How was working with Oliver Stone on “Alexander?”
Oh, it was great, man. Yeah. I had an amazing time working with him. He's an incredible man, an incredible filmmaker. Jesus.
Is your character’s private life an issue in “Alexander?”
Oh, of course. It's hard to have a private life when you're a king, but [what] we've done in his personal life, for sure, is touched on. It's not in a way that highlights it. I'll tell you one thing, anything that was needed for Oliver to tell a story the way that he intended it to be told is not taken out. As a result of, again, appeasing the people or being afraid of what people won't be able to handle.
Is the sexuality in there?
Yeah. I mean, you know he's bisexual. That's all you really even need to know and you don't even need to know that because there was no term for sexuality back then in respect to categorizing it as homosexuality, bisexuality, heterosexuality. There was no term for it. It was a time when men and men laid together and they shared knowledge. And they laid together. And women had babies primarily, but later on in life, as we got more technologically adept and sociologically inept, we started to put titles on everything. We decided for the few what was right or wrong or the few decided for the multitude what was right or wrong.
What was Stone’s process on “Alexander?”
He's smart enough. I mean, he definitely demands a different respect as each human demands a different way of trying to pull them out of themselves and dance with him. Oh man, he was very honest with me from day one, very tough and he should've been.
Tough? How?
Just tough in his honesty and the brutality of his honesty. “That was a sh** take. It was terrible, terrible. Okay, f*** it. Let’s go out and work and go. We're here.” Just honest. At the same time, when he told you that that was a great take, you knew that that was a great take. There was no dancing around the truth. He didn't dance around the truth, thank God. There's not enough people in the world that have the brutal honesty that he has.
What was your first meeting with Stone like?
I ate dinner with him. I sat around for a couple of hours and talked about “Daredevil.”
Did you have any preconceived notions about him?
Oh yeah. I'd heard every story going. I was very excited about meeting him. He sounded like a great character and he is and was.
Why do you think that when Stone’s movie was announced, at least two other similar stories were also announced?
I don't know. The story is only 3,000 years old. Of course - welcome to Hollywood. In the same year, “Hurry, who's going to make the first f***ing one?!” It's like, Jesus, I know that Oliver has been working on his or thinking about his for 10 or 12 years.
Was that the toughest role of your career?
Yeah, it's been the toughest that maybe I'll ever do.
Why?
Why? You’re playing Alexander. It's just a life with so much loss and so much ambition and so much destiny, and so many questions and very few answers. It was physically, emotionally, psychologically draining. There was so much philosophy, thought and feeling and pain that went into it. For my money, it's a pretty sad story. It's not “Alexander the Great, TADA!” It's a pretty sad, heavy story.
Did you watch other historical films to see what to do and what not to do? Did you see “Troy?”
No. I haven't seen “Troy.” I have to f***ing see it. But as I said, I've been working. I've been working and only got here yesterday and so I haven't seen it.
Did you watch the Richard Burton film?
Yeah, I watched the Richard Burton one. Ours is not as stiffly classic. I mean, Burton is a f***ing genius. F***ing Richard Burton, oh my God. But the whole piece as an energy was, for my money, far too soupy. These men - even ours will probably be too f***ing gentle - but these were f***ing animals. They were animals, even the King. It wasn’t sitting on the throne in a castle. He was on the battlefield with blood, sweat and tears. And society was rough. It was honest, but it was rough. They drank a lot. They cussed a lot. Their dialect would've been something far more animal than [with a British accent], “Hello, I'm Alexander, the King.” It would've been guttural, something that sounded, not Arabic, but something that sounded a little Latvian or Lithuanian. There would've been animal sounds, but there wasn't. In ours, Oliver was lucky enough that he let us Irish boys use Irish accents and Welsh boys use their Welsh accents and there's a couple of English actors in there. But it's primarily a Celtic sound. So I use my own speech, but I cleaned up the diction. I cleaned it up a little bit. So that's how it differs. It's more real as a result, I hope.
What was the training process like?
Oh, sh** man, we talked about this for four or five months. It was a lot. We did boot camp for weeks, weeks.
PAGE 4: Colin Farrell on "The New World," "Ask the Dust," and Looking Back
