When Colin Farrell was asked last year about the process of transforming into Oswald Cobblepot for The Penguin, the hit small-screen Batman spin-off, the picture he painted was distinctly unglamorous.
“Don’t get me wrong – I loved it – but it got in on me a little bit,” the actor told Total Film. “By the end of it, I was bitching and moaning to anyone who would listen to me that I f**king wanted it to be finished.”
Six months and one Golden Globe win later, Farrell has revised that opinion. “I guess it’s prosthetics from here on out,” he joked as he accepted the award for best performance by a male actor in a limited series at Sunday’s ceremony at the Beverly Hilton.
Farrell’s career has been a story of constant surprises. Having crashed and burned as a conventional leading man with the disastrous Miami Vice movie in 2006, he reinvented himself as a brooding character actor on screens small (True Detective) and large (In Bruges).
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But with The Penguin he has stumbled on the holy grail that every actor seeks: a critically acclaimed franchise with the potential to become a regular gig. Most impressively, he did it by turning himself into the most un-Farrell-like creature imaginable, burying his natural charm and affability under layers of latex.
Part of the transformation was down to a bodysuit – “I was basically covered wrist to ankle,” Farrell told People magazine. “Only things that were me were my hands and feet. Everything else, including ears, were pieces. Everything was covered.”
It was truly a metamorphosis. So utterly did Farrell turn into the slovenly, beaky Cobblepot that when his Penguin costar Cristin Milioti met him without his make-up, she didn’t know how to respond. “I spent a year with Oz,” she said. “I wouldn’t really see Colin out of make-up. It’s very strange when I hear his voice – it flips me out. When I see him in his real form, I associate those eyes with someone I spent a year with.”
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At the Golden Globes, Farrell made a point of thanking Mike Marino, the make-up artist who oversaw his transformation into the Penguin. It was a gruelling undertaking, requiring the actor to spend three hours in make-up each morning.
Marino described the process as like piecing together a puzzle. “We have to flatten his hair, glue on the neck, glue on the eyebrows ... giving him this bird-penguin look. To make him a little angrier.”
Oz was angry – but he was also a tragic figure. In its totality, The Penguin didn’t always work: the plot was spread too thinly across eight episodes, and its attempt to turn Gotham City into The Godfather never convinced, despite Milioti’s best efforts as the Michael Corleone-esque scion of a prominent crime family. Holy anticlimax, this was also a Batman spin-off conspicuously lacking in caped crusaders.
Yet for all those flaws, Farrell was riveting as Cobblepot, a small-time hoodlum with big-time mommy issues and a burning desire to overcome his physical and psychological impairments and make something of himself.
The magic of the performance went well beyond the prosthetic wizardry. Anyone can sit for three hours in a make-up chair. It was Farrell who breathed life into Oz by getting inside the head of a vulnerable monster. It was the actor, for instance, who suggested Cobblepot’s limp should become more pronounced when he was on his own. In company he wanted to play down his perceived weaknesses and present a puffed-up version of himself to the world. Alone, the Penguin didn’t have to pretend.
The key to unlocking the character was Farrell’s humility. This wasn’t a showy performance – little ego was on display – but it has brought the actor great acclaim, to the point at which he seems almost to have revised his view of marathon stints with make-up artists. Asked recently if he would consider returning for a second season of The Penguin, he said he was “absolutely” up for it.
You can understand his enthusiasm. Farrell has had his well-documented ups and downs, but with The Penguin he has spun some potentially fishy material into superhero gold.
