Best thing about finding fame is that you learn it’s not going to bring you happiness – Farrell
THE only good thing about achieving fame is “that you get to strike it off your list of things” you thought might bring you happiness, Colin Farrell has said.
The Hollywood star gave a thoughtful and introspective look at his career path as he appeared at the Pendulum Summit in the National Convention Centre before an audience of about 3,000 people.
Interviewed on stage by RTÉ’s Miriam O’Callaghan, Farrell revealed that he had been home for three weeks for Christmas – and had been driving around Dublin at 3am.
“The city has changed, it’s more the city I remember when there’s nobody around,” he explained, adding that he had visited Phoenix Park and the house where he grew up.
He batted off questions about his love life, laughing: “I love life. Jesus, I love it.”
On his life in Hollywood, Farrell said he doesn’t go out much because “it doesn’t interest me”.
“I love the work, I love working with actors,” he said, adding that it allows him to look at the lives of others and to imagine what life may be like for another person in different circumstances.
Asked if he found fame difficult, he said he believes he found it trickier at the start than he had pretended.
“I was so young – it happened so fast,” he said, adding that he was afraid that people he knew would say ‘hold on, don’t get too big for your boots’.
He believes he had imposed on himself an ‘arrested development’ in which he had attempted to stay the same.
Farrell was speaking at the opening day of the annual Pendulum Summit, a motivational business conference organised by former Munster rugby star Frankie Sheahan.
Among those in attendance were recent presidential candidates Gavin Duffy – with his wife Orlaith Carmody – and Seán Gallagher.
Amongst the speakers today will be Boris Johnson, the former UK foreign secretary and Brexiteer, on the topic of “Opportunity in Uncertainty”, followed by veteran comedy actor John Cleese.
Jim Warny, the Co Clarebased cave diver, told the summit about how he had assisted in the high-risk rescue of 12 boys from a cave in Northern Thailand last July. The Wild Boars football team had spent 17 days underground.
He claimed that while people think of him as “a bit of a hero”, he is “just a person with a specific skill”.
The Belgian national said he had put his emotions on hold after the children were rescued, but around six months later, was suddenly triggered while watching a pre-recorded documentary that he had made. He said he had suddenly become “very quiet” and “was not ashamed” to say he had “cried for 15 minutes”.