

  • But I dare not think too far into the future on the risk that I'll miss the present.

  • I'm enjoying [my career]. If anything I'm aware that the pressure of the first, I suppose, six or seven years I was in America - I mean that energy of having such a rapid and ascending celebrity - it's not there anymore. It's the end of that chapter and now I'm just enjoying the work probably more than I ever have and yet I'm simultaneously less attached to it I think, which is kind of a strange state of grace to be in.

  • I'll try anything. I'll do anything. I'll explore. Try different takes.

  • That's the process of making the film and it isn't until the world puts their eyes to it that you find out if it's creating any kind of connection at all. But every single film at some stage of the film I think, "I wonder what this is going to be?"

  • I don't go to the gym or practice yoga. And the closest thing I have to a nutritionist is the Carlsberg Beer Company. I just have the appetite of a pigeon.

  • My Mum taught me great manners. And she always told me that you can be or do whatever in life, as long as you don't hurt anyone and you're happy. My Mum's great; I adore her.

  • I'm a big old romantic.

  • Around the world there are certain marital systems, certain physical systems, political systems, social systems, and all those things are kind of turned on their head but represented in various ways within "The Lobster."

  • Seven years sober. I'm really grateful. It's really lovely to be present in my life.

  • I do have the ability to explore life and to be over the moon at the smallest thing - a few pints and a craic in the pub and I'm in heaven. But I have a melancholy side to me as well. Acting allows me to feel things, it kind of buys me human experience. And I don't mean this as acting as higher cause, because it's not, but it does kind of have a higher awareness emotionally.

  • As much as "The Lobster" feels like a world we recognize but not the world we live in, it's all drawn in an allegorical way from all the systems that exist.

  • An actor said recently that, unless you're a parent, you shouldn't play a parent in a film. I don't know who said it, but I disagree. I understand that maybe there are aspects that you don't understand, or maybe this actor or actress had a really strong recent experience with having their first or second or third born child. I don't know. As a dad, I get that. I get that there is no love like it. But, at the same time, love is love.

  • I never think I'm capable of any of [action movies]! I'm always terrified, but luckily on this one it was directed by my husband [Len Wiseman]. 'I can't possibly do it. I'm too scared, I can't do it.' He says: 'Go on. DO it!' So it is shocking as I'm not one of those people who finds that stuff easy.

  • Every week a tsunami rips through poor towns and villages all over the world ... That tsunami is hunger.

  • There are so many interpretations that this film [The Lobster] could be approached from. But Yorgos [Lanthimos] is so specifically minded, he's so clinical in his direction of the film.

  • Allow your head to be quiet. Allow it to be still. Just for an hour and half. Just deal with your body & your breath.

  • I take acting very seriously. I put everything I have and know into it.

  • [Yorgos Lanthimos] is really a master I feel, I really do.

  • Girl trouble, for me, is when you fall in love.

  • I'll wait to see what the film [The Lobster] is, but it's set in a contemporary world, in America, there are hospitals and diners, parks, things that we will recognize and experienced ourselves but yet there's this similar kind of uneasiness through all the interactions and all the things that take place. It was unnerving reading the script. I kind of felt nauseous after reading it.

  • It's not that I'm stupid. I just don't think sometimes.

  • Magic is at the core of myths.

  • I was disappointed, but I kind of knew it was going to be an uphill struggle because of how strong the first season [of "True Detective"] was.

  • I called Nic Pizzolatto and he said, "No, no. You're in it the whole way through." That was fun to shoot [in The Lobster]. I had a few scenes in that show that were some of my favorite all-time scenes to be in.

  • I never once regretted doing "True Detective".

  • I did loads of auditions and I didn't get called back. I still get giddy at all the people I get to work with, and I'm still enjoying the work and enjoying life too much that I don't feel like I've done that much.

  • I remember some of the sets on "Alexander" were extraordinary and it would just take your breath away.

  • On "[Total] Recall" also [sets were extraordinary], but this was next-level. They built two or three blocks of midtown Manhattan in 1926 and it was inhabited with 400 extras and 24 Model Ts and a train system and all that kind of nonsense. It was madness. You would walk into shops and they would have the goods from that period, it was just huge.

  • I didn't work with any of the beasts [ "Fantastic Beasts"], I didn't have much green screen, but I loved working on it. I'm excited to see it myself.

  • I think people enjoy "The Lobster" because people respond to original things, but I think they only respond to original things if they connect to some truths within us.

  • The level of backlash [for the True Detective] was kind of fascinating and not fully shocking because I know what the world of the internet is and how it's a platform to project their greatest anger and frustrations. But it's also a place where people can wax lyrical and be effusive in their glowing fondness of something.

  • Myself and Yorgos Lanthimos, we spoke a little bit and I was at a certain body weight that I was closer to making a statement or defining the character physically by losing weight. There was no justification for him to be emaciated, but I thought, say I was 165, I thought what if I went down to 155 and have him rail-thin? And Yorgos was like, "Well, if he's very thin I think maybe it will speak to some kind of psychological trouble that we want to stay away from," and I was like, "F - -, you're right."

  • I had a list of about 35 restaurants, 25 of which were fast-food joints all around Los Angeles and I didn't get a quarter through the list. It just became me thinking about going to these places and wanting to enjoy the food and food just not being enjoyable anymore.

  • Yorgos Lanthimos said, "What about if he's a bit soft?" And I said, "Yeah, I think you're right." He just comfort-eats a little bit too much. He's just asleep in his own life and has let himself go. And the mustache, I don't know if it was him or I suggested it. But I remember my sister was watching me eat and she was like, "God, does he have to be fat?" And in retrospect I couldn't think of David being any other way because it affected the way I moved. It really did. It slowed me down in a way that I felt was conducive to kind of tapping into the spirit of the character.

  • There was a part of me that felt afraid of people in Hollywood going: '**** Hollywood with their total lack of originality!'.

  • It can be a bit annoying if another actor is trying to talk to the director and the wife is sitting on his lap.

  • It's so technical. It's nothing personal. You're not fighting really, you're missing each other by a half of foot at least, ideally more and you get a few knocks and bruises. But with the kissing, you do kiss someone. Its lips on lips.

  • I just recently realized. It's very strange. But doing fight scenes with Kate [Beckinsale], I was little bit more cautious. You can go harder with a guy, which I don't mean as an insult.

  • I love working with horses. People say you shouldn't work with animals and children; that's wrong. You must only work with children, because you only work eight hours a day and I love working with animals. Animals have an honesty that human beings reach to find in their lives at the best of times.

  • It as an argument between the world of emotion versus the world of the intellect. It's the idea that you can suppress a person's mind and a person's experiences, mentally, psychologically and intellectually, but you can't completely quiet them to the point of dormancy and the emotionally life a person. You still have the heart and what the heart remembers and what the heart experiences. And even that isn't important that that comes across.

  • I was well aware of that when I heard they were remaking 'Total Recall.' My first reaction was: 'Ewww, really okay?' And the director said you should really look at it, the script is good. I had already done a remake. I had just finished 'Fright Night.' When I heard about that being remade, I had a whole ego thing... remake?. 'That is so uncool! I loved the original, I can't possibly do that'.

  • I have a piano in my living room that I mess around on a little bit and when I asked Len [Wiseman] if I could find a piece of music, I went through a **** load of classical music to find something that I felt had a certain urgency to it, but also with a hint of melancholia and maybe a sense of longing. I found that which is public domain and I had a piano teacher to go through it with me.

  • Quite often on a movie like Total Recall you have this training period of two or three months where, like on the first 'Underworld' I was doing gymnastics and trampolining and all this stuff which I don't do in the movie necessarily, but mentally it helps. You come home and you go: 'Well, I've done all that. I must be an action star now!' So it helps you focus a little bit and gets you fit.

  • Yeah, I know my way around some guns, which is weird because I have no time for them. I don't like them at all but I can take apart guns and put them back together and stuff, so I didn't have to go to the range. I don't think I will ever to go 'the range' again! I've done enough of that.

  • The idea of implanting memories where by the implantee couldn't tell the difference between a real experience and a fantasy experience was really cool. And his ideas of technology - do we control technology or does technology begin to control us? His work hasn't aged a day it seems.

  • At the end of the day, it's all one version of telling a story. I treated this as if it was a two million dollar independent film. I did a lot more physical work than I'd probably have to do for a two million dollar independent film with four months of training and stuff. But as far as the character's psychology or emotional life goes, I treat it just the same.

  • I'm not going to experience the reality of hardship that sometimes my characters live in. I'm very cautious about that.

  • I think people are propelled towards violence, and what propels them is much more interesting than the actual act of violence itself.

  • I just adored working in London. It was in London where I first had the idea of making a film.

  • I think that is what you want to do as a cinemagoer - to experience something fully. Some things don't let you experience them fully. It may be your own preordained prejudice where you can't experience them fully. But when you come out of the cinema having felt, thought, and experienced your way through two hours, that is a really cool thing.

  • From my experience, the only thing you can do is take what's written on the page and try, through your own curiosity and investigation, to make it your own and honor what the original intent was.

  • Most of actor's work is done at home, in your hotel room, in the wee hours of the morning thinking and reading and feeling, walking around and listening to music. It really just because an internal exercise, whatever skills. It's great if you have to learn something new for a gig and designing a character physically is always fun but it does become an internal exercise in separating the wheat from the chaff.

  • Sometimes I have experienced at the start of a film you're very excited and enthusiastic and you've done all your preparation internally and externally and you start the film and it's all go..... Then your attention goes somewhere else. Your energy goes into telling the story, so you don't have the same amount of energy to be objective, and that's okay because sometimes you become a subject of the story and you're inside it so much that you don't need to keep on looking on the outside.

  • If you need to get in physical shape for a film and you have to maintain that for six months.

  • It doesn't matter if it's a drama or a comedy, the need to get the emotion and the character arc across is way harder in something like this so was more of a preparation.

  • I've started films like Miami Vice where I'm in really good shape and I look back on that film and see the moustache is bigger as I've got a larger face.

  • I am more comfortable doing a drama.

  • I mean you can go wherever you want with it really. No matter what story you're telling you're always representing some reality. You are always representing human beings, their fears, their shortcomings, their braveries, their doubts, their loves, their abilities, their brilliance and those things inevitably lead to bigger political systems, foreign policy and crime and religion. It's an action film. We are not taking a stance about big government.

  • Audiences will see what they want to see. Some will come out, hopefully enjoying two hours of action. Some people will find themselves gravitating towards the emotional dilemma that the characters find themselves in. Other people will see that there is some layer of subversions to the storytelling aspect of poking a finger of judgment at certain governments to the idea of foreign invasion, others maybe false pretenses.

  • Hollywood. It lacks originality. Remake sucks.' But I had to look deeper into it from my own perspective. We are not trying to compete with the original at all and that's what allowed me to pull the trigger without any hesitancy .

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