When people bump into Colin Farrell and his eldest son James near Colin’s home in Los Angeles, they sometimes approach him to ask what’s wrong with the young man.
“And I always tell him,” Colin says. ‘Maybe some people’s feelings will be hurt by that question, but my feeling is, “If you want to know about this, just ask.” So if someone says, “That’s your son, what’s wrong with him?” I’ll tell him: “I’ll tell you what’s wrong…”
What’s ‘wrong’ with James Padraig Farrell, 21, Colin’s son with his ex-girlfriend Kim Bordenave, an American model, is that he has Angelman syndrome, a rare genetic disorder named after British pediatrician Harry Angelman, who identified him in 1965 as a happy personality but with severe intellectual and developmental disabilities, with symptoms including seizures and difficulties with both speech and movement. It is incurable and yes, says Colin, it is very visible.
“We all have important struggles,” he says. “But for most people it is about emotional or psychological issues, which is not negligible, it is very serious.” But if I look around me now, I wouldn’t know that anyone had a hard time. Everyone looks healthy, everyone looks present. When James walks into the room, you’re like, “Wow, what’s that guy going on?” It’s significant.’
Colin Farrell with his son James, who suffers from Angelman syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes a happy personality but severe intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Before he became a father, Farrell, an A-list movie star and a legendary lover of both alcohol and women, seemed to float free of the obstacles that we less mortals must contend with.
Until James arrived, Colin’s life had been, by any standards, fairly free of challenge. Handsome, charming and carefree, an A-list movie star and a legendary lover of both alcohol and women, he seemed to float free of the obstacles that we less mortals must contend with. He’s had a stellar film career, most recently with 2022’s The Banshees Of Inisherin, which was nominated for nine Oscars, and is currently riding high in television in the lead role of the acclaimed but violent Batman spin-off, The Penguin, in which he plays. Oswald ‘Oz’ Cobb, the brutally disfigured mobster who reinvents himself as a supervillain.
As The Penguin, Colin is barely recognizable under layers of prosthetics, and he has said that with the prosthetics and the dark side of his imagination he had to tap into to play the role, he found the experience challenging. “Don’t get me wrong, I loved it,” he told film magazine Total Film. “But it affected me a little bit… It’s not like I didn’t know who he was and went out burning cars and shit, but… it was a really powerful experience.”
In 2003, when James was born, Colin and Kim assumed parenthood would be easy. “We thought it was perfect,” Colin says, before quickly correcting himself. “Well, he’s perfect, he’s a lovely young man, but we thought he was also perfect physically and neurologically. He was initially misdiagnosed with cerebral palsy, which is common because cerebral palsy and Angelman syndrome share similar characteristics. But when he was two At the age of 10, he was already suffering from seizures and knew he had profound developmental delays.
His son’s challenges caused Colin to see life very differently. “You really don’t take anything for granted,” he once told me. “There is a deep sense of fear (I ran through hospitals with James in my arms when he was having a seizure), but there is also a deeper sense of love and respect. Do you know that a child’s first steps are a pivotal moment in life from your parents? Well, if you have been told that there is a possibility that your child will never walk, those steps take on a whole new meaning.
So Colin, who at one point estimated he drank three bottles of Jack Daniels, 12 bottles of red wine and 60 pints of beer a week, as well as consuming various other substances, gave up drink and drugs. “James was two years old when I got sober,” he says, “and part of the fuel I used to get off alcohol and drugs and all that stuff was knowing I had health problems.” All children need their parents, or a parent, or a grandparent, or someone, to take care of them, and one of the things James taught me was to access within myself the desire to live, even if at first it was more about I thought I wanted to live. be close to him.
He speaks less in public about his youngest son, Henry, 15, son of another ex-partner, the Polish actress and singer Alicja Bachleda-Curús, simply because he feels he needs to say less. But it is clear that he loves both children equally. ‘My two children have taught me. I feel like they’ve raised me more than I could raise them. That sounds corny but it’s true. Whatever man I am today has a lot to do with my parents and my upbringing, of course, but it also has a lot to do with what my children have asked of me.
But it’s James we’re talking about today. Colin says he couldn’t be more proud of him. ‘James is incredibly strong, brave and willful. He works very hard to achieve the physical capabilities that most of us achieve by the time we are two or three years old. But it’s charming. It’s fucking fun, cheeky like anything else. He has a smile that would light up Manhattan; “He has a wonderful spirit and is very fun to be around.”
However, there are limits to communication with James, who is non-verbal. —I speak to him as I speak to you now, as if he were the king’s English teacher. We have talks and all that, but I don’t think James has the level of understanding that some people say he has. I hope I’m not wrong, because there is a lot of shame there. I want to find him where I think he is and I think he’s perfect just the way he is.’
Colin and Kim have remained in close contact throughout James’ life and have agreed that, now that he is 21, it is time to find him a place to live where he can be cared for professionally.
Farrell with James’ mother, his ex-girlfriend Kim Bordenave. she is an american model
The actor is barely recognizable as Oz Cobb in The Penguin. He said he found the experience quite challenging.
‘Some parents say: “I don’t want to leave my child anywhere, I want to take care of him myself.” And I respect that,” he says. “But my horror would be: What if tomorrow I have a heart attack and, God forbid, Kim is in a car accident a month from now and she’s affected too? Then James is alone. He’s a ward of the state. and where does he go? We wouldn’t have any say in it. He knows when someone wants to be with him and when someone is supposed to be with him. So if he has a caregiver or a teacher or a therapist and they’re not fully engaged, they just. “He will disconnect. What his mother and I want is to find a place he can go, while we are still alive and healthy, that we can visit and get him out. We want him to find a place where he can have a full and happy life.”
Will it be traumatic for James? ‘I know my son. He’s had enough of me. He’s already fed up with his mother, she would say the same! He is ready to leave the house and have a bigger life than we can allow, having a sense of community that he feels connected to, going out every day, going to the supermarket and shopping, going to the beach, museums, movies , all that kind of stuff. Just a connected life.’
It was his and Kim’s horror at the lack of adequate facilities that inspired him to found the Colin Farrell Foundation, an organization dedicated to helping families with members with intellectual disabilities.
“It’s been a struggle for us to find suitable residential care for James, and I thought, ‘If I have these difficulties, what about all the other families who don’t have anything like the means that I have?'” I always knew I wanted to do something about it, but until now I have been busy raising my children in a self-centered way. Now I feel like I have more space to do something.”
Among the first steps is a star-studded gala (the guests are rumored to include some of Colin’s Hollywood friends) to be held on December 7 in Chicago. That will be our coming out to the community. Much of the community will be there and many donors; there will be high rollers there. In February I’m going to Washington to speak to the press. I will also visit a couple of senators who have been kind enough to contact us.
Would you mind divulging the political leanings of those senators? No, I wouldn’t. “I don’t give a damn if they’re Republican or Democrat because I’m neither; I won’t be considered politically.” Someone told me about a senator, “But he’s a Republican.” I said, “Are you kidding me?” None of this has to do with Republicans, Democrats, liberals or conservatives. It’s about doing the right thing by our children.’
Gabrielle Donnelly
The Penguin, Monday, 9pm, Sky Atlantic and Now.
