Colin Farrell didn’t have a great time filming ‘Thirteen Lives’.
“In a word, frightening. Terrifying,” the Irish actor told “Entertainment Tonight” at the film’s premiere Thursday night while describing the experience.
The Ron Howard-directed film chronicles the 2018 real-life rescue of a dozen young boys and their soccer coach trapped in Thailand’s flooded Tham Luang Cave.
Farrell, 46, confessed that he was particularly afraid of filming extreme underwater scenes.
“It was scary. I’m not a great swimmer anyway, not that we were swimming, not that we were treading water – we had to stay on the surface – but they built a really impressive network of caves,” the ‘Batman said. ‘-star.
“It was about four or five different caves that were based on the topography of the caves, the Tham Luang caves in Thailand, and they filled them full of water, and we went down and there was none up.”
Farrell, who plays rescue diver John Volanthen, added that not being able to see the water’s surface was horrendous and “just wreaks havoc on [the] mind.” He even said he had panic attacks underwater, which he called a “new experience.”
However, the “True Detective” alum explained that all the underwater scenes didn’t improve his water skills, adding that a rescue diver is “a very specific skill set”.
Farrell wasn’t the only star on set to struggle with the intense scenes.
His co-star Viggo Mortensen, who plays the real-life hero Richard Stanton, said he also panicked at one point during filming.
“Suddenly I couldn’t breathe,” the ‘Green Book’ star, 63, told People on Thursday. “It seemed long, but it was only a matter of seconds. I panicked.”
Although he could remember his training and put the mouthpiece on the oxygen tank, Mortensen acknowledged that “it’s not that complicated, but right now it’s hard to think clearly.”
The film, which also stars Joel Edgerton, Tom Bateman and Paul Gleeson, is now in theaters and launching August 5 on Amazon Prime Video.