Colin Farrell looks unrecognisable when he puts on his suit for The Penguin, but prior to getting in the makeup chair for hours at a time, he wasn't really sold on the character. He was happy to trust in Matt Reeves, but didn't really think that his version of the iconic Batman villain had enough space to flourish.
Speaking at Zurich Film Festival (via Variety), Farrell opened up about what drew him to the character, and it's all down to the work of makeup artist Mike Marino. "I'll never forget, Matt [Reeves] went, 'Come here, come here, come here.' And he opened up his laptop and he went, 'Look!' It was the first time I saw the makeup ... and the cogs crunched," Farrell said.
"I was like, that's extraordinary. Then the script became clear to me. I could see through Mike Marino's imagination and every little pockmark and every scar. The character was ferocious looking, but there was also, I could imagine, a sadness to aspects of that character's life. ... It just gave me so much information."
Farrell has been known to complain about wearing the suit for hours on end, but he also deep down seems to love Marino's work, so much so he pushed to get The Penguin series made. "Mike's makeup design was so extraordinary and really was very moving; it was very touching to be a part of it...So I felt doing that part, I was like a part of Hollywood history. It was really cool. But there was no plan for it. It was because the makeup was so extraordinary, I thought, this is such a waste to only have five scenes of this, not me, in it. We can do so much with this beautiful makeup that Mike designed," he said.
Both The Batman and The Penguin have been well-received by fans, with the latter especially gaining a lot of fanfare thanks to Farrell's performance and Marino's makeup work. We know The Penguin will be back in The Batman - Part II, but we'll have to see how big his role is.