Peak Of His Powers

Now in his early 40s, Colin Farrell has left his firebrand ways behind to become an even more accomplished actor with an amazing array of roles under his belt.

- Michael Pickering

IF YOU EVER FREQUENTED legendary Sydney watering hole the Judgement Bar in Taylor Square in the early 1990s, chances are you may have shared elbow-bending room alongside a charismatic, good-looking young Irishman with coal-coloured eyes and hair to match.

He may have introduced himself as “Colin”, which would have meant nothing to you at the time, because a famous Irishman with that name and look was still a few years off. This Colin, 17 years old, was here “for the fuck of it”, drinking “with the reprobates” in the Judgement, working in a bank and living in a unit offOxford Street.

“I hadn’t even finished school and they put me in a bank,” Colin Farrell told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2012 while recalling his brief time living in Sydney in 1993. It was a short but eventful time. Farrell also took his first steps into acting in Sydney, via a play at The Performance Space in Redfern, and was also taken into police custody for suspected murder because he resembled an identikit photo, as he told US Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon in 2015.