Colin Farrell ‘Very Proud’ of His Kids but Doesn’t Believe He’ll Ever Peak in His Own Career: 'We Are Constantly Arriving'
Colin Farrell values his role as a father above everything else.
The actor, 48, said following his win at the 2025 Golden Globes on Sunday, Jan. 5 that he is most “proud of my kids” while reflecting on his personal and professional life so far.
“I don't know if I feel pride to be honest with you, which is not to say I'm not a prideful person. I do feel pride in my life,” Farrell said backstage at the ceremony. “I feel very proud of my kids and who they are as men and watching them navigate the world,” referring to sons James, 21, and Henry, 15.
The Penguin star said the unemployment rate of actors is "super high" as he added that he is “very grateful that I get to work most of the time with people who I end up having real affection for and bringing these scripts to light. It's just such a joy."
Farrell, who won best male actor in a limited or anthology series at the Golden Globes, shared that he still feels he hasn’t arrived in his career despite having worked as a successful actor for around 30 years.
“I think I did say that a long time ago, and I still believe, that either there is no arrival or you're constantly arriving,” he said. “We are constantly arriving in the moments of our lives and some of them we would prefer over others. And the ones that oftentimes would be less preferable are the ones of course you learn the most from and experience the most growth from."
Farrell shared that he appreciates, however, every milestone that comes his way. “I'm grateful that I still get the opportunity to do it,” he said.
The actor has two children: his eldest son, James, shared with ex-girlfriend Kim Bordenave, and youngest son Henry with his ex and Ondine costar Alicja Bachleda-Curús.
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In August, Farrell spoke to PEOPLE for the first time about life with his son James, who has the intellectual disability, Angelman syndrome.
"Everything is magnified when you have a child with special needs," the actor said. “James was about 2 when I got sober, and he was a big, big part of me putting the bottle down … if it wasn’t for my sobriety, I wouldn’t be able to be there for James and enjoy the marvel of his life and support him in the way that I feel that I can.”
Farrell revealed his sobriety and his sons "are the aspects of my life and the presences within my life that I’m most grateful for.”
"I’m proud of both my boys. I’ve been blessed to have two really fine young men in my charge. I just adore them. And I don’t want to be like this is perfect, and I just tell them they’re perfect all the time … They’re just really good dudes,” added Farrell.
Why Transforming Colin Farrell for ‘The Penguin’ Was ‘Harder on Every Level’ Than ‘The Batman’
Mike Marino, the makeup designer responsible for transforming Colin Farrell into Oswald “Oz” Cobb for “The Batman” in 2022, knew that returning to work on the actor’s look for the HBO spinoff series “The Penguin” would be harder than the film in every way. In the film, Farrell was a supporting character who only appeared in a handful of scenes. With the show, he’s front and center in almost every shot, and in some, there is even full-body nudity. Add in TV vs. film budgets, different kinds of lighting and longer shooting days, and Marino was in for a real challenge.
“It was harder on every level,” Marino said. “We always try to build things to look great in person. My mentality is if you get it to look good in person, it’ll look good on film. But now we’re in different lighting environments (with) less control. We have extreme close-ups of a makeup. It’s much more difficult.”
The biggest hurdle for Marino and the show was hair. For the film, Farrell shaved the top of his head, which made the difficult process of applying Oz’s thinning hair a bit easier. When it came to starting production on the show, Farrell informed Marino he didn’t want to shave his head again. This meant the makeup designer had to contend with the actor’s thick hair.
“Colin has a huge head of hair that doesn’t want to stay down,” Marino said. “That’s why he’s always wearing a headband in interviews and stuff—hair’s wanting to stick up. So flattening that every day and making it look like he’s bald is the biggest challenge. And then the lighting and the coloration and all of those things play. There’s a million puzzle pieces and factors that will make or break this.”
The early development for Oz came from Marino’s conversations with “The Batman” director Matt Reeves. The two talked a lot about “The Godfather” and likened the character of the Penguin to Fredo Corleone, the sweaty, balding brother of Al Pacino’s Michael in Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic film. Marino also went straight to the source to draw further inspiration. During the interview with TheWrap, he showed off walls and walls of comic book art through the years. There was “Batman,” obviously, but also “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “Judge Dredd” and more. There have been countless interpretations of the Penguin across media, so Marino took what was also there while keeping his own hyperrealistic approach.
“I have a vast knowledge of comic books and all the different artists that have all different types of interpretations of Penguin,” he said. “I knew him very well. I mean, not only from the 1966 TV show, not only Danny DeVito but (comic book artists) Neal Adams, Carmine Infantino, Brian Bolland—all these people who did their own versions of the Penguin.”
He added, “If you compare a real human being to the Penguin, it’s going to be very rare for you to find a person that looks like that. They exist, but it’s rare. Taking in hyperrealism and a fantasy feeling of scars and tuck marks and the general shape of him and my looking at penguins and angles of their eyebrows and all these things, I didn’t so much copy anything. I just let it intuitively come out in my studio.”
A version of this story first appeared in the Below-the-Line Issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
The post Why Transforming Colin Farrell for ‘The Penguin’ Was ‘Harder on Every Level’ Than ‘The Batman’ appeared first on TheWrap.
