Entertainment
Colin Farrell ‘shocked and thrilled’ as he nabs top best actor prize at Venice Film Festival-Jennifer McShane-Entertainment – Metro
Director Martin McDonagh collected the prize on his behalf.
Colin Farrell has won one of the industry’s top accolades (Picture: AP/Shutterstock)
Colin Farrell has won one of the industry’s top prizes, the gong for best actor at the Venice Film Festival, for his performance in Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Insherin.
The Banshees of Insherin, set on a remote island in the west of Ireland, casts the Irish actor opposite fellow Irish star Brendan Gleeson as two friends who fall out inexplicably while the Civil War rumbles on the mainland.
‘I’m shocked to get this and thrilled,’ the 46-year-old said in a live video message broadcast at the festival Saturday night.
He couldn’t be there to attend in person, however, director McDonagh was on site to collect the prize.
‘I can’t imagine ever passing on anything he writes because he’s such an extraordinary writer,’ the actor said of the writer-director earlier in the festival.
The Beguiled star scooped the prestigious award tonight alongside fellow winner Cate Blanchett, who was awarded for her ‘bone-rattling performance’ in TÁR.
The Banshees Of Inisherin, in which Farrell stars, got a 13-minute standing ovation at the festival this week (Picture: Shutterstock)
On Tuesday, the Dubliner and his co-stars received a 13-minute standing ovation at the festival following the premiere of the film.
The Venice Film Festival, after Cannes, is seen as the start of the long awards season run that stretches out to the Oscars in March, which means his chances of possibly securing an Oscar nod are looking good, considering all the hype the film has generated so far.
Farrell stars in the film with fellow Irish actors and Barry Keoghan (pictured) and Brendan Gleeson (Picture: AP)
The filming of this film was undoubtedly easier than some of the Hollywood star’s former projects. He previously said he got a sense that death was only a misstep away,’ while filming The North Water in the Arctic.
He played Drax, a feral harpooner locking horns with Captain Brownlee (Stephen Graham) and surgeon Sumner (Jack O’Connell) on an 1850s whaling voyage to the Arctic.
‘We were shooting on moving ice floes and the ice would crack, a walrus visited us on set as we were shooting. We’d have four spotters, one on each corner with a rifle and binoculars.’
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‘The 10 times or so they spotted a polar bear, a horn would blare and we’d have to get back on the boat until it had gone. The bears and their cubs were beautiful, majestic, but, y’know, keep them away from me…’ he said.
He was recently seen in the Robert Patterson-starring remake of The Batman, as well as Amazon Prime film Thirteen Lives.
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