Hollywood wildman Colin Farrell has confessed to taking a regular cocktail of drink and drugs that spiralled him into depression before he achieved fame.

The Phone Booth hunk, renowned for his hard partying lifestyle, admitted to taking cocaine, ecstasy, speed and marijuana, as well as copious amounts of alcohol and cigarettes during a period in the mid-1990s.

But the new father of baby JAMES says he was left depressed by his over-indulgence and sought solace in a counsellor.

Colin tells British magazine RADIO TIMES, "I ended up on a shrink's couch and he told me to write down how much I did in a week.

"Twenty E's, four grams of coke, six of speed, half an ounce of hash, three bottles of JACK DANIELS, 12 bottles of red wine, 60 pints and 280 fags. He looked at me and said: 'No wonder you're depressed.'"

Colin hit rock bottom in 1993 after he lost out on a place in Irish boyband Boyzone and spent a year in a line-dancing troupe.

He continues, "I was a chancer and hustler, out of my t*ts on ecstasy for a year. There's footage of me in a red G-string advertising Christmas underwear. I did it because they paid an extra GBP10 - the cost of an E.

"I was going one way - down. I was self-destructive, still am."

30/09/2003 01:56