NEW YORK ― If a wine connoisseur is an oenophile, what, exactly, do you call someone with expertise in freshly pressed juices?

Colin Farrell is that, personified. “Cheers, love,” he says, clinking plastic containers of a leaf-colored beverage. “Here I am having green juice with you, in New York City. How times have changed.”

He pauses, sips. “It’s not bad. A little tart.”

Farrell, 39, quit drinking in 2006, and now expounds on the joys of hot yoga. He juices. And he’s all about reveling in his own good fortune.

Sobriety “has been good to me,” he says. “I’m lucky that I have one son who has never seen me drunk or high. My oldest son wouldn’t remember, I don’t think. It’s been that long,” says the father of James, 11, who has Angelman syndrome, and Henry, 5, from two previous relationships. 

Professionally, after years of some hits (2011’s “Horrible Bosses”) and misses (that same year’s “Fright Night” remake), he’s starring in Season 2 of HBO’s “True Detective,” which premiered Sunday, playing a morally decrepit cop investigating a grotesque murder. And his futuristic love story “The Lobster,” due next spring, just won the jury prize at Cannes. Not bad for an actor who freely acknowledges that some of his choices were made for the money.

“I’ve had some highs, man, and I’ve had some things that gloriously didn’t work. The kind of failures you should be proud of,” says Farrell with a grin. “Through all that then, I’m working 15 years later. I’m just grateful, really.”

Playing a police officer with serious anger issues didn’t come naturally for Farrell. “The last thing I wanted to do was anything that alluded to law enforcement, criminality or violence as represented by gunplay. And then this thing comes across,” he says. “I had such a respect for each character’s moral or ideological or psychological quandaries.”

Creator Nic Pizzolatto says he wanted Farrell to portray a man with “a lot of contradictions, a deep sadness and an innate strength, a corruption and a nobility, and I thought Colin’s performance embodied those things perfectly. I think Colin’s intelligence, emotional nuance and dedication gives an authenticity to those extremes, and I am in total, humbled awe of what he did with the character,” he says via email. “And it takes a very, very special man to pull off a bolo tie.”

Not to mention, that facial hair. “My mustache was homegrown. The finest homegrown,” brags Farrell.

Filming near Los Angeles, just miles from his home, sweetened the deal for the actor, who got to see his kids on a regular basis, no Skyping needed. “I got to get in my own bed at night. It was tasty,” he says. “It felt like a normal job, where I had to deal with kids and lunches.”

By Donna Freydkin, USA Today  

(TNS)