Cillian Murphy: Ireland’s self-effacing ‘analogue’ award magnet
Self-effacing Irish actor Cillian Murphy is having to get used to red carpet glitz and acceptance speeches. The 47-year-old Cork native won his first Oscar on Monday – on his first nomination – for his leading role in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer”, capping a glittering awards season that saw him snare a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and other prizes.
He bested a stacked field that included four American rivals – Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”), Jeffrey Wright (“American Fiction”), Bradley Cooper (“Maestro”) and Colman Domingo (“Rustin”).
“We made a film about the man who created the atomic bomb. And for better or for worse, we’re all living in Oppenheimer’s world,” Murphy said as he received an ovation from the audience at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. “So I would really like to dedicate this to the peacemakers, everywhere.”
Murphy's portrayal of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the US physicist who masterminded the atomic bomb, has been widely lauded, and is the culmination of years of fruitful collaboration with Nolan, which has included six films together.
“I knew the character was so much in his head and that the performance was so much interior, how you could transmit thought process through the face, the eyes,” Murphy told the BBC.
After all the accolades for “Oppenheimer”, the Irishman’s thin face, trademark sculpted cheekbones and piercing blue eyes are likely to become even more globally recognizable.
The veteran performer’s film career has already included standout roles in acclaimed epics like Nolan’s “Dunkirk” and Ken Loach’s Irish historical drama “The Wind That Shakes the Barley.”
But for many fans, he is Birmingham gangland boss Tommy Shelby, from the wildly popular television drama “Peaky Blinders.”
Murphy has not shied away from conflicted roles, playing the villainous Scarecrow in Nolan’s “Batman” trilogy and a transgender woman in the 1970s-set “Breakfast on Pluto.”
“I’ve always been interested in the melancholic, or the ambiguous, or the more transgressive – that, to me, is drama, getting into those knotty places. I find it really stimulating,” he told Esquire magazine for a 2022 profile.
- ‘Analogue’ -
Despite his burgeoning fame, Murphy is often described as humble – a profile helped by an aversion to technology and social media that translates into maintaining an internet and telephonefree home.
“He’s the most analogue individual you could possibly encounter,” said “Oppenheimer” producer Emma Thomas, who is Nolan’s wife.
Murphy is also known for trying to avoid excessive media attention. “If you behave like a celebrity, then people will treat you like a celebrity, and if you don’t, they won’t,” the actor told the Irish Times. “There’s not much to write about me in the tabloids.”
Born to language teacher parents in Cork, Murphy played guitar as a teenager and formed an avant-garde rock band with school pals called “Son of Mr. Green Genes” after a Frank Zappa track. “Music was what I wanted to do, and for a while, it looked like it would work out,” Murphy told the BBC.
However, bowing to parental pressure, the band members turned down a record company deal. With the door closed on one passion, another door opened in 1996 when, aged 20, he quit a law degree and set out on an acting career.
“I’d probably have been wealthier if I had stayed with law, but pretty miserable doing it,” he confided in one interview.
- Cork school ‘super proud’ -
There was a whiff of Hollywood glamour in the air yesterday at St. Anthony’s, a primary school in the Irish city of Cork that counts Murphy as a past pupil. Staff, parents, and children at his former school were basking in his success.
“When we woke up this morning there was such a buzz of excitement,” Sean Lyons, principal of the all-boys Catholic school, told AFP.
Murphy was a pupil at St. Anthony’s, in the tidy Cork neighbourhood of Ballinlough, between 1982 and 1988.
“We thought can this be real, that this man from Ballinlough in Cork actually won the Oscar, a global award!” said the beaming bespectacled teacher. “He has set the seed now for many students not just here in Ballinlough and St Anthony’s but all around Ireland that they can achieve on the global stage.”
A “Congratulations” banner referred to the actor’s recent Golden Globe and BAFTA awards and wished him luck for the Oscars. “That will have to be updated now,” smiled Mary Harrington, a 68-year-old grandmother picking up her grandchild at the school gate. “I got up early this morning to make sure he’d won – I don’t know why I did that as I knew he was going to win.”
“My brother was in secondary school with Cillian and here as well, and he remembers all the gigs that he played with his music,” said Valerie Ni Cochlain, who was waiting for her child to come out from her school. “Well done to Cillian and his family, it’s great news for Cork and Ireland.”
“Cork is a small close-knit community, a small city, we’re proud of everybody who achieves success and goes on to achieve great things,” said Elaine Murphy, who is no relation.
“We are super proud and so are the children, it’s a great boost for everybody to be proud of a local,” she said alongside her two smiling children, seven-year-old Liam Eanna, and Holly, aged six.
- Homework-free day -
Displayed inside the school in a questionnaire filled out in 2015, Cillian Murphy advised current students on how to break into acting and film. “Join a theatre group, start making films on our phone with your friends, edit them on your computer and put them on YouTube,” wrote the actor, who now lives in Dublin after returning to Ireland from a decade in London. According to the questionnaire his biggest challenge was “trying to understand the Cork accent” after moving to Cork as a child from Dublin, some 160 miles southwest of the Irish capital. “One regret I have is that I didn’t put money on him getting an Oscar back then,” said Eddie Hogan O’Connell, a staff member who was a classmate of Murphy’s. “I’d say the odds would have been great, whereas now he is up there with the best in the world and congratulations to him.” For the children at the school, Murphy’s win was reason for a surprise from the teachers: no homework. “The kids are especially happy that the teachers let them off,” said Phil Howard, a grandmother collecting her grandson, Colm. “Cillian would be happy if he heard that I’m sure.” - ‘Chameleon’ Murphy had dipped his toe into acting at both school and university in Cork, where an English teacher and early mentor William Wall described him as a “chameleon of an actor.”
In 1996, after pestering a local director, Murphy landed a lead part in the frenetic “Disco Pigs”, a play written by fellow Corkonian Enda Walsh. The stage show was a critical success, going on an 18-month world tour, and Murphy never looked back.
His big cinema break came in 2002 when Scottish director Danny Boyle gave him the lead in post-apocalyptic London horror flick “28 Days Later.” Then in 2005, Nolan cast Murphy in “Batman Begins”, the first chapter of the “Dark Knight” trilogy starring Christian Bale as the Caped Crusader.
Regular film appearances followed, but it was his work on “Peaky Blinders” from 2013 to 2022 – set largely in the period between the two world wars – that earned him a fawning fan base.
Married to Irish artist Yvonne McGuinness for the past 20 years, the couple and their two sons moved back to Ireland in 2014 after more than a decade in London to reconnect with their homeland.
His latest film “Small Things Like These” about the country’s mother and baby homes scandal – which he produced as well as stars in – opened last month at the Berlin film festival to stellar reviews.
Murphy still finds time to host the occasional late night BBC radio show, serving up an eclectic mix of his favorite tunes alongside commentary in a soothing Cork accent.