Colin Farrell in rehab as pre-emptive measure, report says

Has Colin Farrell again entered rehab?

People magazine Wednesday, citing an anonymous source, claimed the well-regarded Irish actor, who has spoken of alcohol and drug issues, had entered a rehabilitation facility pre-emptively after spending months shooting two films back-to-back: Tim Burton’s live-action remake of the animated classic “Dumbo” and Steve McQueen’s crime thriller “Widows.”

Farrell, 41, told daytime talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres in May 2017 that he had been sober 10 years.

The actor’s spokeswoman, Danica Smith, had no comment on the report, which initially appeared in the U.K. tabloid newspaper The Daily Mail, also based on anonymous claims. Farrell has no social-media accounts, and has not responded publicly.

Smith had told The Associated Press in December 2005 that Farrell then had entered an unspecified facility for exhaustion and to treat dependency on painkillers prescribed for a back injury. Farrell himself, in numerous talk-show interviews, has described far more long-standing substance abuse.

In October 2013, Farrell recalled to host Ryan Tubridy on the Irish talk show “The Late Late Show” that after production wrapped on the film “Miami Vice” (2006), “I was put on a plane and sent to rehab,” according to a transcription in the newspaper the Irish Independent. “I’d gotten out of control. For years I could indulge in certain things; I had quite a high tolerance for various drugs for years, I thought. It accumulated to the point where I couldn’t put my foot on the brake anymore.”