QUOTE:

Colin Farrell has revealed he specially designed his own communist tattoos for his character in new film The Way Back.

The Irish actor, has some real tattoos of his own, but said he felt the tattoos his character Valka had in Peter Weir's new film about soldiers who escaped from a Siberian gulag in 1940 were much more meaningful.

Colin said: 

"There's an incredible significance to every single drop of ink that appears on these men's bodies, much more so than the couple of drunk markings that I have of various nights in the last 15 years on my body".

"But each single tattoo referenced either a crime committed, an amount of time done, a particular status one held within the criminal infrastructure so it was fun".

"Again it was something that was very foreign to me, it was very exotic, as was the accent and language so it was just another conduit into Valka".

"Peter gave me a couple of books that had a lot of the tattoos that were used, some photographs, some drawings, reams, hundreds, 800 tattoos, 1,000 tattoos and I went through them and kind of just designed Valka's torso."

Colin stars alongside Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris and Saoirse Ronan in The Way Back, in cinemas now.