Tom Cruise was “not really happy” with Colin Farrell during the filming of the 2002 movie Minority Report.
Farrell, 49, recalled what it was like to co-star with the “Mission: Impossible” actor in the blockbuster movie during Wednesday’s episode of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
“It was really crazy, because I grew up watching those young guys. I grew up watching Tom Cruise in ‘Top Gun’ and[…]’Risky Business,'” he told Stephen Colbert, also mentioning director Steven Spielberg.
However, his experience with Cruise turned sour on the “worst day” of his career.
Farrell told Colbert that he had “begged” production to not work the day after his birthday because he had “thought all kinds of nonsense” the night before. They made him show up at the 6 a.m. meeting time even though he said, “We’ll see what we can do.”
“When I got to the trailer, God bless me, the third assistant director… said, ‘I can’t go on set like this,'” he said.
To stave off a hangover, he asked for a rabbit bunny (a tactic he warned the audience about) and 20 packs of cigarettes.
“It worked in the moment,” he laughed. But it still took him “46 takes” to finish a line.
“Tom wasn’t very happy with me,” Farrell said.
The “Penguins” star, who has been sober for 18 years, previously spoke about the experience, explaining that his sister was also there to visit him.
In a 2019 interview with Britain’s Mirror newspaper, he recalled that he was offended by seeing him drunk and behaving like a “disaster” and left the set.
Three years after the film’s release, Farrell admitted that he had been “basically drunk or high” since he was 14, and entered rehab. His most recent assignment was in 2018 and was meant to be an “adjustment and reset.”
The Irish actor credits his 22-year-old son James, who has Angelman syndrome, with inspiring him to get sober.
“James was two years old when I got sober,” Farrell told the Daily Mail in October 2024. “Part of the energy I used to quit alcohol and drugs and things like that was knowing he had health issues. Every child needs the care of a parent, or a parent, or a grandparent, or someone else.
“One of the things James taught me was to access the desire within myself to live, even if it meant initially wanting to live to be by his side.”
Mr Farrell, who is also the father of 16-year-old son Henry, said he wanted to stop “what has been an intergenerational problem in[my]biological family” and declared sobriety to be his “legacy”.
If you or a loved one is affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please call SAMHSA’s national helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
