Actor Colin Farrell attends the film premiere of "Saving Mr. Banks," at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, Calif., December 9, 2013.KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/Reuters
Now it can be told: Colin Farrell's last "romantic relationship" was with the late Elizabeth Taylor in the years before her death.
Vanity Fair reports on the odd-couple connection between the rakish Irish actor and the Oscar-winning film legend. When Taylor passed away in 2011, Farrell was one of the few non-family members invited to speak at her funeral. They were never lovers, but they were close.
Farrell, 37, finally spoke of his relationship with Taylor during an appearance this week on Ellen.
Their friendship began several years ago when Farrell first met Taylor's business manager at Cedars-Sinai medical centre in Los Angeles, where Farrell's youngest son was being born and Taylor was having a cardiac procedure.
The following day, Farrell asked his publicist to send Taylor some flowers, but discovered that Taylor had already sent him an orchid. And from that point onward, they kept in close contact.
In his own words: "She wasn't much of a sleeper at night like I'm not, so at two o'clock in the morning I'd call her … and the nurse would answer the phone."
Farrell continued: "I'd say, 'Is she awake?' I'd be on the phone and I'd hear, 'Hello?' And I'd go 'How's it going?' and we'd talk for a half an hour, an hour, into the wee hours. Really cool."
When the end was near for Taylor, the actress requested Farrell read the poem The Leaden Echo and The Golden Echo by Gerard Manley Hopkins at her funeral service. Farrell fulfilled his good friend's wishes, but it wasn't easy.
"It was a tricky poem as well," Farrell said in a subsequent interview. "Even in passing she had me under the thumb, sweating bricks."
And with more than a four-decades age difference between them, the Farrell-Taylor connection wasn't a physical relationship, but more a meeting of kindred spirits.
Farrell said: "It was kind of like the last, it feels in my head, not hers, I'm projecting, but the last kind of romantic relationship I had."