Farrell at last night’s screening for In Bruges.Photo: Getty Images
He’s the quintessential bad boy gone good, and, even though he’s quit partying, Colin Farrell’s still got his weak-knee-inducing charm, as we learned last night at the screening of Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges, at the IFC. He plays Ray, a hit man who’s sent to the gothic Belgian town to sit out the aftermath of a killing. As with all Martin McDonagh productions, the characters have set moral standards and rules, some justifying murder and violence. One of Ray’s rules is that if someone comes at you with a bottle, you have to hit the person, even if it’s a middle-aged Canadian woman. We wanted to know former bad boy Colin’s lowest threshold for violence. “I’m not a very violent man,” he told us, “[but] ask another question like that and I’ll put you on your back!” he joked. “That could be misconstrued,” he added quickly, as we blushed. And since his character punched said Canadian while on a date, we asked about his worst-ever first-date experience, being a former Casanova and all that. “We [Irish people] don’t really date,” he said. “I can’t even ever remember ever having a first date.” Just as we thought: Colin just goes right in for the kill! —Fiona Byrne
