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Colin Farrell has revealed that he once showed up hungover to set and needed almost 50 takes for a scene, leaving costar Tom Cruise “not very happy” with him. The Banshees of Inisherin star said that while working on Spielberg’s 2002 film Minority Report, he had “one of the worst days” ever on a film set thanks to the heavy partying he did the previous night. “I grew up watching them lads, I grew up watching Tom Cruise and Top Gun and Risky Business, and Steven Spielberg and [composer] John Williams kind of raised me in their films,” he said during an appearance on the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “But it was my birthday on May 31. We were shooting. I begged production of a $120m film if they would not have me working on my birthday. Who did I think I was?” Based loosely on Philip K Dick’s 1956 novella of the same name, Minority Report follows a police unit that uses psychic technology to predict murders and stop them before they take place. Colin Farrell plays Department of Justice agent Danny Witwer, who audits the programme, alongside Tom Cruise as Precrime chief John Anderton, who finds himself accused of a murder he hasn’t committed yet. “So my pickup [time] was at 6am and I got up to all sorts of nonsense the night before,” the Irish actor said. “I remember getting into bed, and as soon as I turned off the light, the phone rang, and it was the driver outside saying, ‘It’s 10 past 6’ and I went, ‘Oh s***.’ Farrell recalled assistant director David H Venghaus Jr stopping him at his trailer and saying: “You can’t go to the set like this.” “I went: Just get me, get me six Pacifico Cervezas and a pack of 20 Marlboro Reds,” said Farrell. The In Bruges star explained that this incident took place a few years before he went to rehab for his addiction to alcohol and drugs. Farrell checked himself into a treatment centre in 2005 and has been sober since 2006. In 2018, he checked himself into rehab as a “preemptive measure”. “Now, listen, it’s not cool because two years later I went to rehab, right? But it worked in the moment. All the holy people that we look to for the answers on how to live a life would say, ‘The present is all that counts,’” he continued. “I had a couple of beers and I went to the set,” he said. “But it was terrible. I will never forget the line that I had, but I couldn’t get it 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. I remember one of them coming up and saying, ‘Do you want to go and take a breath of fresh air?’ And I remember thinking: ‘If I go out and take a breath of fresh air, then I’ll be under more pressure when I come back in.'” Farrell revealed what upset Cruise that day. “It took 46 takes. Tom wasn’t very happy with me. Tom was not happy with me.” Farrell is currently promoting his latest film, Ballad of a Small Player, where he plays Lord Freddy Doyle, a high-stakes gambler laying low in Macau when his past and his debts start to catch up with him. Speaking to The Independent at the London Film Festival earlier this month, the 49-year-old explained that he spent eight weeks residing in Macau, which is often dubbed the “Las Vegas of Asia”, whilst portraying the gambling addict Lord Doyle. “I was surrounded by bells and whistles and loud horns and lights and water fountains going off and Celine Dion playing from the speakers at seven o'clock in the morning.”
