Cillian Murphy on working with Christopher Nolan: 'There is space to try things, make an eejit of yourself'

• Published date: 05 June 2023
• Author: Roslyn Sulcas
• Publication title: Irish Times: Web Edition Articles (Dublin, Ireland)

"I try not to think of actors as I write, but Cillian's eyes were the only eyes I know that can project that intensity," Nolan says in a telephone interview. And there was another thing: "I knew he was one of the great actors of his generation."

In Oppenheimer, as in most Nolan films (the Batman trilogy, Dunkirk, Inception, Interstellar), the scale is substantial. The director, who has managed to combine ambitious conceptual ideas with mainstream appeal and billion-dollar revenues, is one of Hollywood's most admired and scrutinised creative figures. And although Murphy has worked regularly with Nolan for more than 20 years, he has until now played only supporting roles in his films.

Did he feel the pressure of carrying a film that arrives with Nolan-size expectations?

"Yes," Murphy says seriously during a conversation in a north London photo studio, where he just completed a shoot. The Irish-born actor, who recently turned 47, says that while playing a lead for Nolan was a dream, he took the time to prepare, "knowing you are working with one of the greatest living directors" – he pauses. "I have been doing this for 27 years," he says, adding an expletive for emphasis. "So I just threw myself in. I was terribly excited."

Over the past decade, Murphy's sapphire stare and coiled intensity have become familiar to millions of television viewers who have watched him play Tommy Shelby, the mesmerising centre of the British hit television series Peaky Blinders, even as he has maintained a thriving career onstage and in film.

Murphy, who is married to Irish artist Yvonne McGuinness, and has two teenage sons, speaks in a mellifluous accent and is extremely handsome. "He has the blessed curse of beauty," says Sally Potter, who directed him in The Party. "The camera loves to watch light fall on the structure of his face. But it doesn't interest him in the slightest."

He is also intelligent, thoughtful and clearly sincere about the artistic motivations that have driven his choices.

"For me it's always the script first and the medium second," Murphy says. "I've always believed that good work begets good work. If you're doing a play above a pub, someone may see it; it's not the scale, it's the quality."

He has long had "a huge amount of energy and focus," says playwright Enda Walsh, who met him at 18 in Cork, where Murphy grew up, the eldest of four siblings. Murphy's parents were schoolteachers, and he loved reading and music, forming a band with his brother in his...