Colin Farrell is magnetic: this much we know. Indeed, there is something about his energy that seems to attract the metal of life – intensely good, at times intensely bad, and sometimes a little random. This is how we end up, standing in the rain, his jacket slung in a gentlemanly fashion over my shoulders, both our left hands on the 'holy book’ of an Indian 'yogi’ who has accosted us outside Farrell’s London hotel during a cigarette break.  Having mistaken Farrell and me for a couple, he performs a darshan blessing to calculate our compatibility – apparently, I am very good for him. 'Just one last thing,’ our guru warns him. 'Do not tell the secrets in your heart so easily.’ This feels less of a message from the Hindu gods than from Farrell’s long-suffering publicist.  Farrell nods gravely, and stops short of rattling out the rest of an anecdote about his drug-fuelled youth, which begins, 'I used to love an eight ball,’ his eyebrows tilting like slashes of black marker pen. I wonder what the karmic sentence is for killing a swami.  All this is strange; only stranger because Farrell’s film The Lobster, a dystopian satire of 21st-century mating, opens next week, and Autobiography of a Yogi is Farrell’s current bedside tome. It is safe to say that it is a book that would once have not been on his reading list.  But Farrell the diehard sensualist, who seemed in constant orgiastic motion in tabloid photographs, is long gone; now 39, he is a dedicated convert to green juice and yoga. Yet rehab 10 years ago, seven years of sobriety and five of singledom have not made him anodyne.  If he has evolved into a new man through a decade of abstention, he appears to be, in his freewheeling bonhomie at least, refreshingly unchanged. It is easy to see how, when magnified exponentially by stimulants, this could have got him into trouble.  When, aged 22, he moved from Dublin to Hollywood, he was notorious not only for his frenzied devouring of narcotics, whisky and women, but also for his refusal to modify himself for the sterilising publicity machine. He vomited forth the unedited details of his antics to journalists – as if the priests of his confessions. He was quoted on porn, prostitutes and on one occasion heroin. And so any subtleties of the man were drowned out by his soundbites.  It would be easy to frame Farrell’s 20s in equally splashy terms. They read, after all, rather like a classical parable. The Icarian ascent to Hollywood after he was cast, with only a few professional acting credits, in Joel Schumacher’s acclaimed Tigerland (2000), hailed as the 'next great actor of his generation’ and leapfrogged into roles opposite Tom Cruise in Minority Report and Al Pacino in The Recruit.  The fall from grace was premature and precipitous. In 2004 he was slated for his lead turn in Oliver Stone’s lumbering Alexander, after which his self-medicating escalated into full-scale self-annihilation on the cursed set of Michael Mann’s Miami Vice two years later.  He rose from the ashes of rehab a dedicated father to his son James (with model Kim Bordenave), born in 2003, who was diagnosed with the developmental disorder Angelman syndrome. 'You had to choose a higher power for the 12-step programme. I made James mine. Something in me wanted to live, that was louder – albeit locked away screaming in a room – than I knew back then.’  If chemically induced oblivion was once Farrell’s god, these days it is deep soul excavation. He is clearly a man who has spent a decade staring himself in the eye. He is at pains neither to mythologise his past (he was, he says, 'just a garden-variety drug addict’) nor sanctify his present ('I’m not saying I’m a great father or a healed man’).  He is still a deep well of charm, but now the storm clouds have gone, it is easier to see the sensitivities beneath: his swift intellect and emotional fluency. With his Jimmy Stewart-style sweep-over flopping on to his forehead at the height of his verbal paroxysms, there is a tenderness to him. He is a bundle of paternal instincts: offering to pick out the offending cheese from his sandwiches so I can eat them, pouring the milk into my tea like an attentive vicar.  I became a parody. Everything was magnified: the opportunities I had, the money I earned Colin Farrell  Cheese and pickle: that’s as bacchanalian as it gets these days. What would his younger self think? 'If he heard me talking about yoga, he’d think “wanker!” He would’ve been uncomfortable sitting with someone that was quiet. It f***ing would’ve killed him.’ He cringes. 'If 25-year-old Colin came in here now, I would have to leave the room.’  To say that he once partied for Ireland is not as trite as it sounds. His patriotic identity became his life raft, crystallised in a self-styled version of a riotous tinker in the face of polite LA. It didn’t help that his paragon of Irishness was poet Brendan Behan, notorious for drunken interviews and incendiary aphorism.  'I became a parody. Everything was magnified: the opportunities I had, the money I earned. So the smokescreen [I created] was magnified: it was the one true consistency I had. That was like a cancer after a while. If you build a dam, water becomes a bigger version of itself.  Then the dam broke, and I thought, “I don’t know who I am any more, what I’ve become.” One of the most liberating days of my life was in rehab, when I realised how many fears I had. Was I smart or dumb? Was I a good lover, son, father, actor?’  Farrell stepped off the blockbuster juggernaut, taking the slow train back to the top, rebuilding his confidence in independent films – mostly playing soul-scorched men struggling to extricate themselves from erstwhile sin and addiction.  In 2008 he won a best actor Golden Globe for his suicidal hitman in In Bruges, after which he took on a mix of small, thoughtful films (Ondine, Shell Shock), unlikely cameos (Crazy Heart, Horrible Bosses) and the odd grandiose affair (Total Recall).  His portrayal of Ray Velcoro, an amoral detective clinging to his son as his last hope of redemption, is the shining light of the second season of True Detective. Farrell says he was fond of Ray. 'I identified with his suspicion that by having a child you can set the record back.’  Still, a new cult status hovers over him since he worked with European auteurs Liv Ullman, in her 2014 adaptation of Strindberg’s play Miss Julie, and Yorgos Lanthimos, whose The Lobster won the Jury Prize at Cannes this year. This surrealist comedy, which imagines a totalitarian state in which singles are given 45 days to find a partner or be turned into an animal, is inspired.  Set in a chintzy hotel, the film examines society’s emphasis on coupledom, and digital-dating mores in which genuine connection and commitment are all but extinct. Once, Farrell would have hardly been the ideal casting for an awkward, pot-bellied divorcee, but his turn is bleak, touching and hilarious. Single and on the brink of 40, does he feel an outcast? 'No, but I feel pressure with regards to the conversation I have with my own loneliness at times throughout the day and night.’  His relationship CV is lengthy, if a little hazy: his exes include actress Amelia Warner and writer Emma Forrest, and his rumoured brief encounters Angelina Jolie and Britney Spears. All were short-lived. His last serious girlfriend was his Ondine co-star Alicja Bachleda-Curus, the mother of his second son, Henry, born in 2009.  'I’ve never been in a relationship long enough for it to evolve into something that, in my most honest, sane moments of listening to my heart, I would aspire to. I’d stay in it for a year, then the old voices would start coming back and I would run for the hills.’ What were they saying? 'Let’s just say, voices of impatience.’  I suggest that he might have been avoiding intimacy. 'No, I’ve run headlong into it. I’ve probably overshot the mark on occasions when I’ve promised things based on the deep intimacy I felt that I couldn’t follow through. I’ve never known how to love in moderation. One tries to learn through the process of life how to respect one’s heart and not to just give it away to everyone you meet.’  He is more cautious now. He says being a 'present’ father and travelling for work means he’s too busy anyway. I scoff a little. 'I’ve had a few kisses.’ I scoff again. 'I haven’t been living the life of a monk.’ But he tries to avoid one-night stands. 'Is the tip of the mountain a joyous place to arrive? Yes. For a f***ing nanosecond. The climb up and the climb down isn’t that [satisfying].’  I imagine women must see him in a certain light. 'Oh God? A cad?’ He groans. He is not on Tinder, but 'probably would have been’ back in the day. 'I’m pleased camera phones didn’t exist. I would’ve been caught in all kinds of compromising situations. I was completely f***ing feckless.’  It’s no surprise that Farrell has emerged from the flames of desire feeling burnt. Forrest wrote about him, albeit thinly veiled, in her memoir Your Voice In My Head; he was plagued by a stalker; then there was the sex tape with Playboy model Nicole Nairain, which was leaked in 2005 despite a multimillion-dollar lawsuit – all of which he is a good sport about.  Even without trust issues, things must be more complicated now with the clear sight of sobriety. He has had to adjust to love in the cold light of day: 'The first sober sex I ever had was terrifying: in the afternoon, with the blinds open.’ He is not cynical, he says, and wholeheartedly believes in the longevity of love for some, but 'it might be an impossibility for me. I have loads of fears [about being with someone again]. But I don’t want to be on my own forever.’  He remembers 'feeling lonely even as a child’. He grew up the youngest of four children in Castleknock, a moneyed suburb of Dublin, the son of Rita and Eamon, a debonair footballer who, with his brother Tommy, played for Shamrock Rovers. He was a morose, 'sensitive’ toddler, and soon developed a monomaniacal streak, bingeing on Coco Pops and cans of tuna.  'I was always good at zoning in on one thing that gave me a sense of relief.’ At first there was hero-worship for his often absent father; the young Farrell was told he had a potential pitch career. But then he began to rebel. Farrell eschewed training for beers in the local park. Castleknock was soulless and his home a cultural 'vacuum’ in which he felt 'deprived of’ the romance of his parents’ working-class roots and the grit of the Irish artistic tradition – and its often tortured path, with which he increasingly identified.  'Unconsciously that’s why I ended up being the level of drug addict I did. I grew up being told that I was very fortunate, but being unable to feel the good fortune for years. So I created difficulty for myself. I was in love with self-propagated pain, darkness, Dostoevsky, lonely nights howling at the moon, writing bad poetry. For f***’s sake!’  By 14, he was a seasoned drinker; by 17, a compulsive E-head; at 18, he went to see a psychiatrist and stopped drinking for a year. By then he had been expelled from school for threatening a teacher and had moved to a bohemian quarter of Dublin to live out his fantasies in a multitude of pubs. He drifted in and out of jobs, was scouted for Boyzone (he failed the audition) and finally enrolled in the Gaiety School of Acting, where he was spotted for a part in BBC’s Ballykissangel in 1998.  By the time he was cast by Schumacher, he says, 'Spinning out of control was preordained. After Tigerland it was, “Here’s the keys to the city; here’s a few million; here’s a bag of...” At a certain level, you are allowed to do whatever the f*** you want, in a way that is maddening.’ Should he have been controlled? 'Not controlled. But if I’d had better guidance, I wouldn’t have reached such commercial highs, but it would’ve been interesting to see what the work would’ve been like.’ Perhaps he anaesthetised his talent along with his demons? 'Of course the drugs affected my performances then, but I have no idea how.’  Today, he indulges in more nuanced pleasures: yoga and saunas, and he has thrown himself into 'hands-on’ fatherhood; the only tabloid photos these days are of him knee-deep in domesticity. 'They’re beautifully untainted goods. You see these little moments of innocence, the apple fall off the tree.’  Could he 'overdo’ fatherhood too? He is too self-aware these days, he assures me. 'But I’m needy enough with them. At times I try to have a conversation and they’re like, “Can you just shut up and get me a bag of pirate booty.” I get my feelings hurt like a four-year old.’ (I imagine his forthcoming turn in JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is for them.)  He also practises slow-burning affairs of the heart, without physical consummation – his last with Elizabeth Taylor during the remaining years of her life. 'I was pissed off I didn’t meet her earlier. What a titanic existence!’ It’s easy to see the common ground: the addiction to love and other substances, the turbulent intensity of everything, the late-blossoming quietude.  He remains an unashamed romantic: passion 'still lives in [me] loud and proud’, he declares, his eyebrows making a dramatic leap. 'I still write poetry.’ Then, lest he get too quixotic, he adds, 'It’s really terrible. I hope it gets worse with age.’ I suspect that will be the only thing.  The Lobster is released on October 16
Once hailed as the next great actor of his generation, Colin Farrell self-imploded  in a haze of sex, drink and drugs. Now he’s back: older, wiser, single and sober – but still incandescent.