Don’t call it a renaissance but Colin Farrell is on quite a run of brilliant projects of late, isn’t he? We learned something new about the Irish actor today though, in that he used to have a huge obsession with Marilyn Monroe as a child.
After starring in great flicks like the drama movie After Yang, comedy movies The Lobster and The Banshees of Inisherin, and playing the Batman villain Penguin in the new Batman movie, Farrell is well and truly smashing it. But when he was a little boy, he only had one thing on his mind – Marilyn Monroe.
In an interview with Jimmy Kimmel from 2017, Farrell discussed his childhood crush on the iconic movie star and revealed the unusual notes he used to leave her under his pillow when he was eight years old.
“I used to leave her Smarties. I wrote her a little note saying, ‘You should try these, I know you’re dead but they’re really good.’ This happened for about a week until I finally got the message that she wasn’t going to turn up. I used to get pissed off with her for not responding, my feelings were hurt,” Farrell explained.
“She was my first experience of romantic love. When I saw her for the first time in Some Like It Hot, as beautiful as she was and as exuberant as she was and as flirtatious as she may have been, there was a sadness that she could never, never hide as a performer. At eight or nine, I felt it,” he added.
Of course, as a child it didn’t matter to Farrell that Monroe had already passed away, or indeed that there was a considerable age gap to start with. He just fell in love with the romance movie star. That is, until she ignored the offer of sweets under his pillow.
Dive into the future of Farrell’s depiction of Penguin with our guide to The Batman 2 release date. Or, see if any of Farrell’s recent hits make it on to our list of the best A24 movies.