Colin Farrell Was Once a Suspect in an Attempted Murder Case? Watch the True Detective Star's "Confession"!

The 39-year-old Irish actor talked about his ordeal on The Tonight Show during a game called "True Confessions," which also featured his co-star Vince Vaughn

By Corinne Heller Jun 19, 2015 2:45 PMTags
Colin Farrell, Tonight ShowYouTube

Colin Farrell says he was a suspect in an attempted murder case when he was a teenager. He was never charged and he had an alibi (one he hopefully kept to himself).

The 39-year-old Irish actor talked about his ordeal Thursday on NBC's The Tonight Show during a game called "True Confessions," which also featured his True Detective season 2 co-star Vince Vaughn, 45. There, the two and host Jimmy Fallon, 40, had to read out a "confession" and interrogate each other about it, then determine who was telling the truth.

"When I was a late teen, I got brought in for questioning as a suspect in an attempted murder," Farrell said. "I saw a photofit of the guy who actually did the crime and it looked remarkably like me and for a second, because I had had a blackout that night, I wondered, 'Could I have done such a thing?'"

Fallon and Vaughn then discussed the case in front of the actor. 

"Is it true?" Fallon asked.

"Yeah, yeah," Farrell replied.

"It had to be an uncomfortable moment," Vaughn told him.

"Very," Farrell said. "Yeah, and I was supposed to bring my mother to the airport. I was in Sydney, Australia, and I was pulled in by the cops and they showed me a photofit of a pencil sketch of the guy that...had attempted to murder this other gentleman, had beat him up and left him in his own apartment and set the apartment on fire and split, thereby leaving the guy to burn to death and it was 'me.' They said, 'What do you think about that picture?' And I went, 'I, I, I think I'm in trouble.'"

Luckily, he was nowhere near the scene of the reported crime...although he wasn't exactly on his best behavior at the time, either.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was terrifying," he said. "I was there for about six hours and then, thankfully a friend of mine had kept a journal and [at] that particular night and that particular time, we were at a party on the other side of town, doing ecstasy."

You can watch Farrell and Vaughn on True Detective season 2 when it premieres on HBO on Sunday at 9 p.m. ET.

(E! and NBC are part of the NBCUniversal family.)