This Is Why Colin Farrell Wants To Put His Son With Angelman Syndrome In A Care Facility Despite He And His Ex Being In A Position To Look After Him Themselves
Angelman syndrome is a rare genetic disorder that causes intellectual and developmental delay, and James was diagnosed at 4 years old.
Last year, Colin decided to offer a glimpse of their life to the public in a bid to raise awareness for his new venture, the Colin Farrell Foundation. Speaking to People, Colin explained that in the United States, the cut-off age for the support systems provided for families with children who have additional needs is 21 — which is what inspired him to launch the foundation, which provides support for adults who have intellectual difficulties.
'It's a terrifying thought that I'd miss the last 40 years of 50 years of his life because I won't be there to shepherd and to protect,' Colin said of the stark likelihood that James will outlive him and Kim. He added that his hope for James would be 'a life of connection' and that once his parents are gone, James will 'be somewhere he feels like he belongs, where he feels safe.'
In fact, Colin noted that he has an intense fear over what the future holds for his son as he admitted that even as a wealthy Hollywood actor, he still struggles to find the help that James needs. He shared: 'My fear would be, God forbid, if and when something happens to James's mother or me, James would be 30 or 40, and then he'd have to go in somewhere. Into some kind of institute or some kind of residential care at 30 or 40, and there'd be nobody there to call over, and take him out, and have lunch and all that.'
'I want the world to be kind to James,' he concluded at the time. 'I want the world to treat him with kindness and respect.'
And Colin — who also has a 15-year-old son called Henry — has reflected some more on his concerns for James's future in a new interview with Candis magazine, where he explained his and Kim's decision to settle James in a care facility while they are still technically able to look after him themselves.
He said: 'It's tricky, some parents will say: 'I want to take care of my child myself.' And I respect that. But my horror would be... What if I have a heart attack tomorrow, and, God forbid, James' mother, Kim, has a car crash and she's taken too — and then James is on his own. Then he's a ward of the state and he goes where? We'd have no say in it.'
'And one thing I can say about James is that he knows when somebody wants to be with him, and he knows when somebody's just supposed to be with him,' Colin went on. 'So, if he has a carer or a teacher or somebody who's doing physical therapy with him and they're not fully engaged and fully loving with him, he'll just switch off.'
'What his mother and I want is to find somewhere we like where he can go now, while we're still alive and healthy, that we can go and visit, and we can take him out sometimes,' Colin continued. 'We want him to find somewhere where he can have a full and happy life, where he feels connected. He needs a bigger life than we can afford him, by having a sense of community that he feels connected to, by going out in the van every day and going to the supermarket and doing the shopping together, by going to the beach, museums, movies, all that stuff. Just a connected life."
'It's been a struggle for us to find suitable residential care,' the actor added, referencing his decision to set up his own foundation. 'And in realizing that, I thought: 'If I'm having these difficulties, what about all the other families out there that don't have anything close to the means that I have?' I've always known I wanted to do something about this, but until now I've just been really self-centredly busy in raising my own two kids. But now, they're up and running and I feel I have a bit more space to do something. It's early days for the foundation yet, so we're still on baby steps."
Colin previously told People that James's additional needs are what motivated him to get sober in the mid-'00s, with the star renowned for his party boy past. He said at the time: 'James was about two when I got clean, when I got sober, and he was a big, big part of me putting the bottle down, a big part of it. Because I was in no condition to be a friend, never mind the father of a child which such exacting needs… If it wasn't for my sobriety, I wouldn't be able to be there for James and enjoy in the marvels of his life and support him in the way that I feel that I can.'
He also said that James has given him a newfound appreciation for the little things in life, explaining that while his son is able to complete everyday tasks, they tend to take him much longer.
Colin shared: 'It'll take James 90 seconds to take a T-shirt off, but he takes a T-shirt off; you sit it out with him. If anything, he also gifts me with the ability to look at the human being and the human body and life as a marvel, because I see how much he struggles with things that I'd never have given a second thought to, that many of us take for granted.'
Detailing their day-to-day life, Colin said that he and James, who is nonverbal, enjoy regular father-son activities together like playing ball, swimming, watching movies, and going out for a cheeseburger, and that James benefits from the fact that he has had the same live-in carer for 18 years.
Reflecting on his oldest son, Colin added: "I'm proud of him every day because I just think he's magic."
Colin Farrell Emotionally Opened Up About The 'Terrifying' Reality Of Having A Child With Disabilities In His First Interview About His 21-Year-Old Son Who Has Angelman SyndromeStephanie Soteriou · Aug. 8, 2024
Colin Farrell Shouted Out The Craft Service Crew On 'The Penguin' By Name In His Golden Globes Acceptance Speech, And People Are ObsessedStephanie Soteriou · Jan. 6, 2025
Colin Farrell And Nicole Kidman Have Been Called Barry Keoghan's 'Proud' Dad And 'Stressed' Mom After An Adorable Interview Resurfaced OnlineStephanie Soteriou · March 16, 2023
Colin Farrell Was Warned That He Was Wasting His Time Trying To Be An Actor After He Was Rejected From A Boyband For Not Being Talented EnoughStephanie Soteriou · March 21, 2024
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
27 minutes ago
- New York Post
New Yorker writer who referred to Sydney Sweeney as ‘Aryan princess' deletes series of racist X posts: ‘I hate white men'
A staffer for the New Yorker who denounced Sydney Sweeney as an 'Aryan princess' has spouted anti-white and antisemitic rhetoric in social media posts — before scrubbing her account after being called out on Friday. Doreen St. Felix, 33, had written several racist posts on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, including that 'whiteness fills me with a lot of hate' and that 'the holocaust is the worst thing to happen to black people.' The unearthed inflammatory tweets date back to 2014 — three years before the Haitian-American journalist was hired by the left-leaning magazine run by longtime editor David Remnick. Advertisement 6 Doreen St. Felix, 33, deleted her social media on Friday after inflammatory posts were unearthed. X/dstfelix St. Felix deleted her X account after her past comments resurfaced following her recent article for the Conde Nast-owned publication in which she criticized Sweeney's American Eagle campaign. In the 1,040-word piece that ran Aug. 2, she accused Sweeney's fans of wanting to 'recruit her as a kind of Aryan princess' and declared there were 'plenty of reasons' to dislike the ad. The ad has been panned by the 'woke' mob for its play on words that boasts about the blonde star's 'great jeans.' Advertisement However, it was St. Felix who was feeling the heat after X users — including conservative journalist Chris Rufo — flooded The New Yorker's site with screenshots of her past tweets. In one tweet targeting white men dated in December 2014, St. Felix wrote: 'You all are the worst. Go nurse your f–king Oedipal complexes and leave the earth to the browns and the women.' The resurfaced messages revealed a pattern of racially charged commentary spanning multiple years. Advertisement 6 St. Felix penned a provocative article for the New Yorkers in which she made reference to Sydney Sweeney as an 'Aryan princess.' American Eagle In one post, St. Felix admitted she 'writes like no white is watching.' Another declared that she 'would be heartbroken if I had kids with a white guy.' Her antipathy extended to broader cultural claims, including assertions that white people's poor hygiene 'literally started the bubonic plague, lice, syphilis.' Advertisement Keep up with today's most important news Stay up on the very latest with Evening Update. Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters She also suggested that 'we lived in perfect harmony w/ the earth pre whiteness' and blamed environmental destruction specifically on 'white capitalism.' Her posts also contained provocative references to the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews. In one tweet, she described what she called 'the holocaust gesture,' writing that 'it's tricknological, when white people invoke the holocaust' because it 'allows them to step out of their whiteness and slip on fake oppression.' 6 Sweeney is starring in an ad campaign for American Eagle Outfitters. American Eagle She also wrote that 'the holocaust birthed trauma studies' and claimed it 'explains a lot about why we get so many things wrong about how trauma comes.' In another post, she claimed 'the tolerability of racism is linked to how its acted out on brown bodies. The holocaust was not tolerable bc of white victims so it ended.' 6 St. Felix scrubbed her social media on Friday. X/realchrisrufo Advertisement St. Felix could not be reached for comment after deleting her social media presence. The Post has sought comment from both Conde Nast and The New Yorker. Many of her posts were written in late 2014 against the backdrop of racial tensions that were stoked by the police-involved deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner on Staten Island — both of whom were black. None of the officers involved were indicted. 6 The now-deleted posts appear to make light of the Holocaust. X/realchrisrufo Advertisement A Dec. 5, 2014, tweet referenced The Post. She wrote: 'there's a slow, second holocaust against brown people in this country and the nypost 'Supports the NYPD' so they are terrorists as well.' Social media users noted the apparent contradiction between St. Felix's past statements denouncing capitalism and her living conditions. Her listed address corresponds to a $1.3 million home in a gated Brooklyn community overlooking a marina. 6 She deleted posts declaring 'I hate white men' and calling for whiteness to be 'abolished.' Getty Images for The New Yorker Advertisement St. Felix, who has also penned articles for Vogue and Time magazine, regularly contributes to The New Yorker's Critics Notebook column. Prior to her current role, she served as editor-at-large for Lenny Letter, a newsletter created by actress Lena Dunham, and worked as a culture writer for MTV News. Forbes named her to their '30 Under 30' media list in 2016. The following year, she earned finalist status for a National Magazine Award in Columns and Commentary, ultimately winning in the same category two years later in 2019.
Atlantic
an hour ago
- Atlantic
Is Anyone Actually Mad About Sorority-Rush Dances?
'You know the LIBS are seething over this,' Joe Kinsey, an editor at the sports website OutKick, wrote on X while reposting a video of sorority girls doing a choreographed dance. Many of the girls were wearing red-white-and-blue outfits, though some were dressed as hot dogs. They waved American flags in front of a banner that read We Want You Kappa Delta. 'Credit to these ladies for pumping out patriotism to kick off the 2025 school year,' Kinsley wrote. It wasn't only the display of patriotism that supposedly made liberals seethe. 'The purple hair lesbians have to be furious that SEC sororities ARE BACK,' Kinsey wrote while reposting another sorority-dance video. This one had no clear Americana element aside from the matching trucker hats all of the dancing girls were wearing. Kinsey's two posts were viewed nearly 40 million times. Many other such videos have been shared on X in the past couple of weeks, as sororities have begun recruiting for the new school year. The videos come from TikTok, where sorority dance videos have long been popular. But they've been presented on X with a new gloss: Democrats, liberals, and leftists are enraged by pretty, mostly white young women who are dancing happily. It drives them up the wall when a woman is blond! Do not let a liberal see a woman smiling while wearing a short denim skirt. The only thing that is missing is evidence of seething libs. Search around social media, and you might be surprised how difficult such reactions are to find. In fact, I couldn't find a single one. When I asked Kinsey where he got the idea that people were angry about the sorority-recruitment videos, he didn't point me to any specific examples. He noted that many people replied to his posts saying that they weren't mad about the TikTok dances. But, he said, 'I don't believe that.' By now, this is all familiar. Recall the recent controversy over an American Eagle ad starring Sydney Sweeney, in which the actress hawked denim jeans by making a pun about her genes. A small number of people on social media did get very angry, and posted about how the ad sounded like a eugenics dogwhistle. Their reaction was then amplified by right-wing commentators eager to make the point that the left hates hot women. The fact that the situation involved Sydney Sweeney, a celebrity who had already been evoked in culture-war debates in the past, drove even more attention. It turned into a full-blown news cycle. (I am confident my grandmother heard about this.) In both cases, this burst of bizarre posting is less a story about American politics than it is a story about social media and, specifically, X. Whatever else you may say about Elon Musk's platform, it is the best place to watch a fake drama unfold. Both of the videos that Joe Kinsey shared—of the girls with the flags and the girls with the trucker hats—were originally posted on their respective sororities' TikTok accounts. But the versions he shared had been uploaded to X by what appears to be an account called 'Calico Cut Pants,' which seemingly exists to move short-form videos from one platform to another. The account follows no one and is named after a sketch from the Tim Robinson Netflix show I Think You Should Leave. Other sorority dance videos have been pulled from TikTok and posted by an account called 'Big Chungus,' which also posts almost nothing but videos from other sites, paired with incendiary rhetoric. Accounts like these can bring in money by driving engagement on X, thanks to a revenue-sharing program that debuted after Musk took over the site. Both Big Chungus and Calico Cut Pants have Premium badges, which means they can get paid for generating activity including likes and replies. According to X's Creator Revenue Sharing guidelines, the company maintains some discretion in calculating the true 'impact' of posts. For instance, engagement from other paid accounts is worth more than engagement from an unpaid account. It stands to reason that the best way to make money is to elicit some reaction to your content from the people who enjoy X enough to pay for it. Social media is replete with political outrage, and playing to either a liberal or conservative audience is likely to draw attention. (Certainly, plenty of accounts decrying MAGA values, real and exaggerated, exist.) But X, in particular, is a much more right-coded platform than it was a few years ago, and it makes sense to pander to the home crowd. Consider 'non aesthetic things,' an account that has 4.9 million followers on X, all from posting short-form videos—sometimes relatable, sometimes nostalgic, generally just mind-numbing. Its bio links to an Instagram page that is full of ads for the gambling company Stake. (None of these accounts responded to requests for an interview.) The non aesthetic things account shared a video of sorority girls at Arizona State University who were performing in jean shorts, most of them quite short, and cowboy boots. The X caption makes reference to 'their JEANS'—a subtle nod to the Sydney Sweeney panic. This pairing of footage and wink was a solid bet to produce a big reaction. Given all the attention the Sweeney dustup received, returning to it is logical for engagement farmers. 'BREAKING,' wrote a pro-Trump account called 'Patriot Oasis' that almost exclusively posts short-form videos, 'Sorority at the University of Oklahoma wearing 'Good Genes' is going VIRAL showcasing pure American beauty. Liberals are OUTRAGED online.' The caption suggested that the sorority is participating in some kind of activist response to the villainization of Sydney Sweeney, though there is no reason to believe that. The girls in the video never say anything about politics, Sydney Sweeney, genes, or even jeans. The sorority has been making similar dance videos for years. Nevertheless, the right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk reposted Patriot Oasis to his 5.1 million followers and asked, 'Do you see the difference between conservative and liberal women?' Underneath his post, a Community Note generated by other users pointed out that the video doesn't reveal whether the women are conservative or not. But that hardly mattered. Many others made the same argument in the replies to Kirk's post, driving up engagement. Although the original post has since been deleted, Kirk's repost has more than 3.8 million views. Sorority dances worked well on social media even before they were inserted into a fake culture-war debate, because they are briefly hypnotic due to the weirdness of so many people moving in the same way while wearing such similar outfits. They offer the muted thrill of a flash mob. But plucked from their original context, they offer more. Someone finds them and puts them on X with just a phrase or two of framing and they blow up. People watch the videos of young women dancing and gleefully share them, writing, for example, 'nothing is more triggering to leftists,' and 'at what point do you just give up if you're a lib?' and 'America is BACK and Democrats hate it.' There is no need to point to an actual instance of a leftist or lib or Democrat being triggered. It is easy enough to imagine how triggered they are.
Cosmopolitan
an hour ago
- Cosmopolitan
How Did AD and Ollie Get Over Their ‘Perfect Match' Drama?
Going into this season of Netflix's Perfect Match, fans already had an idea that things were going to work out between AD Smith and Ollie Sutherland—getting engaged on TV before the season actually airs will do that. But now that reality TV obsessives have watched the entire season, there are some lingering questions. Like, how did AD and Ollie move past all that Perfect Match drama? 'Ollie was in time out for a while,' AD admitted to People in a post-Perfect Match finale interview. And now that we've all watched season 3 of the Netflix dating show, it's easy to see why. AD and Ollie came in second place and were still together when it ended, but they also had a few major pain points that needed tending to. Despite being paired up from the beginning, AD and Ollie had their rough patches on the show, specifically when Ollie went on a date with Love Island USA's Justine Joy and lied to AD about kissing Justine, something she later found out on her own. 'He had a lot of making up to do,' AD continued. 'But we focused on intentionality in our relationship and just being open and honest with each other about what we wanted out of our own personal lives and what we wanted as a couple.' For his part, Ollie told People that their brief split on Perfect Match is actually what made him realize just how strongly he felt for her. 'In that moment, where I was so scared I was going to lose her, I think that made me realize just how important she was to me, and how much I'd never want to be in that position again,' he said. That feeling might help explain how the couple went from reality show to engaged in less than a year. AD and Ollie announced their engagement in March of 2025 during the Love Is Blind season 8 reunion, news that was soon followed up by a pregnancy announcement. They're now enjoying being engaged while they await the arrival of their baby girl. It might seem fast in the normal world, but in the world of reality television, it's actually pretty standard. 'The show expedited things for sure, because from day one, when you're sharing a room with that person, you're waking up and doing challenges with that person,' Ollie explained. 'In the real world, you don't date in that fashion.'
