COLIN FARRELL: Yes my son is disabled, but I think he's perfect

When people run into Colin Farrell and his elder son James near Colin’s home in Los Angeles, they will sometimes approach him to ask him what’s wrong with the young man.

‘And I always tell them about it,’ Colin says. ‘Maybe some people’s feelings are hurt by that question, but my feeling is, “If you want to know about it, just ask.” So if someone says, “Is that your son, what’s going on with him?” I’ll say, “I’ll tell you what’s going on with him…”’

What’s ‘going on’ with James Padraig Farrell, 21, Colin’s son with former girlfriend Kim Bordenave, an American model, is that he has Angelman syndrome, a rare genetic disorder named after British paediatrician Harry Angelman, who identified it in 1965. It results in a happy personality but 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 highly visible.

‘We all have significant struggles,’ he says. ‘But for most people they’ll be about emotional or psychological stuff, which is not to be sneezed at, it’s very serious. But if I look around me now, I wouldn’t know that anyone had struggles. Everyone looks healthy, everyone looks present. When James walks into the room you go, “Wow, what’s that dude got going on?” It’s significant.’

Until James came along, Colin’s life had been, by any measure, fairly free of challenges. Handsome, charming and happy-go-lucky, an A-list movie star and legendary lover of both alcohol and women, he seemed to float free of the obstacles we lesser mortals must deal with. He’s had a stellar movie career, most recently with 2022’s The Banshees Of Inisherin, which was nominated for nine Oscars, and he’s currently riding high on TV in the title 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 super-villain.

As The Penguin, Colin is barely recognisable under layers of prosthetics, and he has said that with the prosthetics and the dark side of his imagination he had to access to play the role, he found the experience quite a challenge. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I loved it,’ he told movie magazine Total Film. ‘But it got in on me a little bit… It’s not like I didn’t know who I was and I was going out and burning cars and s***, but… it was a really powerful experience.’

In 2003, when James was born, Colin and Kim both assumed parenthood would be smooth. ‘We thought he was perfect,’ Colin says, before quickly correcting himself. ‘Well, he is perfect, he’s a lovely young man, but we thought he was physically and neurologically perfect too. At first he was misdiagnosed as having cerebral palsy, which is common because cerebral palsy and Angelman syndrome share similar characteristics. But by the time he was two he was already having seizures, and I knew he had profound developmental delays.’

His son’s challenges made Colin look at life very differently. ‘You really do take nothing for granted,’ he told me once. ‘There’s a deep sense of fear – I’ve run through hospitals with James in my arms when he was having a seizure – but there’s also a deeper sense of love and respect. You know how a child’s first steps are a seminal moment in the life of the parent? Well, if you’ve been told there’s a chance your child will never walk at all, those steps take on a whole new meaning. They go into another realm.’

So Colin, who at one point estimated he was drinking three bottles of Jack Daniels, 12 bottles of red wine and 60 pints of beer per week, along with using various other substances, gave up drink and drugs. ‘James was two when I got sober,’ he says, ‘and part of the fuel that I used to get off alcohol and drugs and all that stuff was knowing he had health issues. All children need their parents – or a parent or grandparent or somebody – to care for them, and one of the things James taught me was to access within myself a desire to live, even if it was initially more about me thinking I wanted to live to be around for him.’

He talks less in public about his younger boy Henry, 15, son of another former partner, Polish actress and singer Alicja Bachleda-Curús, simply because there is less he feels he needs to say. But it’s clear he loves both sons equally. ‘Both my boys have taught me. I feel they’ve raised me more than I could ever raise them. That sounds twee but it’s true. Whatever man I am today has a lot to do with my parents and my upbringing, sure, but it’s also very much to do with what my boys have asked of me.’

But it’s James we are talking about today. Colin says he could not be more proud of him. ‘James is incredibly strong, brave and self-willed. He works so hard to achieve the physical capabilities that most of us nail by the time we’re two or three. But he’s lovely. He’s funny as f***, cheeky as anything. He’s got a smile that would light up Manhattan – he has such a gorgeous spirit and he’s loads of fun to be around.’

Nevertheless there are limits to communication with James, who is non-verbal. ‘I talk to him as I’m talking to you now, as if he’s a master at the King’s English. We have chats and all that but I don’t believe James has the level of comprehension some people say he does. I hope I’m not wrong, because there’s an awful lot of shame there. I want to meet him where I think he is – and I think he’s perfect as he is.’

Colin and Kim have remained in close contact throughout James’s life, and have agreed that, now he’s 21, it’s time for them to find him somewhere to live where he can be taken care of professionally.

‘Some parents say, “I don’t want to put my child anywhere, I want to take care of my child myself.” And I respect that,’ he says. ‘But my horror would be, what if I have a heart attack tomorrow and, God forbid, Kim has a car crash in a month and she’s taken too? Then James is on his own. He’s a ward of the state and he goes where? We’d have no say in it. He knows when somebody wants to be with him and when somebody’s just supposed to be with him. So if he has a carer or a teacher or a therapist and they’re not fully engaged he’ll just switch off. What his mother and I want is to find somewhere he can go, while we’re still alive and healthy, that we can visit and take him out. We want him to find somewhere 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 had enough of his mother – she’d say the same! He’s ready to get out of the house and go and have a bigger life than we can afford him, by having a sense of community he feels connected to, by going out every day, going to the supermarket and doing the shopping, going to the beach, museums, the movies, all that kind of stuff. Just a connected life.’

It was his and Kim’s horror at the lack of suitable facilities that inspired him to found the Colin Farrell Foundation, an organisation dedicated to helping families who have members with intellectual disabilities.

‘It’s been a struggle for us to find suitable residential care for James, and I thought, “If I’m having these difficulties what about all the other families out there that don’t have anything close to the means I have?” I’ve always known I wanted to do something about this, but until now I’ve been self-centredly busy raising my kids. Now I feel I have more space to do something.’

Among the first steps is a star-studded gala – with guests rumoured to include some of Colin’s Hollywood pals – to be held on 7 December in Chicago. ‘That’ll be our coming out into the community. A lot of the community will be there, and a lot of donors – there’ll be some big high-rollers there. In February I’m going to Washington to speak in front of the press. I’m also going to visit a couple of senators who have been kind enough to reach out.’

Would he care to divulge the political leanings of those senators? No, he would not. ‘I don’t give a f*** whether they’re Republican or Democrat because I’m neither – I won’t be cast as anything politically. Someone said to me about one senator, “But he’s a Republican.” I said, “Are you joking me?” None of this is about Republican or Democrat or liberal or conservative. This is about doing the right thing by our children.’

Gabrielle Donnelly

The Penguin, Monday, 9pm, Sky Atlantic and Now.