Currently he is filming the Harry Potter spin-off, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and planning a project inspired by the Homeless World Cup. Farrell attended the most recent tournament held in Amsterdam last month and is keen to talk to The Big Issue about why the subject is close to his heart.
I could have been easily on the streets. Easily
Why the interest in people suffering from homelessness?
Och man, there go I but for the grace of God. Genuinely. If I didn’t have the abundance of shit that came by way of a film career as I explored my proclivities, I could have been easily on the streets. Easily. If I had a nine-to-five job and was doing things the way I was doing them in the past… honestly, there go I but for the grace of God.
Does the film industry accept that kind of behaviour because it can often be good publicity?
The movie industry is forgiving. Actors are treated sometimes like golden cows. There’s a certain level of idolatry. As long as your films are making money you can pretty much do what you fucking want – any kind of behaviour will be excused, even if you’re killing yourself or mistreating others. That’s very much the way it is elsewhere but it’s taken to a different and more elaborate degree in the world of entertainment, whether it’s music or film.
Do you relate to the men and women you meet selling The Big Issue and at the Homeless World Cup?
Of course. The Homeless World Cup was amazing to see. I had a blast. I met a lot of the players, particularly the Irish lads and the Scottish guys and gals. They were telling me what they’d been through. They were very generous, I hope I wasn’t imposing on them. I noticed so much of my story in their stories, the struggles and the difficulties. It all boils down to human beings, our sensitivities and our inability to deal with them at times.
You are planning to make a film about the tournament. How did that come about?
The producer of a film I did thought one might be able to make an effective film to the backdrop of the Homeless World Cup. We began the process of working on a screenplay with Frank Cottrell Boyce, who has been writing it since then. He’s done a few drafts and he’s really cracked it big time.
Loneliness and exclusion are a couple of the biggest themes we have to deal with as human beings
Isolation is something that exacerbates the problems homeless people suffer. Isolation is also a major issue in The Lobster.
Loneliness and exclusion are a couple of the biggest themes we have to deal with as human beings. I see it with my kids in school, them wanting to be part of a play date, things going pear-shaped and someone feeling on the outside. From a very early age you learn about this thing called exclusion, then we try and navigate through the rest of our lives avoiding it like the fucking plague.
People are often judged by the relationships they are in. A single person can be seen as a loner, married people are normal… Is that a fair way to judge people?
They are the brush strokes within which we live. Some of us gladly hand ourselves over to that and a lot of people offer up a hearty resistance. I think resistance and alignment both have potential flaws and pitfalls. But ah man, it’s tricky. Each to their own – single, with someone, polymorphous, I don’t fucking know. I haven’t a clue. I just know that life is tricky for a lot of people and some of that is down to the fact that a lot of people feel very alone.
The Lobster is part comedy, part drama, it asks a lot of questions but doesn’t provide answers. That’s life, isn’t it?
Absolutely. I’d love to have more certainty in my life. The only certainty life allows is that it’s all awash with uncertainty. There’s not a corner you turn and then you see the straight road ahead. As soon as you think you’ve arrived… you’re fucked.
As you get older do you learn how to handle the unpredictable things life throws at you differently?
I would like to think so. If you can diminish the desire or insistence on certainty then you can rid yourself of that thing that also causes so many of us so many problems, which is expectation. But it’s easy talking to you in some hotel about this. We’re talking some lovely theory here, practice is a different thing. You start off sometimes with theory then you grow practice from that. Decisions are informed by age – age being the accumulator of experience.
The Lobster is out in cinemas