The James-Younger gang on the ride in AMERICAN OUTLAWS (left to right: Gregory Smith, Colin Farrell and Gabriel Macht)
© 2001 Warner Bros.

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Irish 'Outlaw'

When Colin Farrell was growing up in Dublin, Ireland, the idea that he might someday get the chance to play a gunslinging western hero like the ones he loved to watch on the telly must have seemed about as likely as taking a trip to the moon. Even today Farrell finds the idea of an Irish kid starring in the quintessential American movie genre "kind of ridiculous."

Yet there he was, not so many years after he first got into John Wayne pictures and SHANE, blazing away with his own pair of six-shooters as Jesse James in AMERICAN OUTLAWS.

"I couldn't believe it meself," he says. "It was like a f---in' joke, letting me play Jesse James."

If any aspect of Farrell's fast-rising movie career is a joke, nobody in Hollywood seems to be laughing. A high school dropout who joined his first acting workshop at age 17 and quickly began winning prominent TV roles back home, he got his big break when director Joel Schumacher cast him as a tough Texan recruit in last year's critically acclaimed Vietnam War story TIGERLAND. Farrell's commanding turn in that film set him up virtually overnight as a hot new talent in the States, winning him the lead role in AMERICAN OUTLAWS as well as upcoming parts in Steven Spielberg's much-anticipated sci-fi tale MINORITY REPORT and the Bruce Willis-starring World War II legal drama HART'S WAR.

Young outlaws in love Colin Farrell and Ali Larter

© 2001 Warner Bros.

Charmingly humble about his near-instant success, the 25-year-old Farrell can only shake his head and express his amazement at the wild ride he's taken in the past few years.

"I've skipped like a thousand rungs on the ladder," he says.

His current rung finds him headlining the latest attempt to resuscitate the long-dormant western genre for a young audience more accustomed to hip hop than horses' clippety-clop. AMERICAN OUTLAWS revisits the much-filmed myth of the James-Younger gang, a band of Civil War veterans that went on one of the most famous bank- and train-robbing sprees in the Old West.

As reimagined in director Les Mayfield's OUTLAWS, the James and Younger brothers emerge as heroic champions of the oppressed who take on a ruthless railroad company intent on stealing the land of their small Missouri hometown. The film co-stars Gabriel Macht (TV's THE OTHERS) as Jesse's older brother Frank, Scott Caan (VARSITY BLUES) as competitive gang co-leader Cole Younger, Ali Larter (FINAL DESTINATION) as an independent-minded love interest, and former 007 Timothy Dalton as the legendary private detective Allan Pinkerton, who is soon dogging the outlaws' trail.

Kathy Bates thanks the James brothers for their Robin Hood-like actions in AMERICAN OUTLAWS

© 2001 Warner Bros.

Asked how much of the film's storyline is based on historical fact, Farrell shoots back a sly smile.

"I think he was christened Jesse James, but as far as the historical accuracy goes, no, it was all just a completely romanticized version of what was done back in the day, you know?" he says. "We weren't restricted by the confines of historical accuracy."

Rather than present a docudrama about the real James brothers, the goal was "to make it light, have a good time and tell the Robin Hood version," Farrel explains. "Because [in real life] they were cold-blooded killers. Whether they stole from the rich and gave a little bit back to their own people, they were mean men."

Farrell initially planned to visit the James' home turf and bury himself in research on the period in true Serious Young Actor fashion, but he eventually gave in to the fact that such elements wouldn't be the key to making the fanciful, exaggerated action-adventure of OUTLAWS work.

"I read a bit on the James brothers and the Younger brothers, and I wanted to go to Missouri and read up on the Civil War and stuff, but then I just put it all down because it wasn't our film," he says. "It was just about taking what's between page 100 and 111 and making that seem real for the characters."

James brothers Colin Farrell and Gabriel Macht in AMERICAN OUTLAWS

© 2001 Warner Bros.

One way for Farrell to do that was to perform most of his own stunts, a challenge the wiry actor embraced enthusiastically.

"I did whatever they let me do," he says. "It's not to be tough or macho or anything, or to prove a point or play the hero. It's just when you're 24 and someone says, 'Do you want to run along the top of the train or should we get a stuntman?' it's like, 'Please! Please! Please!' You get the chance to do things you'd never get to do, so I was jumping at any chance I could get, really."

However, there were times when his lack of stunt experience was all too evident. One such moment was a particularly tricky maneuver that had him barrel rolling down a saloon bar, firing two pistols as he went. In his estimation, the finished sequence says more about the skill of the film's editors than his own stunt ability.

"It was just impossible," Farrell says. "I was dropping the guns, fell off the table the wrong way off the back of the table instead of the front. Thank God they got their scissors in there and made me look really smooth."

James-Younger gang members [left ot right] Will McCormack, Gregory Smith, Colin Farrell, Scott Caan and Gabriel Macht in AMERICAN OUTLAWS

© 2001 Warner Bros.

With the heat at the film's location outside Austin, Texas, sometimes reaching 120 degrees, that kind of work meant long, thirsty days for the cast and crew. Fortunately, Farrell is one of those actors who believe a little discomfort on a film shoot can be a good thing.

"All those kind of things the heat and the dust and the costume and that kind of thing aid your performance a bit," he says. "I don't think it should be that comfortable. I don't think you should be sitting under the shade all the time with fans in your face. So those challenges were embraced."

It's harder to get Farrell to open up about the challenges he faced on Spielberg's MINORITY REPORT, an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's story about a law-enforcement agency with the ability to look into the future and prevent crimes before they happen. All he'll say about his part in the top-secret project is: "I play a young federal agent that comes in to make sure that the agency that [serves] as kind of the backdrop to the whole film is being run correctly, and I have a bit of a conflict with Tom Cruise."

He speaks more freely, however, when describing the excitement he felt working with his director and co-star.

Timothy Dalton plays the villainous Allan Pinkerton in AMERICAN OUTLAWS

© 2001 Warner Bros.

"Aw, that just was even f---in' more ridiculous," he says. "Sitting there having a sardine sandwich with Steven Spielberg. Too mad. But he's a really good bloke, and Cruise is a really good bloke. You meet them and you get over the stigma that you've created in your own head from so many years of watching them on a cinema screen. You get over that pretty fast because they're so nice and quite unassuming."

Working alongside Hollywood's heaviest hitters after just a few films would be enough to turn most people's heads, but Farrell's self-deprecating humor and down-to-earth attitude suggest he hasn't gotten completely swallowed up by the star-making machine. In fact, he seems to have downright mixed feelings about "chasing the dream" in the Land of Opportunity.

"I just don't think it's that important to me to be a star," he says. "I say that ironically, sitting here after doing the films I've done."

Perhaps tellingly, while business such as the present interview brings him to Los Angeles frequently, Farrell has no plans to move to La-La Land permanently.

"Maybe New York not here," he says. "I've met people that are from here, who were born here, that are great people. Gabriel Macht is Los Angeles through and through he's a great man, has a great family. But to move here now and to function in the world that now I'm moving in, in this city, and to be treated like a f---in' king I'm not into it."