Colin Farrell has been sober since 2006, but he was infamously addicted to drugs and alcohol before that. As the actor recalled in an appearance on The Late ShowWith Stephen Colbert, his drinking once got him in trouble with none other than Tom Cruise.
Farrell was one of the stars of Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Report, a 2002 adaptation of a Philip K. Dick sci-fi story starring Cruise as a police chief in a special unit that can predict crimes before they occur and arrest the would-be perpetrator. Farrell plays an agent from the Department of Justice who is hot on Cruise’s tail when he goes on the run after the precogs foresee him committing a murder. The film was shot in 2001, and one of the days they were filming happened to be Farrell’s birthday, as he explained to Colbert.
Farrell’s Partying Caused Tensions With Cruise
“It was my birthday on May 31, and we were shooting, and I begged production — who did I think I was? — of a $120 million film if they [could] not have me working on my birthday,” Farrell recalled. “So of course my pickup was 6 a.m. on May 31, and I got up to all sorts of nonsense the night before. And I remember getting into bed, and as soon as I turned off the light the phone rang and it was the driver, [who] said, ‘It’s 10 past 6.’ And I went, ‘Oh, shit.’”
When he arrived at the set, the assistant director David H. Venghaus Jr. told him “You can’t go to the set like this.’”
Farrell’s solution? A six-pack of Pacifico Cervezas and a packet of 20 Marlboro Red. Farrell, who went to rehab two years after this incident and who has been sober for nearly two decades, no longer endorses his past actions. It’s not like the hair of the dog made things much better, anyway.
“it was terrible,” Farrell said. “I will never forget the line I had that I couldn’t get out. It was, ‘I’m sure you’ve all grasped the fundamental paradox of pre-crime methodology.’ That was the line that started the scene.”
According to Farrell, they had to do 46 takes of the scene.
“Tom wasn’t very happy with me. Tom, who I love, was not very happy!”
Colin Farrell Went to Rehab in 2005
Farrell struggled with addiction ever since he was 14, according to the actor. In December 2005 he entered a rehab facility upon realizing that his addiction was preventing him from being a good father to his then-2-year-old son, James.
“Having my son, as well, was the primary reason. I just wanted to be there for him. I wanted to be clear, be around him, and remember being with him,” Farrell said on The Late Show With David Letterman a few months after he was released in 2006.
“It was horrible in one way, because I went away because I was pretty sick,” Farrel said of the experience. “But in another way it was great, because it was a very safe environment with a bunch of people who were looking to sort out things in their life.”
He has stayed sober since, though in 2018 he voluntarily checked himself back into rehab as a preemptive measure.
