PEAKY BLINDERS BOSS CILLIAN IS BUILDING MUCH BIGGER BOMB...
PEAKY Blinders star Cillian Murphy has gone through an amazing physical transformation to play Dr J. Robert Oppenheimer, the ‘father of the atomic bomb’, in a €96million blockbuster.
Murphy, 45, lost at least a stone to portray the tortured genius, who was a distinctively stooped and lanky figure, seldom seen without a cigarette.
This exclusive picture shows him outside Fuller Lodge in the Los Alamos research facility in New Mexico, where the Christopher Nolan film, called Oppenheimer, has received permission to shoot, and where the atomic bomb was first built.
Matt Damon plays General Leslie R Groves, the commanding general of the Manhattan Project which built, designed and tested the world’s first atomic weapons.
In the picture, the men are recreating the 1945 presentation of the ArmyNavy ‘E’ Award (the E stands for excellence in production of war equipment) to the physicist, who was stepping down as the facility’s director.
The Cork-born actor leads an all-star cast, with celebrated actresses Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh playing his wife and mistress, respectively.
Oscar-winner Gary Oldman has a small role, said to be as President Truman.
Truman met Oppenheimer after the bombs were used in 1945, killing 200,000 people, and the latter said that he felt he had blood on his hands.
Truman had little use for such pangs of conscience and dismissed him as a ‘crybaby scientist’.
Belfast native Kenneth Branagh is also in the film – rumour has it he plays FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover, who was suspicious of Oppie and his ‘communist sympathies’. Nolan’s previous films include Batman Begins, Memento, The Prestige, Interstellar, Inception, Tenet and Dunkirk.
Stooped and lanky figure