Colin Farrell Andreas Rentz/Getty Images for ZFF Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment In The Ballad of a Small Player, Edward Berger's adaptation of Lawrence Osborne's 2014 novel, Colin Farrell plays Lord Doyle, an Irish con man and high roller in Macau whose luck, he fears, may be about to run out. Farrell, however, is still on a roll. The Irish actor received the Golden Icon Award at the Zurich Film Festival, in recognition of his career achievements and, in a wide-ranging Master Class discussion on Sunday, discussed the "extraordinary, unearned good fortune" that has been his life in cinema. Growing up in Dublin, Farrell had no plans to act. "I wanted to be a footballer, a soccer player. I was handy enough," he recalled. His father had played professionally for Dublin club Shamrock Rovers and sports were "the one way my father and I could have communication and a relationship. It was tricky everywhere else, but when it came to football, we were good to go." Related Stories Movies Wagner Moura on 'The Secret Agent' and Confronting Authoritarianism, From Bolsonaro to Trump: Zurich Movies Inside Tom Quinn's Neon Revolution His dream of a professional soccer career ended when, "I started drinking and smoking and all that stuff." Acting came via his sister Catherine, who went to theater school. "It was the first time in my life when I heard that she was going to, quote, unquote, study acting. It sounded ridiculous. I didn't think it was something you could apply yourself to within a formal structure." Farrell followed his sister to theater school. "Which gave me the chance to do something I do very well, which is drop out," he said. "I dropped out and started working." Colin Farrell in 'Ballad of a Small Player.' Netflix Farrell landed a role in the popular BBC series Ballykissangel and got his first film role in Tim Roth's directorial debut The War Zone (1999) - alongside his The Ballad of a Small Player co-star Tilda Swinton. But it was Joel Schumacher who changed everything, casting the still-unknown Irishman in Tigerland (2000) as a young soldier going through boot camp before heading over to Vietnam. "Joel kind of changed my life," Farrell said. "He wanted a bunch of unknown actors. He took a chance on an Irish kid." After Tigerland, Farrell's rise was meteoric, leading to roles in Hollywood productions working alongside "my childhood heroes," from Tom Cruise in Minority Report to Al Pacino in The Recruit. "I got to work with Al Pacino in my third year of acting on film. It was pure bananas." The speed of it all was overwhelming. "It was so loud, it was so global, and I was so unprepared," Farrell said. "I was only 22, but I was really [emotionally] 12. I hadn't earned it. The thing I understand now, at 49, is that there's no earning the degree of good fortune that came my way." By his own admission, the combination of sudden fame and heavy drinking nearly ended his career. "At a certain point, big Hollywood stopped calling. I got a certain reputation, which I probably earned." The turnaround came with Martin McDonagh's In Bruges in 2008. "I read the script, loved it, and then I tried to talk Martin out of casting me," Farrell said. McDonagh didn't listen. "It was a bit of a turning point. It might have been the first job I did sober," he recalled. In Bruges was a hit and the role marked the beginning of Farrell's second act, defined by more personal, often darker choices, from Yorgos Lanthimos' The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer to his Venice-winning, Oscar-nominated performance in McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin. Farrell has also managed to slip back into blockbuster territory, most memorably as the Penguin in Matt Reeves' The Batman. Being cast, he said, was a dream come true for "that child in Dublin who used to draw Batman signals on his jeans." But he admitted, on first read, he didn't get Reeves' take on the cartoon villain. "I was so excited when I got the script and then I read it and was like 'I've only got five scenes,'" he recalled. "I didn't really get it either. I thought he was a bit silly, a bit of a putz." It wasn't until Reeves showed him the mockup of how Farrell would look, unrecognizable, in his Penguin makeup, that the penny dropped. "I'll never forget it. Matt went: 'Come in, come in.' And he opened up his laptop and showed it to me. The first time I saw it, the cogs crunched. Everything in the script became clear. Every little pockmark. The character was ferocious looking, but I could imagine every aspect of the character's life, even moving ones. It just gave me so much information," Farrell said. Rhenzy Feliz (left) and Colin Farrell in HBO Max's 'The Penguin.' Courtesy of HBO The part proved strong enough to launch HBO's spin-off The Penguin, where Farrell got to dive deep into the characte