Cannes Report: How Colin Farrell Packed on 40 Pounds for 'The Lobster'
By Gary Baum, Rebecca Ford
This story first appeared in the May 29 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
To soften up for his role as a lonely singleton in Cannes competition entry The Lobster, Colin Farrell went all in on pizza, cheeseburgers and Haagen-Dazs. “I would put [the ice cream] in the microwave to melt and drink it,” he toldTHR, adding: “Two cheeseburgers, fries and Coca-Colas, and two slices of chocolate cake at 10 a.m. is not that fun — and I love cheeseburgers.”
The 40-plus-pound weight gain over eight weeks changed the actor more than just physically. “It makes you aware of how you’ve identified being a certain way.” Yet at the film’s premiere May 15, when he saw himself onscreen without his shirt, “I gasped. I’d forgotten what it looked like.” In fact it looked, in the current ubiquitous parlance, like a dad bod. (Farrell is a father of two.) Observes his Lobster co-star John C. Reilly, “A dad bod is a physical manifestation of our sacrifice to our children.”
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