As I read these latest excerpts from Emma Forrest’s book… I cannot help but be astounded by how much Emma remembers of her conversations with Colin. Or, did she just have a secret tape recorder with her at all times?
I have written an epic post here, but for those who do read it, I hope it gives a realistic alternative to the self-absorbed material Emma Forrest has written in regards to her brief, and past relationship with Colin Farrell. The reason I've written it is simple; to discover the truth!
EXTRACTS & MY OWN ANALYSIS
Yet for all the women he has dated and then split up from - including two with whom he has children - not one has ever told her story. Not one has ever revealed what it is truly like to be with Farrell.
Until now.
Because last week, little-known writer Emma Forrest, whom Farrell dated for a year, released a memoirs that seems to be nothing less than a thinly veiled account of her own romance with the Castleknock bad boy.
In the book, Your Voice In My Head, she suggests that the actor didn't just woo her: he pursued her around the world, he texted her relentlessly, flew her family out on holiday with them, made endless promises of undying love - then walked out with barely a word.
At last! Someone is beginning to review the book with common sense and like me, and you, is beginning to realise that a lot of this memoir is based on a lot of ‘suggesting'. As perhaps some might say is my epic post, but if it's good enough for Emma then it's good enough for me!
But if that all sounds like the behaviour of a lovable rogue, then far more shocking is her claim that he repeatedly badgby ered her to have a baby with him, even picking a name for the child and buying it clothes - right up to the moment he dumped her.
Months later, he was having a baby with a co-star.
So damning are the revelations that Forrest has even said she contacted Farrell ahead of publication to warn him about how it might be interpreted by elements of the media.
Yet by the same token, she didn't go so far as to keep quiet.
Instead, she sets out every intimate aspect of the relationship - from the moment they were introduced at a famed Los Angeles hotel. From then on, it seems, Emma Forrest will be holding nothing back.
Again, it’s good to finally see someone else question the precarious content of her book with understandable suspicion.
'At dinner, following a film screening, I am introduced to a man with long flowing hair who is wearing a keffiyeh,' Forrest writes. 'He looks like the world's campest terrorist but he's actually a movie star with a storied reputation, much of it here, at the Chateau Marmont hotel. In the candle-lit garden we sit next to each other and talk and he admits later that every single thing he tells me is intended to translate as "I'm not like you've heard I am". It works.' The pair's connection did not immediately become physical, she says; instead, Farrell rang and texted Forrest incessantly, asking her to play him favourite songs over the phone. She describes a 'barrage of texts, poems broken up into thirty little pieces'.
She describes him not as attractive but 'softly wounded, like distressed velvet. A touchable sadness'.
Yet for all her poetry, the couple are soon in a sexual relationship which appears to be becoming more serious by the minute. The star, she says, invited her to his film opening four months in advance - insisting that he wanted them to walk the red carpet together. He worried about her, she writes, and was always protective.
After reading these excerpts; it’s hard not to ask yourself if Ms Forrest has ever been in a relationship with a man before. It’s certainly probable she has never found herself in a position of interest with a man of Colin Farrell’s fame and calibre before.
But as we know, Ms Forrest has been hanging around the music scene from a very young age; how many 15 year olds do you know who managed to bag an interview with Madonna for their school newspaper? And by the grand old age of 20; she was a top music journalist. It’s clearly not what you know, but who you know. Or, in Emma’s case having wealthy and influential parents.
Then came writing novels such as ‘namedropper‘, inspired no doubt from hanging around or bribing anyone, with a connection to anyone who was a ‘name’ within the wonderful world of celebrity. During recent years she has enlisted herself into the world of ‘acting’ in the form of script-writing.
So if a good-looking, Hollywood actor starts hitting on you, would it be fair to say most women would be ‘flattered’. But of course Emma Forrest is not ‘most’ women… she is uniquely complex?! So no, she didn’t find Colin Farrell the Hollywood movie star attractive, but… ‘softly wounded’. I’m sorry, but it doesn’t matter how you dress it up in fanciful words this means exactly the same as finding someone attractive!
In her memoir, Ms Forrest appears to be wanting to portray herself as a naïvely complicated woman whom clearly has no understanding of the power of her own attractiveness around the male species.
Yet, this is a woman who openly admits to being sexually reckless. But unlike other women doesn’t have the gut’s to admit she ‘knew exactly what she was doing at the time‘. No, this is a woman who instead conveniently chooses to blame any such reckless behaviour on the mental condition of being ‘manic’. And it’s turning out to be a very useful condition, and a brilliant excuse for just about every regrettable shag she’s had so far!
Once they start dating, we are told that Farrell was ‘insisting‘ they will walk the red carpet together. Now why would he do that? You don’t suppose it’s because he considered you to be his girlfriend, and therefore, it seemed natural to him to invite you? Maybe, he was also trying to ‘help’ you (career) in a gentlemanly discreet way?
But what’s really interesting is why you, felt the need to reveal this precise snippet of information with the reader? Surely, it cannot be that you are ‘still’ reeling from the fact his ‘gesture’, and your ‘opportunity in the spotlight’ never saw the light of day?
'He doesn't like that my front gate doesn't close properly, so, though he is on a film set thousands of kilometres away, he sends builders to build it and make me a bolt lock for my front door,' she writes.
Even that, though, couldn't prepare her for the shock she feels when the actor decides to announce casually during a late-night phone call that he wants to have a baby.
'When I get back from this film, let's have a miniature human, that grows,' Forrest says he told her. She froze in surprise, then suggested a name: Pearl. And Pearl would come to dominate their conversations for the rest of their relationship, though not always in romantic and endearing terms.
'With his hand over my mouth so I can't answer back, he says, "I would rather die than not knock you up",' Forrest writes. According to the picture painted in the memoir, the star - whom she calls 'GH' throughout because he is her Gypsy Husband - was constantly drawing Forrest in more deeply. He sent her presents and love letters from all over the world, she says, from a Kenyan Barbie doll to a T- shirt he had covered in a handwritten love letter. The couple met in New York and he suggested they plan a trip to Istanbul. They laughed about the tabloid rumours that had begun to swirl about their relationship.
This believe it or not Emma, is not uncommon behaviour, and these are not uncommon subject matters talked about when two people are engaged in the first flushes of a new romance. And the fact you ‘froze in surprise’ at his suggestion to have a miniature human being, yet you were not ‘froze in shock’ can only suggest that you too were completely in agreement. Who knows… maybe he read ‘your’ mind?
'I tell him my sister, having surveyed the internet, has collated the comments into one conclusion: "You are having a fat ugly baby that's using GH to sell books".' Farrell replied: 'That's only if it's a girl, love. If it's a boy, it's an unwashed anorexic who's using you to boost its intellectual credibility.' But Forrest dismissed the rumours, instead falling harder and harder for the tortured Irishman - admiring his 'intellect, his kindness, his sensitivity'. He listened tenderly as she told him of her own struggles; her bulimia, suicide attempts and self- mutilating. But she felt that Farrell helped her and they were 'good people together'.
She writes: 'I love him, and for the first time in a relationship, I also like me. Every time he says, "I love you", I answer, "I believe you".'
A typical loved-up couple loving all there is to love about each other. Imagining what their future could hold, should their new found happiness last, which of course at this stage everyone believes it will. So again, this is all pretty normal behaviour. A lot of couple’s go off on a hedonistic trip when they first meet. Suddenly, you find yourself viewing the world through rose-tinted glasses, everything has optimistic hope, and your dreams are ever-lasting because at that moment in time you are both ideal people living in your own loved up ideal world.
Farrell, according to Forrest's tale, certainly went to great lengths to bolster her belief in him, going so far as to fly her parents on holiday with the couple and worrying about the impression he would make. But he soon ingratiated himself. Her father, for example, loved the fact that the actor butters his digestive biscuits; her mother loved that he was reading Chekhov.
A natural progression from the ‘getting to know you’ stage is generally followed on with the ‘getting to know your parents‘. Once again… perfectly, normal behaviour.
As Farrell won over the family, he continued to discuss babies, telling her: 'The only thing I know for certain is that I want us to be a family.' The actor brought Forrest to what is clearly an Irish village, though she never names it, while he was filming a new movie. The two were pictured together at Castletownbere, Co. Cork, while he was working on Ondine, starring alongside Polish beauty Alicja Bachleda- Curus: and it seems Farrell continued his obsession with Forrest and their baby while there, repeatedly asking the writer: 'Are you mine?' He was so absorbed with the idea of Forrest giving birth that he actually began buying the imagined baby presents.
“The only thing I know for certain is I want us to be a family”. This sounds very much like a couple who ‘like’ the idea of starting a family one day‘, and during the course of their relationship have even begun to take it to another level by ‘toying’ around and ‘playing out’ the fantasy. It’s not so unusual as long as both persons are in agreement. Which you both were.
Cleverly, Emma also sows the seed of the ‘other woman’. Farrell is filming ‘Ondine’ with a Polish female co-star, but during the film he is still with her and he is repeatedly asking her, ‘Are you mine? I believe this is pure artistic license on Ms Forrest’s part - as a writer she knows the ‘order’ in which you tell a story can have a great effect on the mindset of your reader who will hopefully allow their imagination to travel along the same path as you are implying the order of events were happening. It’s called story-telling. What Forrest is really doing is making sure you know that there is 'another' woman on the scene, and she feels threatened.
Leaving our hotel for dinner, we happen upon a local arts and crafts store,' she writes. 'Amongst the Aran sweaters and knit handbags is a fluffy pink coat for a baby girl, with attached rabbit's ears at the hood, and a soft flannel carrot sewn into one pocket. It's the cutest thing we've ever seen.' Farrell called it 'Pearl's rabbit coat'.
'He touches the coat. He strokes it. He feels it against his cheek,' she writes. 'He paces back and forth, in and out of the store. We head back towards the hotel. He turns on his heels and goes back into the shop. He comes out with Pearl's coat in a plastic bag.'
Now the story of the fluffy pink coat complete with rabbit ears and carrot pocket. Again, she is trying to ‘influence’ her reader’s thought process by attempting to shift the emphasis away from herself. He went back and purchased the coat.
Ms Forrest wants us to think that it is Farrell, who is the one pursing the idea of having a baby. Yet at the same time Forrest doesn’t appear to be trying to discourage him from the idea. So the idea of having a baby also appealed to her too. Interestingly, how do we know Ms Forrest wasn’t responding to his baby quest actions in an equally positive manner? Was she actively encouraging him to develop the idea into a reality? Think back to the discovery of the ‘fluffy baby girl’s pink coat’; “It’s the cutest thing 'we’ve' ever seen”. Did Farrell purchase the item because he thought it would please her?
The book records how Forrest flew home and he continued his devotion. He booked a trip to see her, she says. 'He texts me from the plane to say he'll be in my arms in a few hours and our life together will begin in earnest.
'Then he turns off his phone and the plane takes off.' And yet hours later, it seems, everything has changed: the Farrell who arrives at her door is not the same lovesick man whom Forrest last saw in the Irish village - or even the same man who texted her so optimistically from the plane.
He turns up shaking, looking horrible. They go upstairs to lie on the bed - and, crying, he tells her that he needs 'space'. She, shocked and dazed, wonders 'where he put Pearl's coat'.
Indeed, by Forrest's account it took a few moments for her to realise that Farrell was ending the relationship. She asked whether he only wanted her to get pregnant because he thought it would keep him from leaving. Farrell admitted that could be true.
'This is what love should be like: what we have,' he told her. 'This is the standard we'll both hold out for when we're next with someone.' The realisation that her world was falling apart sent Forrest into a tailspin. She locked herself in the bathroom while, outside the door, Farrell begged her not to resort to self-mutilation.
She told him to leave and take the food she'd prepared.
How abrupt? Or, was it? How do we know that their relationship wasn’t starting to show cracks? Maybe one of them could sense something wasn’t quite right, but the other one was oblivious to any such signs?
So Colin has made the decision to end his relationship with Emma, but he gives no indication of such during the text conversation on the plane; Why? Did he want to tell her face to face - no matter how painful it would be for them both? So was his ‘romantically worded’ text maybe a safe guard - to make sure she didn’t do anything ‘silly’ before he saw her? Some might claim he was leading her on with such cruel wording, but how far gone was Ms Forrest in her ‘love’ for him?
How do we know Emma’s love wasn’t becoming, or had become ‘over-powering‘, or her behaviour ’too needy’? Were there aspects of her own character that had now surfaced which were causing Farrell concern? Did he begin to panic and worry about being in a relationship with her? Did this lead him to now start questioning whether she was a woman stable enough to genuinely, cope being in a relationship with him, and this led him to question the idea of having a child with her?
She asked whether he only wanted her to get pregnant because he thought it would keep him from leaving. Farrell admitted that could be true.
Is he telling her things he knows, she wants to hear. Is it his way of triying to stop her doing something stupid? Remember, he now 'knows' how her mind works.
Certainly Emma’s behaviour following the break-up is worthy of note, but probably not in the sympathetic way she would like us to think.
Now the man who had helped her feel whole had sent her back into panic and depression. She slept with a stranger; she began renting videos on Farrell's video card; she emailed him and texted, begging to meet him in person.
'Barrelling towards rock bottom, I reach out to GH, tell him things are not good and I would like to speak face to face,' Forrest writes.
'He does not reply. For two days I roil in shock, knowing that he will. But he doesn't. Finally, an email, cool, saying he's "glad I'm doing well", no mention of what I said.' Forrest considered suicide, even lining up the pills that she would take. But she finally came to a realisation.
'When GH asked if he was mine, tears in his eyes, I think he knew what he would do, what he would have to do, and he was mourning us. He was mourning us the whole time.' But the final blow was yet to come. Six months after the couple broke up, a journalist emailed Forrest a photo showing Farrell and his new, heavily pregnant girlfriend - obviously in her second trimester, meaning she became pregnant around the same time that Farrell and Forrest split up. The girl, of course, was his former Ondine co-star Alicja.
She writes. 'I know I'm supposed to cut myself. That's the hotwire.' Instead, she goes for a walk through New York City, takes a ferry - and manages to find some sort of closure.
'I finally get it now,' she writes. 'It's really very simple: That wasn't my baby. That wasn't my husband.'
FACT: People react in different ways to the end of a relationship, and the reactions of Ms Forrest are not so extreme. The act of sleeping with a stranger is quite common during such times. We believe by replacing the person with someone else, we will somehow erase all traces of the person we really want to be with.
‘Stalker’ behaviour can also be common. We cannot accept they do not want to be with us, or even talk to us. The more they ignore you, the more you persist.
These are natural reactions for some people, and does not necessarily mean they are being ’manic’ in a mentally unstable way. They are hurt, and angry. In Ms Forrest’s case, she has already been given a diagnosis of being ‘manic’ so yes, she could potentially be a danger to herself.
However, she appears to be fully aware of her ‘actions’ during this time, so much so she has remembered them all and put them in her book. In other words; she was in control, and therefore, not a danger to herself in the physical sense. And mentally, she is able to process what is happening.
The revelation: “I finally get it now. It’s really very simple. That wasn’t my baby. That wasn’t my husband”.
Basically, she has no choice, but to admit and recognise the facts for what they are. So mentally, she is in control of her thoughts enough to be consciously aware of herself, and her actions.
Ingeniously, she words her ‘realisation’ in the order of child first, and the man comes second (remember; she is a writer). But you could pose the question: Does this mean having Farrell’s child was actually more important to her than the actual relationship of being with him?
Farrell has yet to respond publicly to the book's claims.
This is emotional blackmail at its finest. It’s the classic ‘Catch 22’. If Colin responds - then he immediately lends credibility to the book.
Before the book is published, Emma takes it upon herself to make sure Farrell knows a) she has written about him in her memoir, and b) offers him to opportunity to read it.
Genius! At last Emma has got his ‘attention’. He will have to respond to her offer in some way. Thereby, he has to acknowledge her presence (in the literary sense) along with their past relationship… all over again.
Colin has moved on; Emma will not allow herself too. She still wants to have some form of ‘attachment’ to him, but why? What exactly is it that Emma cannot deal with; not having Colin in her life, the fact he left her, or not having his child?
He chooses not to read the book, and sends her a lovely letter ‘graciously declining the offer’. We know this because Emma told us!
If Colin reads her book this means Emma has established a form of personal contact with him.
This is a woman he did not want to continue a relationship with, and so he left, and following his departure he stopped all contact with her. So clearly, he does not wish to remain on ‘talking’ terms. Now he is being coupled to her again via her book, and asked to read and comment on the book's content in regards to himself and their past relationship. Farrell has to respond in some way; he chooses to write her a letter rather than picking up the phone to talk to her in person.
Put yourself in Farrell’s shoes; if he picked up the phone and spoke to Emma Forrest, what would happen? Would she treat the conversation as a private conversation between the two of them? She wrote a book detailing every aspect of their time and conversations together - so no, it’s more likely his every word would be recorded, analysed and summarised, and probably done so in a very public way.
Would she want to become personal with him, and discuss their past relationship, and where it went wrong? Of course she would, that’s why she’s written about him, and sent him a copy of what she’s written in order to gain a response. And this would now place Farrell in a very difficult and potentially dangerous position. Would Emma accept his reasons, or would she only hear what she wanted to hear? Would she become emotional, and then desperate; would she do something to harm herself? And if she did who would be responsible for the action; Colin, or Emma? Or, put another way... who would be held accountable?
So it’s perhaps understandable to see why Farrell believes having no contact with Forrest is probably the safest option all round. It is not necessarily out of guilt on his part, but maybe out of protection for her, against herself; both mentally and physically.
And what if Farrell did object to some of the content written about him; is there really anything he could do? How would Ms Forrest react when informed? I believe we all know the answer to this - as does Colin. The story would be splashed all over the tabloids, and therefore, immediately give the impression that Emma Forrest must be telling the truth because Farrell ‘objected’ to something in the book. It wouldn’t matter what he objected too; how much or how little. The very fact he objected to something would be enough to give credence to her book. And for Emma, this would be the icing on the cake. She would ‘know’ for sure that he had read her words, and so for her - she has succeeded in gaining personal involvement with Colin again.
And of course, readers must remember that Forrest readily confesses to a deeply troubled past.
Yet this is, after all, a man who tattooed the pet name of his first wife, Millie, on the ring finger of his left hand - despite the fact that the marriage lasted just months. He claimed medical student girlfriend Muireann McDonnell was 'the one', and had sons with both Bachleda and US model Kim Bordenave.
None of these relationships has lasted, however.
So while Emma Forrest may herself be a complex young woman - and possibly one of the most naive on the planet - it seems likely that her account of life with Farrell is the truth. And while his behaviour may add to his allure for some, for most women it can only serve as a warning that this bad boy is exactly as bad as everyone says.
The fact Colin Farrell did go on to have a child with someone else could be viewed as completely irrelevant, or a deliberate act? It’s a question I don’t believe we’ll ever ‘truly’ know, and in all honesty, it really is none of our business… or Ms Forrest’s.
If Farrell began to develop intense feelings toward his co-star Alicja Bachelda, and this made him realise his feelings towards Emma Forrest were not as strong as he’d thought. Then wasn’t he actually ‘right’ to leave the relationship with Ms Forrest?
Break-ups are never easy; no matter who is in the wrong or right. Farrell ended his relationship with Emma for his own reasons. Maybe, he just wanted out, or maybe, he did realise he had feelings for somebody else. But at the end of the day he didn’t purposely try and prolong Ms Forrest’s anguish. So I don‘t believe we can fully blame Colin for Emma’s continued self-anguish towards herself?!
Farrell to his credit has treated Ms Forrest with far more ‘respect’ than she has given him. He has shown himself to be an adult, and someone who actually does ‘care’ about the people he’s been involved with. He has allowed this book to go ahead without complaint and without public bitterness.
Emma Forrest pretends to her disillusioned self, but mostly to others, that Farrell ‘truly’ understands her more so than any other. And would like us to believe that Colin ‘understands’ her reasons for writing about him in her memoir, and so therefore… shouldn’t we?
It’s dreamily optimistic and she knows it's false… as is her spoken admiration about him as a person, and an actor. How can you admire someone as a person - let alone as an actor who left you so heartbroken you dedicate pages of your memoir exposing him as a baby-obsessed liar and cheat!
The same as it’s difficult to believe Farrell can really want to try and understand a woman who has written intimate details about him and their time together. Would anyone, be able to maintain a genuine and non-judgemental understanding about someone who has done such a thing?
The only thing we DO KNOW is that Emma Forrest is a woman who did not see, or want to believe that her relationship with Colin Farrell had come to an end. And the fact he did go on and have a baby with another woman is very much the core of her continued and self-governing heartache. She was a woman who was in pain, and allowed the pain to turn into anger, the anger to turn into blame, and the blame to turn into revenge.
Her work is a constant and blatant attempt to keep herself ‘linked‘ to the name Colin Farrell; such as her screen play ‘Liars‘. But why does she continually have to associate herself with this man? Is it because she’s angry, lonely, depressed, manic, childless or still heartbroken? Or, is it simply because she wants to be regarded as a ‘famous‘ person in her own right?
Emma Forrest started out in her career thanks to influence and a big name, and it seems she has continued to make this her code of working practice ever since. She knows only too well association by name can take you a long way in your career. However, personal happiness is something you have to discover then nurture all by yourself… and you cannot do that when you are obsessing over something or someone which has been, and gone.
To write a memoir in homage to your deceased therapist would be plausible even for Emma Forrest. But sadly, this book has not been written out of ‘respect’ to Dr R, and his friendship, his time, his effort or his work with Ms Forrest. Unfortunately, this man’s untimely death has been distastefully turned into an opportune moment in order to publish nothing more than a ‘kiss and tell’ book!
This book has not only let Ms Forrest down as a person, but has also let women down. By bitching about your ex-boyfriend in a book, you have demeaned all of us into the same category as yourself; a woman scorned!
But perhaps even more alarming is the book has let down many people who suffer from ‘mental health’ issues. Forrest has used mental health as a way of dramatising her own mental instability and used it as a prop in her story about a one-woman crusade for retribution on a past boyfriend, and a ticket to the big time!
