Cillian Murphy in Los Angeles, February 2024 Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision
If you were thirsty and had enough boring, you could play A perfectly good, albeit deadly, drinking game based solely on Cillian Murphy's magazine profiles. At some level, every actor has a set of observations that journalists seem required to include, but Murphy more so than most.
Browsing through, one might drink one finger at perhaps the first mention that he absolutely disdains interviews unless they're about his work — a statement usually accompanied by a light-hearted warning that the writer «could be in for a long hour.» Take a photo whenever his striking pale eyes are complimented, and perhaps another if an aquatic and/or hypnotic metaphor is used.
Big gulps for «prefers a quiet life», «low-key» or «refuses to play the fame game»; another for being a frustrated musician; for the way he manages to look both innocent and menacing, to such great effect as Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders; and for the fact that at 47 years old he can still pass for a teenager. And finish your drink if the thought occurs to you that his career is going slowly. The sad thing is that it's all true.
But such is the cautious and limited self-image that Cillian Murphy, consciously or not, has cultivated over more than two decades as a film actor. The films speak for themselves and they are usually quite interesting. In his words: “I didn’t see myself as a person […] My job is to portray other people. The less people know about me, the better.”
Luckily, next month, all future profiles of Murphy will likely have a new epithet added to them that could kill the slow burn forever: «Bafta and Oscar winner.» The former is now sealed after his all-consuming performance as the title character in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer led him to a Best Actor win at the BAFTA Awards on Sunday; there is now a possibility that the Academy Awards will take place on March 10th.
It will be interesting to watch him. There is an entire genre of Internet memes dedicated to Murphy, who appears so aloof in show business situations that he appears to be heavily sedated. The cover of GQ's latest issue went viral for the same reasons: Despite her beauty, Murphy has an unrivaled ability to look dull and awkward when surrounded by glamour. Still, he's looking forward to the Oscars, where he'll be nominated for Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. He swears.
“You’d be an idiot not to like it,” Murphy told Lauren Laverne recently on Desert Island Discs. «I've struggled with this in the past, and you know, it's not something I've ever been completely at peace with — but I think you have to, like, choose to enjoy it, and I think you can do that in in your brain, just make that change and it will be easier.” This is, of course, made a little easier by the fact that, barring a surprise win for Paul Giamatti's work in The Holdovers, he'll probably walk away with a nice shiny souvenir.
Cillian Murphy in the film «Oppenheimer»
Much has been said about how Nolan managed to make nearly a billion dollars at the box office with what Denis Villeneuve called «a three-hour movie about people talking about nuclear physics» and what others, not inaccurately, described as «mostly men they talk in the rooms.» («Mostly» works here, given that we're also talking about a massive bomb.)
But just as satisfying is that it's helmed by Murphy, a man who seems pathologically unsuited to star in the biggest film of the year; the only commonality between the characters he's played over the past 25 years, from The Wind That Shakes the Barley to Peaky Blinders, is that they are «complicated people, a bit like Cillian Murphy and probably chain smokers»; and who deserves recognition for his talents, even if he doesn't care. Nolan calls him «the greatest actor of his generation.» This becomes hard to find fault with.
As a child, Murphy famously had no ambitions to act at all. He was the eldest of four siblings in a family of teachers. His first love was music. With school friends in Cork, he formed the acid jazz-inspired band Sons of Mr Green Genes (the name was inspired by a Frank Zappa song), which was a relative success. “I think there is such a thing,” Murphy once said, “as a productivity gene. If it's in your DNA, it has to come out. For me, it initially came through music, then moved into acting and came out. I always had to get up and perform.”
There is a great news clip in the RTE archives of a young Murphy, who played rhythm guitar and sang, being interviewed about the mid-90s band. With a much stronger Cork accent than today, he talks to a reporter about the essence of jazz with unprecedented loquacity — doing it in a way that only an extremely serious young man with questionable sideburns can. But at some point he turns to the camera and briefly looks at her with those eyes and that face. The camera doesn't so much love him as instantly marry him. As one YouTube comment says, “He should take up acting.”
And so he did, making his first appearance in Enda Walsh's play Disco Pigs and also taking part in a drama module run at school by a local theatre. Corcadorca group. That same month, August 1996, the Sons of Mr Green Genes were offered a recording contract, but they turned it down. He also met artist Yvonne McGuinness at the concert. They married eight years later, have two teenage sons and live on the seaside in suburban Dublin.
«I look back now and I'm like, oh crap, I didn't know back then how important all these things were—the kind of domino effect they would have on my life,» Murphy told GQ. He does not consider this accident a sign of greater strength. “I love chaos and randomness. I love the beauty of the unexpected.»
Christian Bale and Cillian Murphy in Batman Begins Photo: Alamy
It's funny, at least in retrospect, that all the early interviews portray Murphy as «Ireland's next Colin Farrell» — albeit «one who seems less likely to be caught arguing or drunkenly brawling at premieres.» They were right on that last point, although Murphy never actually intended to follow Farrell, who was born the same month, into action films or superhero roles. (He once auditioned for the role of Batman, but Nolan felt he would be better suited to play the Scarecrow, a sadistic professor who wears burlap to terrorize people, in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.)
Danny Boyle's 2002 zombie drama 28 Days Later saw him stagger into the mainstream and into Nolan's sights, before playing a transgender woman in Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto (2005) and an IRA fighter in Ken Loach's film The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006). He returned to his parents to film the latter; McGuinness was expecting her first child. But Murphy puts it better: “I lived at home with my parents; my wife was pregnant with our son; and we ran through the hills of west Cork, shooting at Black and Pans. Fantastic!”
Murphy claims he rarely watches his films, especially «the ones I hear aren't very good,» but that's really a short list. Early bit parts in the films Cold Mountain and Girl with a Pearl Earring introduced him to Hollywood. Nolan's Inception and Boyle's Sunshine, for the latter of which he copied and emulated Professor Brian Cox's mannerisms, were the kind of high-concept hits that paved the way for the slew of savvy sci-fi blockbusters released in the 2010s.
Cillian Murphy in the film “28 Days Later” Author: Alami
Even B-movies like 2005's Red Eye, in which Rachel McAdams stabs him in the throat with a pen, have a cult following. Less has been said about Watching the Detectives, the rom-com starring Lucy Liu; and “Time” with Justin Timberlake — so much the better. But no one saw them. Murphy certainly doesn't, if he follows his own rules. On stage, often working with Walsh, he was equally eclectic and insightful.
Although Oppenheimer is often credited as the first time Murphy played the lead in a film after years of supporting roles, Boyle noticed it more than 20 years ago. Murphy, he said, “has this thing. Apart from acting technique, there is another strange thing that makes you pin your hopes and fears on him as a leading actor.» Nolan caught his eye first. “I kept trying to come up with an excuse for him to take off his glasses for a close-up.” They really attract people: “Cillian Murphy's eyes. AIBU will be hypnotized,” asks a Mumsnet user in the legendary site’s “Am I unreasonable?” chapter. Consensus among answers: no, absolutely not.
However, it was a television role in Peaky Blinders that changed his life. Steven Knight's BBC series about a crime dynasty in interwar Birmingham, in which Murphy played Tommy Shelby, a terrifying gang leader, made him an international star. (He beat out Jason Statham for the role, as surviving legend has it, by sending Knight a message saying, «Remember, I'm an actor.») Over the course of six episodes, Peaks was the most-watched Netflix show in the world during the pandemic, and she bears responsibility for the wave of edgy haircuts, bobover boots and baker's hats from which Britain is still recovering.
Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders Photo: Robert Wiglaski/BBC
Murphy has weathered the storm of fan interest in and around the show by being himself. “I don’t really go out much,” he said when the show ended, “and people are so upset when they meet me, so I’m really happy about that. And I’m always happy to chat.” When he turned 40, he announced that after several decades wilder than we could have imagined in London, he was «ready for a little more… decency, I guess?» A little more moderation? Still enjoying being a young man, but looking over the wall to the other side, you know?
Mostly, he seems to hang out in his basement, putting together playlists for his excellent music shows on BBC 6, running at night to clear his head (he used to run competitive half-marathons and 10k runs), walking the dog and running the kids around. In Cork, he co-curates the Sounds of Safe Harbor arts festival with Walsh and others. Many of his friends are artists or musicians, but almost none are actors. His youngest son, 16-year-old Aran, followed Murphy into the business, first in a stage adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet and soon opposite Amy Adams and Jenna Ortega in Taika Waititi's Clara and The Sun.
Then «a little more moderation» works in some ways, but it also meant he took on the biggest role of his life. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the nuclear bomb, “danced morally between the raindrops. He was complex, contradictory, multifaceted; incredibly intellectually attractive and charismatic, but, Murphy told the Guardian, he was “completely unknowable.”
It took Oppenheimer years of research and preparation, weight loss, thousands more herbal cigarettes, and dedication to the project (he's in almost every frame), making it impossible to communicate with his co-stars and crew. And yet they adored him. “He’s just a wonderful, sensible person. He's so, so smart. And yet in the roles that he can play, he has such wildness,” Emily Blunt told GQ.
In leading actor circles, being called «so, so sane» is like being declared a demigod or a unicorn. Last week, Murphy was asked how he was able to relax after filming Oppenheimer. “Eh, I had a big sandwich and a pint of Guinness,” he said. So smart.
Blunt was nominated alongside Murphy in 2006 when they were both shortlisted for the Bafta Rising Star Award. The list was completed by Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw and eventual winner Eva Green. This weekend, 18 years later, he returned to Baftas — no longer a rising star, but certainly still fighting back.
Emily Blunt, Christopher Nolan and Cillian Murphy on the set of Oppenheimer Photo: AP/Melinda Sue Gordon
Around However, in the season awards, he returned to work. His plus-one at the Bafta ceremony was Max Porter, who wrote Grief is the Thing with Feathers, which Murphy starred in in a stage adaptation at the Barbican a few years ago; They are currently adapting Porter's novel Lanny for Netflix.
Meanwhile, last week Murphy premiered his next film, «Such Little Things,» an adaptation of Claire Keegan's story about Ireland's Magdalene Laundries, at the Berlin Film Festival on Thursday. Murphy, who also produced the film, plays, of course, a quiet, complex man. This newspaper's review called his performance «very special» and carried out with «hypnotic grace.»
But in three weeks, when the eyes of the world turn to the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, he may well win an even bigger prize than the Bafta, a prize that will blow up this most enigmatic of actors and the most interesting career in a completely different league.
A colleague once asked Murphy how he dealt with fame and recognition. “It’s never been a problem for me,” he replied. “I think the boat has sailed for me in terms of becoming a celebrity. And I’m quite happy with that.”
This was in 2011. Cillian is a future Bafta and Oscar winner — we have some bad news for you. The ship has just set sail.
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