Thug-About-Town

Thanks to Peaky Blinders, Cillian Murphy has become one of TV’s most charismatic brutes. (The haircut also helped.)

with his deep-set eyes and slight build, Irish actor Cillian Murphy is a chameleon who would’ve been a natural second lead in Old Hollywood, perhaps playing the police informant who gets whacked at the end of Act Two or the suitor who doesn’t get the girl. But his alertness, intelligence, and endless capacity for surprise have helped him defy potential typecasting. He’s played a dazzling array of parts, including roles in 28 Days Later,

Breakfast on Pluto, Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy (as Scarecrow), and Dunkirk (as an anonymous infantryman billed only as “Shivering Soldier”). He’s equally convincing as a subtle, introverted lead (particularly in Ken Loach’s IRA drama The Wind That Shakes the Barley) and a lit-fuse villain who can turbocharge modest B-pictures like Wes Craven’s Red Eye. But he became an international star on Steven Knight’s hit series Peaky Blinders, playing the volatile Tommy Shelby, the leader of a gang that terrorizes Birmingham, England, between the World Wars. Season five launched on BBC One on August 25 and comes to Netflix in the U.S. on October 4.

What about this show convinced you to make an open-ended commitment that has continued for five seasons?

Mainly the fact that it was a family saga that takes place between the wars in Britain, which is a period that isn’t that glamorous in the history books. There’s obviously been a lot done about those two conflicts, but the period in between, not as much. Steve Knight was the one who recognized that it might be worth investigating. And at the center of the story were these men who were damaged by the First World War but survived it and were kind of stuck back into society, and then the question becomes, “Can they integrate?”

How does Tommy’s war experience inform his approach to being a gangster?

It’s alluded to in the first series that, prior to going to war, he was a very outgoing character. He laughed a lot. He wanted to work with horses. He was interested in the Communist Party. But that was all destroyed by the First World War. It destroyed his sense of optimism. It destroyed his faith. It destroyed his belief in authority. It destroyed everything, really, and he just became consumed by ambition, and that was fed by the fact that he’d survived the war, which meant he didn’t fear death.

How do you physically play Tommy?

I’m not the most imposing of individuals in my own life, so I go to the gym and lift things and put them down again. I dropped the level of Tommy’s voice. Then there’s the cigarettes, of course. I remember seeing The Long Goodbye with Elliott Gould, and he just constantly has his cigarettes, and even though he’s got this façade of cool, you clearly see that the cigarette is indicating some deeper level of stress. And the hair, of course, played a part in all this.

We should talk about Tommy’s haircut. You get it done for the show, and you’re stuck with it for three months. It must be hard to be incognito with a cut like that.

Yeah, but it’s fine. I don’t generally do wigs. I think they look phony. If I see that a character has to wear a wig, I generally won’t do the part. I’ve gotten more tolerant of the haircut over the years. And bizarrely, it’s become a desirable cut amongst the fashionistas, which is staggering to me. It’s one more sign of how the show has infiltrated the mainstream culture.

Does it bother you when people root for Tommy, considering how brutal he is?

I think we’ve been very careful in the show to demonstrate that violence has consequences for the people who commit it and endure it. Violence should make you flinch and look away.

When Peaky Blinders fans approach you, what do they talk about?

Tommy’s love life, for starters.

Do they not distinguish between you and your character?

Remember, the first series aired in 2013, which means there are fans out there who grew up watching it. When you spend 30 hours watching somebody, they’re gonna start to feel like somebody you actually know, and you’re gonna start to think you have some insight into their life.