Cillian Murphy, a name that has defined versatility and charismatic screen presence over the last couple of decades, has also been an anomaly when it comes to Hollywood. The Cork-bred Irish actor, a recognised showbiz hermit, with a disdain for media attention, has been an actor par excellence with a quiver of critically acclaimed works to his name and an approach towards the craft which he has been silently honing over the years. It seemed kind of poetic when, Cillian talked about contacting director Christopher Nolan, his long-time collaborator, through the latter's wife’s phone, as Nolan apparently does not carry a mobile phone of his own.
Cut to the last few months, both have been the talk of tinseltown with Nolan’s long-awaited Oppenheimer, starring Murphy in the titular role, hitting the screen. On March 10, the 47-year-old actor became the first Irish man to be awarded Best Actor in Leading Role at the 96th Academy Awards. And it has been quite a journey for the man who often finds it difficult to react aptly to praise or understand emojis. “A throwback of an actor”, as Sam Schube writes, in a profile for GQ Style.
Murphy's trajectory has seen him dabble in music and theatre before making his professional debut in Enda Walsh's 1996 play Disco Pigs and in the 2001 screen adaptation of the same. A rebel when it comes to education, Murphy gravitated towards the creative arts at a very young age, with the place having an impressionable cultural influence. Murphy's tryst with the commercial mainstream came with his introduction to Christopher Nolan when the latter was casting for the first of Batman Trilogy films in 2003. Impressed with his intuitive approach, Nolan cast him as The Scarecrow in a brief role for Batman Begins, which he reprised in the following two films of the trilogy. This marked the beginning of a creative collaboration of two decades which, as many pointed out, found its peak in the billion-dollar hit Oppenheimer, which also took home the Academy Award for the Best Picture.
The performance, lauded greatly by critics, saw Murphy play the 'father of the atom bomb' J. Robert Oppenheimer, a tormented genius grappling with life-altering questions through intellectual negotiations with the creation and its impact. "Murphy is an eerily close lookalike for Oppenheimer with his trademark hat and pipe and is very good at capturing his sense of solitude and emotional imprisonment, giving us the Oppenheimer million-yard stare, eyeballs set in a gaunt skull, seeing and foreseeing things he cannot process," writes critic Peter Bradshaw in his review for The Guardian.
Cillian Murphy's filmography, buoyed by his rich theatre experience, boasts of a palette of characters that stand testimony to his range. From a lovelorn stocker in Intermission, an IRA fighter in Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley, an Irish transwoman in Breakfast on Pluto, Murphy expanded his Hollywood horizon with brief yet notable roles in Nolan's Batman Trilogy, Inception, Dunkirk, and dozens of other roles in the years to come. However, he was catapulted to global recognition with BBC's Peaky Blinders, where he breathed life into Thomas Shelby, the central character of the globally acclaimed period crime drama. Murphy as Shelby became a pop culture template with his chain-smoking, eye-slashing, rags-to-riches testosterone fuelled portrayal of the hugely popular character.
Underrated, as industry definitions go, Cillian Murphy was always recognised as an actor who would do his bit to absolute perfection in a film, however Oppenheimer was his first shot at playing the lead in the commercial mainstream. He carries the essence of his nuanced, introspective demeanour from the real to the reel with panache, craftily veering away from the stereotype. Most of the recent roles have mirrored his ruminative character. A man who has shied away from the blinding lights of showbiz glitz, and yet knows the grammar of the craft better than most, Murphy taking home the Best Actor Award this year was expected and still, exhilarating for his fans- the cult hero who was destined for something big.
Vocal about numerous issues, including abortion reforms, rights of the homeless and the MeToo movement, Murphy likes staying away from the Hollywood hustle, with his wife Yvonne McGuinness and his two children, his craft, his music, and the seaside platitude of his Wi-Fi-less South Dublin home. "It’s kind of an Irish story to move away, do your thing and come home; that seems a common narrative for Irish people," he said in an interview with an Irish publication. The scale of Oppenheimer is an actor's dream, often an intimidating one, but for Murphy, it was a challenge that his trajectory weaved for him. A more than deserved shot at glory.
As Nolan wrote on the opening page of the Oppenheimer script~"Dearest Cillian, finally a chance to see you lead..."
