08/17/2001 - Updated 03:20 PM ET

By Kelly Carter, USA TODAY

LOS ANGELES — He has been pictured shirtless on the cover of Interview and profiled in GQ, Vanity Fair, People, In Style, Premiere, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, Entertainment Weekly, Time and Liz Smith's column. Bunch of blarney. Colin Farrell says he's a nobody. "It's not like anybody knows who the (expletive) I am or even cares," he says. That could change beginning today, as moviegoers in the USA take their first real gander at the Irishman with the dazzling smile, smoldering chestnut eyes, bushy eyebrows (à la George Clooney) and lean physique in the Western action-comedy American Outlaws.

Farrell, 25, stars as gunslinger Jesse James in a film that should easily take in more in one day than the $140,000 (yes, $140,000) Farrell's previous film, last year's Tigerland, grossed overall.

Wearing dingy blue jeans, beat-up black hiking boots and a tightfitting navy-blue sweater, Farrell puffs on one of the 40 Camel Lights he'll inhale this day. His cigarettes and ale are as much a part of him as his thick accent and profanity-laced sentences.

"He's a rogue," says Outlaws director Les Mayfield. "That's what Hollywood is missing. What happened to the rogue? He's back. ... I think he has the Russell Crowe charisma and appeal."

But can the newlywed — on July 17 Farrell married British actress Amelia Warner, 19, whom he met last November — have Crowe's career?

The 5-foot-10 actor dropped out of high school in Dublin, unsure of what he wanted to do, but is now on the fast track to stardom. Call it the luck of the Irish, as he has turned major stars' decisions into his good fortune.

He took Matt Damon's place in Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, which stars Tom Cruise; worked with Forest Whitaker in Joel Schumacher's Phone Booth after Jim Carrey backed out; and replaced Ed Norton in Hart's War, which stars Bruce Willis. He recently committed to star in The Farm with Al Pacino.

"(My world) hasn't changed as much as you might think because none of the stuff that I've done really has had a release yet," says Farrell, who, according to Daily Variety, has seen his paycheck go from scale for Schumacher's Tigerland to $2.5 million for Hart's War to $5 million for The Farm.

"The only thing is, I haven't been at home as much as I would have liked to in the last year and a half," he says.

His role in Tigerland took him away from his Dublin residence, but it also put him on the map. The movie opened on just five screens, but Farrell's turn as a rebellious Texas draftee earned him good reviews and a best-actor award from the Boston Society of Film Critics.

His hunk quotient also was duly noted in various media outlets. Since then, he's worked non-stop.

Playing American outlaw Jesse James was a lark, says Farrell.

"It was like being a child in a sweet shop," says Farrell, whose castmates include Scott Caan, Timothy Dalton and Kathy Bates. "We were spoiled. We were in Austin (Texas) for three months and going to see live music and drinking beer and having nice steaks and going to work and fighting each other and riding horses and shooting. It was great fun."

He's looking forward to going home for Christmas, when he'll play an Irish character in an Irish movie and not have to adopt an American accent. The youngest of four children, Farrell lives just 5 miles from his parents, whom he sees daily when he's home.

"I think they miss me like I miss them," he says. "I'm never around anymore. For 22 years I was always there."