Most Hollywood stars have at least one flop under their belt – it’s just easy to forget about them, because they’re rarely ever mentioned. Why boast about a multimillion-dollar movie that no one rated when you can point to your latest, award-winning performance instead?

It turns out for Golden Globe-winning Irish actor, Colin Farrell, said flop was the 2004 war epic, Alexander, directed by Oliver Stone. Based on the life and empire of ancient Macedonian general and king, Alexander the Great, Farrell played the titular role opposite Angelina Jolie and Val Kilmer. Unfortunately, by all accounts, the most epic part of Alexander was the fact it was an epic disaster.

The film cost $155 million (£116.2m) to make and grossed less than $35 million (£26m) in the box office domestically and only $167 million (£125m) worldwide. It was also met with an overwhelmingly negative response from critics, earning a meagre 15% on Rotten Tomatoes. Alexander was lambasted for being historically inaccurate and lacking the depth and grandeur needed for a story about such a gargantuan figure. In fact, the reception almost put Farrell off acting altogether. He was, after all, its star.

In a 2012 interview with The Mirror about the film he said, ‘That was tough. I say tough relative to a charmed life, but I’m not going to apologise for how much it affected me emotionally and psychologically. I was going to walk away from acting.’

Farrell has since revealed that he spent time in rehab following Alexander’s release and felt tied up in the negative press. Speaking to Hollywood Reporter he added, ‘The reviews came out, and I remember someone going, “Oh God, it’s not good.” I felt so much shame. I found myself in a place where with everyone I met I wanted to say, “Have you seen Alexander? If you have, I’m really sorry.”’

Of course, Farrell was not to know that Alexander was going to bomb in the box office. Stone has won three Oscars, five Golden Globes and a BAFTA and the film was said to be his passion project. As a writer, Stone has worked on films like Midnight Express (1978) and Scarface (1983), and he is behind Platoon (1986), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Wall Street (1987), JFK (1991) and Nixon (1995) as a director. Collectively, his films have grossed more than $1.3 billion worldwide. It’s not hard to understand why Farrell might have assumed he was in safe hands.

To set the tone, though, one review of Alexander reads, ‘3.5 hours long and you get two short battles. This film completely fails in every regard.’ Another states, ‘Even at nearly three hours long, this ponderous, talky and emotionally distant biopic fails to illuminate Alexander’s life.’ Another critic asked, ‘How anyone can make a film about one of the best conquerors in history so boring I’ll never know.’

However, some of those who have revisited the film more recently have argued its original reception was ungenerous. ‘Time has been kind to this,’ wrote one critic. ‘There are still problems, but they seem to matter less now, especially when stacked against the ambitious structure and length.’ Another posited, ‘A much better film than it has been received and reviewed, Oliver Stone’s Alexander will one day be considered a very good movie that sought to discover the underlying motives, flaws and successes in the historical figure.’

It’s worth noting that few if any of the disparaging reviews reference Farrell’s performance. The issue with the film was not his acting, but rather the scope of the project and its failure to do the story justice or capture its audience. Nevertheless, as the face of the film, it’s hardly surprising that Farrell took things personally.

In December 2005, a year after the film came out, he was admitted to rehab. He had just wrapped Miami Vice and claims that after starring in a few big budget films that had underperformed, offers were starting to dry up. ‘I was probably due an arse kicking,’ he told The Guardian in 2012. ‘I really was. I was having too much fun and being too loud about it. I’m not saying that my hand was totally forced but, of the work that presented itself, I did the most interesting jobs. They were not particularly good films, and not all of them worked. Cassandra’s Dream didn’t do so well and Pride and Glory didn’t do so well, critically. But then In Bruges did. No one saw Ondine, but I loved it.’

His time in rehab allowed him to ‘step away from the attention’ and to reflect critically on the dangers of the ‘energy that sometimes surrounds big films’. ‘To not be paid that much attention, as I was for a while for a few years, it makes you go, “Ok, so I’m not wondering what people are thinking of me, because they’re not thinking of me. So what the f*ck do I think of myself?”.’

It goes without saying that Farrell regained his footing. Not only was he named as one of Time’s most influential people in the world in 2023, but in 2020 he was voted as Ireland’s fifth greatest film actor of all time. In more recent years, he has fronted several critically acclaimed projects including The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and season two of HBO’s hit thriller series, True Detective.

In 2022, Farrell acted in the celebrated science fiction drama After Yang, as well as the cult black comedy The Banshees of Inisherin opposite Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan. He then led the US crime drama series, The Penguin, a spin-off of his 2022 film The Batman, which earned him the award for Best Actor in a Miniseries of Television Film at the Golden Globes. 

Those drawn-out battle scenes from the early noughties might have left Farrell with a few scars, but luckily Alexander remains safely in his past. His reputation in Hollywood has been duly restored.