Hollywood star Colin Farrell has opened up about his own experience of loss at the star studded Dublin premiere of his new movie, The Banshees of Inisherin.
The Dublin actor landed in the capital tonight to huge fanfare for the Irish premiere at the Lighthouse Cinema. The Martin McDonagh movie tells the story of Padraic, who is left devastated when his buddy Colm puts an end to their long-standing friendship.
Colin, who stars alongside fellow Irish stars Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan, said: “I have had friendships that have kind of petered out but I’ve never had someone draw a line in the sand the way Brendan’s character does.
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He said: "I've experienced loss. We all have experienced loss.
"We experienced the fear of being excluded from the hearts and the minds of the physical lives of the people that we love. So loss isn’t really a novel notion and I experience loss and I experience fear regularly," he added.
The new movie has already been tipped for Oscar success but Brendan and Colin both remained humble when asked how they'd react. Brendan told the Irish Mirror: “Look, it would be brilliant so that’s fine, that’s number one. What it does is it gets us access.
"This kind of film is not easy to either get funding for, but with Martin being a superstar, it makes things easier. But certainly with finance… and then if it’s a hit and people are responding to it, which they are, it’s getting people and then you get recognition for that at that level, it spreads it right out, so it is reason for celebration for sure.”
Colin added: “Anything that can be done to get the film out to give people a chance to see it in a world where films are getting ever more expensive and the films that inhabit a €5m to €15m budget, they’re just harder to make.
“And people aren’t going to them in the multiplexes and I get why. We’ve so many options at home, with streaming and all that so if any accolades came our way would be a positive. Happy days,” he added.
Director McDonagh revealed they had to build a pub on Achill Island where they filmed parts of the movie. And Farrell joked that he was left almost upset when he went to revisit the pub with his son several weeks after filming finished only to find it had been dismantled.
He said: “I went back six weeks after we finished shooting. I took my youngest son back and we did a little tour and the f*cking thing was gone.
“I don’t know what I expected. It was made of cardboard but it was gone, it was just a gravel thing there. But it was almost upsetting,” he added.
U2 frontman Bono, film director Jim Sheridan and Domhnall Gleeson were also in attendance on the night. Bono was joined by his wife Ali Hewson as the pair smiled and posed for photographs with Gleeson, Farrell and McDonagh.
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