Colin Farrell is a great actor with a very impressive filmography to his name. One of his most well-known movies is the 2002 blockbuster Minority Report, and while he may have basked in the success of the flick after its release, there were times on set that sounded less than spectacular. In particular, Farrell remembers the day after his twenty-fifth birthday being especially tough.
Despite requesting time off, the studio made sure the performer had to come in to shoot. They couldn’t just stop filming because someone wanted to go out and have fun. This wasn’t going to prevent Farrell from having a big celebration the night before, though and he showed up for work the next day extremely hungover.
Steven Spielberg was still determined to get all the he could out of the young actor and made sure that every line would be delivered perfectly, even if it took over fifty takes. Farrell recalls the experience in his own words with vivid detail:
“It was a rough night and I didn’t get any sleep. The line was, ‘I’m sure you’ve all grasped the fundamental paradoxical pre-crime methodology’. I only know it now, still, 16 years later because it caused so much panic and anxiety. It should be on my tombstone. My sister was on the set that day and she had to leave the set after 56 takes. I was a disaster.”
In his defense, that sounds like a hard sentence to say even in the best of circumstances. The tongue twister gets even more difficult after a night of no sleep and constant partying. Eventually, he did get the line right. It may have taken hours, but now it seems like it’ll be a group of words that’ll forever be seared into his brain.
This kind of persistence shows why Spielberg is one of the best directors to ever live. The patience and work ethic on display in that anecdote alone are proof that he’s always determined to make every shot perfect. Plenty of others in his shoes would have given up or settled for a lesser take, but not him.
It all ended up working out for the best, too, as the movie became a huge hit and was nominated for a ton of Oscars, including one for Spielberg as a director. It even inspired a short-lived TV series on Fox.
Colin Farrell, on the other hand, insists that this is the only time his lifestyle has ever affected his job. It may all sound entertaining in retrospect, but anyone who’s ever gone to work with a hangover can attest that it’s definitely the opposite of fun.
