colin farrell
A handsome, dark-haired Irish actor with an intense screen presence, Colin Farrell shot to fame in the USA as a cagey army recruit with a penchant for troublemaking in "Tigerland" (2000). Like so many actors who seem to achieve overnight stardom, the Dublin-born actor had paid his dues with film and TV roles. Raised in the Castleknock section of Dublin, this son of a soccer player admits to a somewhat rebellious youth, attending several schools and indulging in beer drinking. After spending a year in Australia, he returned to Ireland and enrolled at the Gaiety School of Acting but left after a year when his career began to take off. Farrell landed his first film role in "Drinking Crude" (1997) and the following year had a supporting role in the period TV drama "Falling For a Dancer" (aired in the USA on Romance Classics). He then landed the regular role of Danny Byrne on the popular Irish series "Ballykissangel", which he played for two seasons. Farrell went on to play a small role in Tim Roth's film directorial debut, "The War Zone" (1999) and co-star as an autistic teen in the Donmar Warehouse staging of "In a Little World of Our". As it happened, actor Kevin Spacey saw the production and recommended the young actor to the director of "Ordinary Decent Criminals" (2000), the fictionalized story of Irish thief Martin Cahill that was to star Spacey. Next up was "Tigerland", in which Farrell, under the direction of Joel Schumacher, more than held his own as the Texan who deploys an anti-establishment attitude despite possessing the makings of a leader. Whatever critics felt about the merits of the film, the actor enjoyed nearly unanimous raves for his work.
Farrell quickly vaulted to the A-list and soon found himself fielding offers for roles originally earmarked for stars like Jim Carrey, Matt Damon and Edward Norton. In 2001, he starred as Jesse James in the poorly received revisionist Western "American Outlaws" and was cast as a lawyer turned WWII pilot who is captured by the Germans and then must defend a fellow P.O.W. on murder charges in "Hart's War" (2002) opposite Bruce Willis. Farrell's major introduction to mainstream audiences came in 2002, when he acted alongside Tom Cruise (as the hard-nosed Danny Witwer, who doggedly pursues Cruise's character) in the Steven Spielberg-directed sci-fi thriller "Minority Report." His first major starring role in a studio release was set to be the Schumacher-directed "Phone Booth," but it was postponed from its original fall 2002 release date due to a series of similar, real-life sniper killings in Maryland making news at the same time. Despite the delay, by early 2003, buzz was high on Farrell--whose press interviews routinely featured the unabashed, outspoken actor drinking, smoking and cursing--as he starred in two high-profile films: first, "The Recruit," in which he played a rising young operative at the CIA who becomes embroiled in the mysterious machinations of his teacher (Al Pacino) and his lover (Bridget Moynahan); second, in memorable appearance as the comic book villain Bullseye, an assassin with incredibly deadly accuracy, who battles Ben Affleck in the big screen version of Marvel Comics' "Daredevil" (2003). Farrell goes devilishly over-the-top as a comic book killer and makes the most of his all-too-brief appearances.
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