Wild man Colin Farrell was cruising along on a sea of drugs and drink when he finally decided to get serious about acting, writes Nick Papps.

COLIN Farrell is in a reflective mood. The hard-drinking, womanising, brawling, foul-mouthed Irish actor is nowhere to be seen.

Well, almost. He is drinking an enormous glass of red, chugging on a cigarette and dropping liberal doses of the f-word, but compared with the drug-popping, booze-swilling, headline-grabbing Farrell, this is a decidedly tame version on show here.

Firmly ensconced on a lounge in the penthouse of a luxury Los Angeles hotel, Farrell is reminiscing about the time before he was one of the world's leading actors; before he was linked to everyone from Angelina Jolie to Britney Spears; and before his manhood was the centrepiece for magazine articles.

It was 10 years ago and 17-year-old Farrell was just another wannabe actor who had dropped out of school and was using his good looks to get some part-time modelling work.

Days were spent drinking in Dublin pubs and nights were for drinking and taking drugs in clubs. In early 1994, though, Farrell decided he'd had enough. As he says, he was "bored off his tits" and in a bid to bring some excitement to his life, he and two mates packed their bags and headed to Australia for an adventure.

"I had my 18th birthday about a week after arriving," Farrell recalls, his thick Irish accent floating across the hotel room. "We had a great time. I had an amazing time – pubs, clubs, girls, the ocean.

"Just a lot of girls and a lot of swimming in the ocean, boogie-boarding, in the pub at Byron Bay hotel playing pool and getting pissed on schooners of VB.

"We hung out in Byron Bay for two weeks and then drove to Nimbin.

"I just had the best time, you know, it felt like the world was full of possibilities, which you feel like anyway a lot of the time when you are 18, but that idea was kind of confirmed by where we found ourselves.

"It's a good year. You don't have to worry about fake ID. You are right in the middle of your career in respect to the opposite sex or the same sex or whatever sex keeps you going."

Sex will become a recurring theme this afternoon and already it is obvious this meeting with Farrell in the top floor of the St Regis Hotel is not going to go the way of most interviews.

Maybe it's the wine, maybe the cigarettes, but already, interviewing Farrell is taking on the dimension of a frank chat in a pub.

It's an impression further confirmed when the 28-year-old darts out of the room to get a second glass of French red for his interviewer.

Farrell spent about a year in Australia, working at odd-jobs, partying and even doing a little acting, appearing in a play called Kelly's Reign in Cleveland St in the Sydney suburb of Redfern.

But there were no great career breakthroughs in Australia and, after getting sick of waiting tables, the restless Farrell headed home and by 1995 he was back to his drinking and partying ways. If it had not been for the intervention of his brother, Eamon, that may have been the last most people would have heard of him.

Eamon convinced his younger brother he should take acting seriously, enrolling him in Dublin's Gaiety School of acting. It proved a life-altering move, and eventually Farrell won a part in the BBC-TV series Ballykissangel in 1998.

In 2000, director Joel Schumacher cast him in Tigerland, his film about young recruits preparing to fight in the Vietnam War.

Then in 2002, Farrell starred opposite Tom Cruise in Minority Report and next month, Australians will see him in his biggest role so far as Alexander in Oliver Stone's epic's film about the great Macedonian conqueror.

He will fly in to Australia on January 14 for a series of interviews and appearances linked to Alexander's opening.

Farrell was paid an estimated $US15 million for Alexander, confirming his status as one of Hollywood's leading men, and for a lad from the Dublin suburb of Castleknock who never finished school, it's an impressive pay cheque.

But with Farrell, first impressions can be deceptive because there is another Colin Farrell, a darker character who offscreen has struggled with drugs, depression and loneliness.

Last year he hinted about this other part of his life in an interview with a British magazine in which he spoke about a visit to a psychologist as a 17-year-old, just before that trip to Australia.

"I ended up on a shrink's couch and he told me to write down how much I did in a week," Farrell said. "Twenty of E, four grams of coke, six of speed, half an ounce of hash, three bottles of Jack Daniels, 12 bottles of red wine, 60 pints and 280 fags. He looked at me and said, 'No wonder you're depressed'.

"I was a chancer and hustler, out of my tits on ecstasy for a year. There's footage of me in a red G-string advertising Christmas underwear. I did it because they paid an extra $10 – the cost of an E. I was going one way – down. I was self-destructive, still am."

The drug usage even extended to heroin, an admission Farrell made recently when he told GQ magazine heroin was "nice at the time". For what it's worth, he says he now regrets saying that and it was just a flippant aside about his life 10 years ago.

But, whatever the intention of Farrell's words about heroin, there is no getting away from the fact that he has his fair share of demons, and as he adds another butt to the hotel saucer, he says he thinks he has a bipolar life, and in his rapid-fire way of speaking, explains why.

"I have always been one of the lads, and had decent mates," he says. "All me mates at home that I have had for 12-15 years, I had great time with the boys and the girls and everyone in Australia. I have always loved the company of people. I love people, I love life.

"But, as I said about almost being bipolar, there are times as well I have felt a kind of profound loneliness which is not justified even because I have had the option of having people in my life.

"Again it just goes down to wandering, being a bit of a dreamer, not being necessarily completely happy in one place for too long because there must be somewhere else that's either more interesting or hasn't been touched yet."

The desire for change can manifest itself in many ways. In Farrell's case it has seen him travelling often and it also has seen a constant stream of women through his life.

Farrell admits he has not had a girlfriend for five years because: "I'm not there. I move around a lot and I'm just enjoying life and enjoy the company of people, both male and female."

The company has included some of the most beautiful women in the world, including models Josie Maran and Naomi Campbell, Britney Spears, actress Demi Moore and his latest supposed partners, his co-stars from Alexander, Rosario Dawson and Angelina Jolie. Every week it seems a new story emerges about Farrell and his women while the source of each scandal claims he can't see what all the fuss is about.

"Joel Schumacher puts it best; he said it like two years ago: 'Colin's 26, he is an actor, he smokes cigarettes, drinks beers, says f--- a lot and likes to screw women, well shock f---ing horror'," Farrell says.

There was a brief time in Farrell's life when it looked as if he may have settled down. It was four months in 2001 when he was married to British actress Amelia Warner.

Nowadays, however, marriage and even a long- term relationship are firmly off the agenda.

"I've been in love a few times and it hasn't worked out and I'm not someone suffering third-degree burns as a result of the incident but I have just made a clinical decision," he says.

"A huge factor is that I'm moving but it's also, you know, I really don't trust myself to fall in love again. If I do or I am with someone I will be going 'OK, when's it going to end?'

"That in itself will bring about a very quick death. I will have to wait until I meet someone, I mean if I met someone tomorrow and they blew me away I'd be gone, I'd be in like Flynn."

Farrell concedes there is also another impediment to seeing a Mrs Farrell for quite some time – the not so insignificant problem of monogamy.

"It's a tough one man, that you are going to spend the rest of your life making love to one person – there's a lot of human beings in the world. There's a lot of different physical experiences to have and there's a lot of sharing of love, even if it's just a moment.

"Romance is great in that it can give you the belief that relationships and monogamy is possible and that kind of love can exist and that kind of trust and abstinence can exist but in the same sense it also gives you a wandering eye. It's a tricky one," he says.

As Farrell's minder wanders into the room to signal an end to our conversation, I throw one final question at Farrell, asking him what he would like to be remembered for, what his epitaph might read.

"What a trip. I hope you have as much fun as I did," he says.

With that, the actor returns to the adjoining room to refill his glass of red and find a fresh packet of cigarettes.