TV supervet Noel Fitzpatrick has revealed the ‘sliding doors moment’ in which he lost out on a role in drama Ballykissangel to future Hollywood star Colin Farrell.
The popular Channel 4 star has opened up about his younger days going to drama school and aiming to prove successful on the small screen but in dramatic roles.
But he was pipped to a place in hit BBC series Ballykissangel to a younger man who would go on to transatlantic triumphs including an Academy Award nomination.
And both he and fellow Irishman Colin Farrell have since reflected on how the decision have worked out for both on very different career paths.
Fitzpatrick, 57, was born in Ballyfin in Ireland’s County Laois – about 100km from Farrell’s birthplace of Castleknock in the capital Dublin, nine years later.
The pair found themselves thrown together in auditions for Irish-set rural drama Ballykissangel, which ran on BBC1 between 1996 and 2001 and starred the likes of Dervla Kirwan and Stephen Tompkinson.
Farrell appeared in 18 episodes, before going on to Hollywood success in blockbusters movies such as Minority Report, Alexander and In Bruges.
He was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for 2022 film The Banshees Of Inisherin and has won awarded in the title role of HBO’s Batman spin-off series The Penguin.
TV ‘Supervet’ Noel Fitzpatrick has revealed how he missed out on a drama part to Colin Farrell
The Hollywood star made an acting breakthrough in the BBC drama series Ballykissangel
Farrell suffered his own early setbacks, including a failed audition trial for 1990s boyband Boyzone – but he has gone on to appreciate what a difference his Ballykissangel success might have made, according to Fitzpatrick.
The Supervet, reflecting on his career, has told a new interview: ‘I went to drama school because I wanted to learn how to communicate. I did Heartbeat, The Bill, Casualty.
‘I was up for Ballykissangel, but Colin Farrell got the role. When he did The Penguin, he sent me a note saying: “But for a quirk of fate, I could have been a very good vet, but I ended up a penguin.”‘
Fitzpatrick graduated in 1990 in veterinary medicine at University College Dublin and 24 years later would win the same institution’s Alumni Award for the subject.
He moved to England in 1993, setting up his veterinary practice Fitzpatrick Referrals in Guildford, Surrey, where the firm remains – treating hundreds of animals each year and employing more than 170 staff.
Their work was covered in BBC series The Bionic Vet in 2010 and since 2014 he has been the focus of Channel 4’s popular series The Supervet – covering how he and his colleagues take on trying to save pets that might not have survived otherwise.
Yet his interest in acting had been a committed one, spending the first decade of this century making appearances in shows such as The Bill, Heartbeat , Casualty and London’s Burning.
And he also performed in films including The Devil’s Tattoo in 2003, 2004’s Live For The Moment and Frames in 2008.
Noel Fitzpatrick, 57, has told how he went to drama school and appeared in TV dramas – before finding fame which shows following his veterinary work
Colin Farrell is seen here winning a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in January this year in Beverly Hills, California – he was rewarded for his performance in HBO series The Penguin
Speaking in his latest interview, with the Guardian, Fitzpatrick also recalled growing up in Ireland – including how he was ‘lambing sheep from the age of seven’.
He added: ‘I remember losing a lamb as young child. I lay on the grass, looked up to heaven and wished I’d been better.
‘When I got into Led Zeppelin, I imagined there was an actual stairway to heaven. I built a superhero in my head called Vet Man, who would save the world, and set about getting myself educated.’
He has gone on to become a specialist in small animal orthopaedics as well as receiving honorary doctorates from the University of Surrey and the University of Bath.
He also achieved a Guinness World Record in 2009, when he became the first veterinary surgeon to successfully apply an amputation prosthesis.
He carried out the surgery on a cat named Oscar who had lost both hind feet in an accident, with Fitpatrick providing a pair of bionic leg implants.
Farrell’s successes, meanwhile, include three Golden Globe Awards – one apiece for In Bruges, The Banshees Of Inisherin and The Penguin.
His other movies include playing Alexander, in which he played Alexander The Great, Marvel Comics superhero film Daredevil and The Lobster.
Noel Fitzpatrick features in long-running Channel 4 series The Supervet and has also made regular appearances on daytime TV shows
Colin Farrell was nominated for an Oscar for 2022 movie The Banshees of Inisherin
Speaking about his unsuccessful audition to be in Boyzone back in the 1990s, Farrell told Ireland’s The Late Late Show in 2019 how it involved a ‘terrible tune coming out of this mouth, murdered it’.
He added: ‘It was so bad that they asked me, “Could you do that a sec—, could you do that again?”
‘And I sang it a second time and I didn’t feel great about myself afterwards and I went home afterwards and the phone rang and my mother said Louis Walsh was on the phone for me.
‘It was at the bottom of the stairs so I took the phone and he went, “Look, eh, Colin – listen, today, eh, you know, it’s not really, it’s not going to work, you know.”‘
