Hollyweird, in collaboration with @velvetcoke, takes stock of once-known but obscure or forgotten stories about popular celebrities and cult figures.
For more than a week but less than 12 days, Britney Spears and Colin Farrell were an item. Their relationship's boiling point was low and, when it bubbled over, Farrell memorialized their relationship by sending Brit Brit a shirt that read: "I slept with Colin Farrell and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
The pair met when Spears, 22 at the time, paid a visit to the set of S.W.A.T., which Farrell was filming in early 2003. Spears shocked fans by accompanying the "Gaelic good-time guy," then 26, to his premiere for The Recruit in February of that year. Despite the public mugging to cameras on the red carpet, however, he made clear they weren't dating. "She's just a mate," Farrell insisted to Entertainment Tonight. "Seriously, we just met a week ago, [we're] having a laugh."
Following the movie's premiere, the pair ended up at The Chateau Marmont. "[A friend and I] went to the after party for the premiere," Bryan Ulrich, a collector of celebrity memorabilia who was present at the after party, told me.
"While we were in the party, we were told there was another private after-after-party going on at Colin [Farrell]'s room at the Chateau Marmont hotel. So we were like, 'We gotta go there.' We figured out where his room was because we followed some other people that were going there. We walked towards his door and there was this security guy at the door — an Irish guy — he asked for the password. We already had heard the people ahead of us; they had to sing this Irish jingle or something and my friend overheard it. We did that and we got in."
Ulrich continued, "So we're inside Colin's room and out on this huge terrace overlooking Sunset Boulevard. There were only 10 or 15 people there. We're standing on the terrace. There's Britney Spears, like five feet away from us with Colin Farrell, with their tongues down each other's throats. They were making out in front of everybody. My friend's like, 'We have to take a picture of this.' That was a really funny night of maybe pushing it too far. My friend took the picture. He sold it. He made a lot of money. All I did was get a picture with Britney."
Spears fared even worse when the relationship soured. She went on a tour of denial that anything between them happened. Spears dished to W Magazine in July 2003 about their time together. "Yes, I kissed him ... He's the cutest, hottest thing in the world — wooh! ... But it was nothing serious."
Farrell, supposedly nursing a bruised ego, decided to send her a few joke gifts around November. In addition to the "lousy" shirt, the Irish bad boy who couldn't act his way out of a phone booth also sent her a bumper sticker that read, "Honk if you've slept with Colin Farrell." Spears was reportedly "furious."
"He thought it would be a great gag to send her the gifts," a close friend of Farrell's told People. "I think Britney thought Colin was being a gentleman and had sent her some perfume. She got quite a shock when she opened his package."
So while Farrell got a balcony lipsmacker and a good laugh, all the pop princess got was a lousy T-shirt.
Photo via Getty