With his gallant appearance and self-confidence, he gained a reputation as a “bad boy” after his success in the 2000s with films like SWAT, Miami Vice o Alexander the Great. A fan of football and especially of Diego Maradona, at some point the Irishman Colin Farrell (48) decided to review his priorities, get serious and begin the second part of his acting career, with roles played and movies with less popcorn and more content.
This Thursday, September 19, he arrived on HBO and MAX screens as the protagonist of a series in which he is playing what he believes is the role of his life, The Penguin. In 2022 he had premiered that role in the film The Batmananother twist to the famous saga, this time with Robert Pattinson as the famous superhero.
To the director Matt Reeves He liked it so much how Colin Farrell managed to transform himself into the famous villain, which Danny DeVito recreated in the Batman of Tim Burtonwhich decided to executive produce this 8-episode series that began to take off this week.
Critics almost unanimously praise its transformation and also the darkness of a series which will see its villain trying to gain leadership in Gotham City’s underworld.
He entered this year to present an Emmy with the music of Batman and everyone is betting that he will be nominated in the next installment. He is preceded by an Oscar nomination for best actor in 2023 for The spirits of the islandthe tragic feud of two great friends on a fictional island in Ireland.
“I’m usually drenched in insecurity, doubt, and disdain when I see my work on screen. After the first screening of The spirits of the island “I remember telling my sister I’m destroyed, no one is going to take me seriously anymore,” he admitted, to the surprise of the journalists present. Clarion included, in a recent press conference.
The transformation that took 3 hours a day
Colin Farrell is unrecognizable as Oz Cobb, as Oswald Cobblepot will be known in the series. Behind the magnificent makeup provided by Mike Marino, Oscar candidate precisely for his work in The Batmanthe only thing that Colin recognizes as his own are the eyes, although he believes that they look differently from the psyche of that disturbed character, whom he defends because he has learned to understand him in his long metamorphosis.
“I don’t want to make a value judgment, but he was born with a physical defect that makes him limp and he has been bullied for that. Sometimes it turns out that people who are very cruel have received cruelty in their lives.”.
The first time, for the movie, the task of becoming that character that is no longer him lasted 8 hours.
For the series, he says that they completed the process in 3 hours, where he listened to music and when he was bored he called his children in the voice of The Penguin. He says he felt like the circus was in town every time he came in to be transformed.
The competition between the different penguins
Danny De Vito just said in an interview that his penguin is better.
Colin says that several messages were sent back and forth with DeVito competing for who was the best penguin and also who had the best action figures.
“They ask me who I was inspired by, some say I remind them of Dustin Hoffman in Lost in the nightsomeone told me that I reminded them of Robert De Niro like Al Capone in The Untouchables. Apparently mine is not a very original performance,” she jokes. He’s seen those movies so many times that she understands how some of that can seep into his performance. And he admits that at 7 years old he was a fan of Burguess MeredithThe Penguin from television’s Batman Adam West.
His character has a catalog of a lot of pain and uncertainty in his past, he acknowledges. “Sometimes it was very violent, sometimes it was very rock and roll”. Without wanting to spoil it, he says that in the end Oz has gone too far and there is no turning back. “It’s all part of the puzzle that makes this job as an actor so entertaining.”