Former bad boy Colin Farrell’s new revelation proves he’s transformed into a true gentleman: In his words, his last “romantic relationship” was with Elizabeth Taylor, the film legend who died in 2011 at the age of 79.
“I just adored her. She was a spectacular, spectacular woman,” the Saving Mr. Banks actor told Ellen DeGeneres, adding he would have gladly made her his wife. “I wanted to be [husband] No. 8, but we ran out of road.”
Colin and Elizabeth’s relationship began with a chance meeting four years ago. He was in the hospital awaiting the birth of his second son while she was in the same hospital for a heart procedure. While pacing in the hallways, Colin ran into Elizabeth’s manager and the two began to talk.
“I said, ‘Will you tell her I said hello, she probably won’t know who I am,'” the 37-year-old actor said. “And they go, ‘No, she knows who you are,’ and I went, ‘Wow, cool. Well, tell her I said hello and I wish her the best,’ and they said, ‘Will do.'”
That could have been the end of it. Instead, Colin and Elizabeth sent each other flowers and agreed to meet.
“That was the beginning of a year and a half or two years of what was a really cool… It was kind of like the last — it feels like in my head, not her, I’m projecting, but the last kind of romantic relationship I had. Which was never consummated,” Colin explained. “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… We’d talk for a half an hour, an hour, into the wee hours.”
Shortly before her death, Elizabeth said the affections were mutual.
“I love Johnny Depp, and I love Colin Farrell – both brilliant, nuanced actors with great range,” she told Kim Kardashian for a Harper’s Bazaar in March 2011.
When Elizabeth died that same month, Colin was one of the few non-family members in attendance at her funeral. He even read “The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo” during the private event.
“Elizabeth chose it. It was a tricky poem as well,” he said at the time. “Even in passing she had me under the thumb, sweating bricks… I just miss her.”
