Colin Farrell Opens Up About "Romantic Relationship" With Elizabeth Taylor, Reveals He Auditioned for a Boy Band

"I wanted to be number eight, but we ran out of road," the Saving Mr. Banks star jokes regarding his close friendship with the much-married actress

By Natalie Finn Dec 17, 2013 12:15 AMTags

Maybe Colin Farrell reminded Elizabeth Taylor of Richard Burton.

Farrell, who has talked about his friendship with Taylor before, told Ellen DeGeneres on Monday's Ellen that he actually counts the late actress, who was 44 years his senior, as his "last kind-of-romantic relationship."

"I just adored her," the Saving Mr. Banks star said about the iconic actress, who died in 2011. "She was a spectacular, spectacular woman."

Farrell never worked with Taylor, but they ended up meeting after the birth of his second child, Henry. Farrell was at Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for the birth in 2009 and happened to run into Taylor's manager by the elevator, who informed him that La Liz was there having a stent put in her heart.

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"I said, 'Will you tell her I said hello, she probably won't know who I am.' 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,'" Farrell recalled happily to Ellen.

"So I got home a few days later with Henry and I was thinking about Elizabeth and how she was doing, and I called my publicist and I said, 'I bumped into some people of Elizabeth Taylor's...could I send her some flowers?' And my publicist said...'That's funny because I'm looking at an orchid from Elizabeth Taylor for you."

"I'll say!" Farrell agreed as the audience reacted excitedly. "I said, 'Wow, that's amazing.'"

"I said, 'Well, send that bad boy over to the house and can I still get the flowers?' And it came with a hand written note from her. I then cheekily about a week later said, 'Listen is there any chance I can go...and see her?'"

His publicist made some calls and "I got to have an audience with her and 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," he quickly added.

But the two, both night owls apparently, did have their share of 2 a.m. phone conversations, and they became great friends.

"I wanted to be number eight, but we ran out of road," Farrell joked, a reference to the seven men she married over the years (including Burton, whom she married twice).

And that's not the only time when Farrell's life could have taken an unexpected direction. In fact, it turns out he almost went in a One-Direction direction once!

Describing it as his "Plan F," Farrell also revealed to Ellen that he auditioned for a boy band when he was 17 or 18 years old.

"I was dancing in a nightclub in Dublin with a pair of leather pants and a nice rubber black T-shirt as you..."

"Do we have a picture of that?" Ellen interrupted.

"Well, we do but..." replied, looking at the audience, "we don't. Maybe I'll bring that next time."