'We're going to die and make big mistakes': Colin Farrell and Jamie Lee Curtis confront their acting legacy and sobriety

Jamie Lee Curtis and Colin Farrell are two of Hollywood's most charismatic figures — and for both actors, magnetism can sometimes disguise contemplative depths. Curtis, who played a ruthless IRS inspector opposite Michelle Yeoh in "Everything Everywhere All at Once," and Farrell, who plays an acting duo as an Irish farmer who falls out with his best friend (Brendan Gleeson) in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” spoke of the complex roles they took on this year. In both cases, deep soul-searching and lessons learned during recovery informed their work.

Jamie Lee Curtis: Ireland is an incredibly friendly country.

Colin Farrell: That's amazing. I've lived here in Los Angeles for 16, 17 years now. I am raising my two sons here. L.A. means more to me than I thought this city ever would. But when I get home, it makes sense to me in a way that no other place would make business sense to me. If I'm in LA and I say, "I'm going home," I drop about two octaves. This place is deeper inside me.

Curtis: And you dropped him in this movie. You have to go home.

Farrell: Yes, I did. I go home once every three years to make a film there. Where were you born?

Curtis: Born and raised right here in the City of Angels. I went to boarding school once. Connecticut. One year. Error.

Alexi Lubomirski for Variety

Farrell: I did an internship for a year and a half. Error, error. You were six months smarter than me.

Curtis: I used to play "California" by Joni Mitchell in my bedroom and I was sobbing. Because when you come from somewhere, it's you.

Farrell: It's like I have so much residual energy there. The place shaped me and sent me out into the world.

Curtis: The movie is so much about Ireland. It's such an Irish movie. It's so deep and exquisite.

Farrell: The movie is about two friends who argue. Literally a boy saying to another boy, "I don't want to be your friend anymore." In today's culture, you don't bother texting - I believe kids call it "ghosting" - you just cut the person off. Hard to do that on an island where there is a pub and a church.

I understood my character, Pádraic, and where he comes from. But I felt such deep sympathy for the struggle of Brendan's character and the struggles he had to go through to find that peace, that solitude, so that he could come to terms with his own mortality.