Colin Farrell on His “Extraordinary, Unearned Good Fortune,” From ‘Tigerland’ to ‘The Penguin’

In The Ballad of a Small Player, Edward Berger’s adaptation of Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 novel, Colin Farrell plays Lord Doyle, an Irish con man and high roller in Macau whose luck, he fears, may be about to run out. Farrell, however, is still on a roll.

The Irish actor received the Golden Icon Award at the Zurich Film Festival, in recognition of his career achievements and, in a wide-ranging Master Class discussion on Sunday, discussed the “extraordinary, unearned good fortune” that has been his life in cinema.

Growing up in Dublin, Farrell had no plans to act. “I wanted to be a footballer, a soccer player. I was handy enough,” he recalled. His father had played professionally for Dublin club Shamrock Rovers and sports were “the one way my father and I could have communication and a relationship. It was tricky everywhere else, but when it came to football,…