Colin Farrell is very excited about his date for the Academy Awards because it’s his 13-year-old son, Henry. “We're both wearing velvet tuxes,” says Farrell during our interview for Little Gold Men. He’s also pretty excited to reunite with the cast and crew from The Banshees of Inisherin one more time. “That’ll be a laugh, and it’ll be the last push across the line. We’ll just celebrate the day and enjoy it, and take any kind of thoughts of winning and all that stuff off the table.”

A guide to Hollywood’s biggest races

Farrell has been enjoying what is arguably one of the high points of his career. In the past year, he appeared in Matt Reeves’s The Batman, Kogonada’s After Yang, Ron Howard’s Thirteen Lives, and Banshees, which earned him his very first Oscar nomination. In Banshees, he plays Pádraic, a sweet man whose easy existence is shaken up when his best friend, Colm (Brendan Gleeson), tries to end their long-standing friendship. For his performance, Farrell won the best-actor award at the Venice Film Festival and the Golden Globe, while also receiving nominations for SAG and Critics Choice. 

Farrell has had a very busy awards season, but he’s now diving into his next project: starring in The Penguin, HBO Max’s series focusing on the Batman villain. While he’s excited to begin (he tells Vanity Fair his first day of shooting will be March 1, the day after our interview), he says it won’t be easy to finally close the book on Banshees at the March 12 Oscars. “We'll miss it—not the accolades and not the attention, but it was a beautiful time making this film,” he says. “So, we’ve had kind of an extension of that magic by virtue of being with each other for these five or six months. We’ll miss seeing each other. I’ll certainly miss seeing them.”

From New York, Farrell spoke with Little Gold Men about the first “rock and roll” version of Martin McDonagh’s Banshees script, how his two sons have helped him enjoy this whirlwind awards season, and which director he may be reuniting with next.

Vanity Fair: I just saw you at the SAG Awards on Sunday, and from what I understand, you flew to New York the next day to begin work on The Penguin. What is life like right now for you?

Colin Farrell: I say this not by way of complaint, just observation: It’s more chaotic than I would like or than I’m used to. But I am so thrilled to be close to the end of it just so I can focus on The Penguin. After we did the SAGs on Sunday, I flew Monday morning and I start shooting tomorrow [Wednesday] morning. It’s gonna be like a 4 a.m. pickup, just so we can get into the makeup because it’s about three or four hours of makeup every morning. But I’m super excited. The great joy of all this is actually the work. These last few months have really been extraordinary and it’s been so heartening to be able to share it with the whole Banshees crew and the other crews from other films that we’ve crossed paths with. But I’m really excited to get back to the working part. 

Do your kids keep you humble? What do they say about what’s going on with you this year, with your first Oscar nomination?

If anything, they do the opposite. I can be a bit kicking over sand castles about the whole thing, about the awards-season stuff. I remember my boy came back from school one day and he had heard, I think I had won the National Board of Review and I said, “yeah, it’s cool.” And he went, [mockingly] “oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it’s cool.” He went, “Come on, enjoy it for God’s sake. Just enjoy it.” And I was like, okay, I’ll lean into that wisdom. His point was you can get overtaken by it. You can take all this stuff too serious by trying really hard to not take it serious, in a way. There’s a bit of a trap there.

As a human being, I know what’s really important to me in life and it’s not what’s happened in the last six months. So knowing that, it just frees me up to actually just enjoy that. It is my first time doing all this, and I’ve been working as an actor for 25 years, so I’m just trying to enjoy it all.

You’ve been on the promotional part of this journey with Banshees since Venice where you won the actor award. Have you learned anything new about your cast or filmmaker during this part of the process?

I’ve known Kerry Condon for 22, 23 years. I've known Brendan for 15 years. I’ve known Martin for 18 years. So we're all kind of square with each other in that way. But what has been interesting is spending time with the other lads from other films, listening to a little bit of Austin [Butler]'s story and listening to Brendan Fraser's story. Crossing paths with them has been really, really lovely. 

But with our crew, there’s just been a massive amount of comfort, and to celebrate all this stuff has been a much easier lift because we’ve had the opportunity to share it together. If I was on my own in this, if it was just me from the cast, like I think it would be hard for me if I was Brendan Fraser—I know there’s a couple of people being nominated, but it’s mostly him kind of out front. We’ve been like the Traveling Wilburys. It kind of takes off the pressure.

Take me back to the beginning because I’m curious if after working with Martin on In Bruges and then Seven Psychopaths, did he come back to you throughout that time about working on something else?

Through the years, anytime he is in LA we grab a bite to eat and stuff. About seven years ago he said, “I’ve done something. I wanna send it to you and Brendan to have a look at it.” He wanted to get us back together and I certainly wanted to work with Brendan and Martin again. But he was nervous about it because he felt In Bruges had enough of a cache of love out in the film-loving community that he didn’t want to get me and Brendan together unless it was something that he felt incredibly strongly about and that it was different enough. 

He emailed me and Brendan, “Hey fellas, here’s this script I was working on. Have a look. Tell me what you think.” I read it and I loved it. I thought it was brilliant because  a mediocre Martin McDonagh script is better than 95% of the shit you’ll read as an actor. Brendan thought the script was great but couldn’t understand his character, couldn’t find a way in, couldn’t find a reason for the severity with which he cuts ties with me. My character was much cooler in the earlier version. There was a big shoot-out, and at the end I died bleeding out with a gun in my hand and a chair. The character had a bit of moxie in him. And then Martin said, “I don’t like it. Maybe I’ll rework it.” About four years later, we get another email: “Hey lads, I threw everything out except for the first five pages.” It was the script that we ended up shooting last summer. 

When I read it, I was like, “Oh no, where’s the cool guy? Oh, shit.” I just got a bit nervous. I just found Pádraic’s journey so sad. But I just loved it because he had taken a lot of the plot out. He’d taken all the gun shoot-outs, he’d made it way less cool, way less rock and roll and punk, and by simplifying it and literally just making it this kind of existential journey, he just allowed himself to go deeper and deeper and deeper into the human condition.

It sounds like this version is much more vulnerable.

It was. It was really clear that Martin had gone through a little bit of heartache himself that I think he just infused the script with, and when I read the second version, it had a much, much, much greater effect on me. I really felt it a lot more, to be honest with you, and I thought it was deeper and richer and more sad and more meaningful.

When you play a character like this, do they stick with you after?

They stick with you, just like memories in life stick with you. All of the films, they all get just packed away as memories because, if you’re an actor working in film and you’ve worked for 25 years as I have, you’re averaging about probably between six to eight months a year away from home, away from your family, away from your children. There’s a cost on them. There’s a cost on you. I get that you’re compensated financially if you’re as lucky as I’ve been. I get all that—I’m not talking about that. I’m just talking about the human experience of processing life as it happens to you. The point being that a lot of my experience of living has been on film sets and has been with crews. I have a lot of profound memories and experiences that I’ve experienced through the lens of working as an actor in film. As do my kids because they visit on sets and they remember times in London and in New York and being at certain things.

What’s next for you? You’ve got The Penguin but you’re not officially attached to any films that have been announced.

I’ve got a couple of things that I want to do. There’s another film with [After Yang director] Kogonada that I really want to do. And then there’s a film that myself and my sister Claudine are producing. It’s the story of that period between Norman Mailer and Jack Henry Abbott. Andrew Haigh adapted, and he’ll direct as well. They’re the only two things that I really have on my radar, but they’re not confirmed yet. But I’m good. Now, I’m just being in the present, and I can’t wait to get started on tomorrow morning on The Penguin.