Cillian Murphy is an Irish actor. He began his career performing as a rock musician. After turning down a record deal, he began his acting career in theatre, and in short and independent films in the late 1990s.
His first notable roles were in films such as 28 Days Later (2002), Cold Mountain (2003), Intermission (2003), Red Eye (2005) and Breakfast on Pluto (2005), for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy and won an Irish Film and Television Award for Best Actor. Murphy played the character of Dr. Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow in the highly successful Batman films of The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005–2012). In the mid-late 2000's, he starred in films such as The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), Sunshine (2007), The Edge of Love (2008), Inception (2010) and Peacock (2010).
In 2011, Murphy won the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Actor and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance for Misterman. He also became patron of the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre at the National University of Ireland Galway. He is closely associated with the work of Professor Pat Dolan, Director UCFRC and UNESCO Chair in Children, Youth and Civic Engagement. In the early 2010s, he appeared in the films In Time (2011), Retreat (2011) and Red Lights (2012).
Since 2013, Murphy has portrayed Thomas Shelby, the lead of the BBC gangster series Peaky Blinders, for which he has won two Irish Film and Television Awards for Best Actor – Drama, in 2017 and 2018 respectively. More recently, he has appeared in the films Transcendence (2014), In the Heart of the Sea (2015), Anthropoid (2016) and Dunkirk (2017).
Murphy pressured Pat Kiernan until he got an audition at Corcadorca Theatre Company, and in September 1996, he made his professional acting debut on the stage, playing the part of a volatile Cork teenager in Enda Walsh's Disco Pigs. Walsh recalled meeting and discovering Murphy: "There was something about him – he was incredibly enigmatic and he would walk into a room with real presence and you'd go, "My God". It had nothing to do with those bloody eyes that everyone's going on about all the time." Murphy observed, "I was unbelievably cocky and had nothing to lose, and it suited the part, I suppose." Originally intended to run for three weeks in Cork, Disco Pigs ended up touring throughout Europe, Canada and Australia for two years, and Murphy left both university and his band. Though he had intended to go back to playing music, he secured representation after his first agent caught a performance of Disco Pigs, and his acting career began to take off.
He starred in many other theatre productions, including Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (1998), The Country Boy (1999) and Juno and the Paycock (also 1999). He began appearing in independent films, On the Edge (2001), and in short films, including Filleann an Feall (2000) and Watchmen (2001). He also reprised his role for the film adaption of Disco Pigs (2001) and appeared in the BBC television mini-series adaptation of The Way We Live Now.
During this period, he moved from Cork, relocating first to Dublin for a few years, then to London in 2001.
In 2002, Murphy starred as Adam in a theatre production of Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things at the Gate Theatre in Dublin.
He was cast in the lead role in Danny Boyle's horror film 28 Days Later (2002). He portrayed pandemic survivor Jim, who is "perplexed to find himself alone in the desolate, post-apocalyptic world" after waking from a coma in a London hospital. Casting director Gail Stevens suggested that Boyle audition Murphy for the role, having been impressed with his performance in Disco Pigs. Stevens stated that it was only after seeing his slender physique during filming that they decided to feature him fully nude at the beginning of the film. She recalled that Murphy was shy on set with the tendency to look slightly away from the camera, but enthused that he had a "dreamy, slightly de-energised, floating quality that is fantastic for the film." Released in the UK in late 2002, by the following July 28 Days Later had become a sleeper hit in North America and a major success worldwide, putting Murphy in front of a mass audience for the first time. His performance earned him a nomination for Best Newcomer at the 8th Empire Awards and Breakthrough Male Performance at the 2004 MTV Movie Awards. Murphy professed that he considered the film to be much deeper than a zombie or horror film, expressing surprise at the film's success and that American audiences responded well to its content and violence.
In 2003, he played the role of Konstantine in a stage production of Chekhov's The Seagull at the Edinburgh International Festival.
He starred as a lovelorn, hapless supermarket stocker who plots a bank heist with Colin Farrell in Intermission (2003), which became the highest-grossing Irish independent film in Irish box office history (until The Wind That Shakes the Barley broke the record in 2006). Reflecting on his roles in 28 Days Later and the "sad-sack Dublin shelf-stacker" in Intermission, Sarah Lyall of the International Herald Tribune stated that Murphy brought "fluent ease to the roles he takes on, a graceful and wholly believable intensity. His delicate good looks have, as much as his acting prowess, caused people to mark him as Ireland's next Colin Farrell, albeit one who seems less likely to be caught tomcatting around or brawling drunkenly at premieres". He had a minor supporting role in the successful Hollywood period drama Cold Mountain (2003). He portrayed a deserting soldier who shares a grim scene with Jude Law's character, and was only on location in Romania for a week. Murphy stated that it was a "massive production", remarking that director Anthony Minghella was the calmest director he'd ever met. Murphy also had a role as a butcher in Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) with Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth.
In 2004, he toured Ireland with the Druid Theatre Company, in The Playboy of the Western World (playing the character of Christy Mahon) under the direction of Garry Hynes—who had previously directed Murphy back in 1999 in the theatre productions of Juno and the Paycock—and also in The Country Boy.
Murphy starred as Dr. Jonathan Crane in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005). Originally asked to audition for the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman, Murphy never saw himself as having the right physique for the superhero, but leapt at the chance to connect with director Nolan. Though the lead went to Christian Bale, Nolan was so impressed with Murphy that he gave him the supporting role of Dr. Crane, whose alter ego is supervillain Scarecrow. Nolan told Spin, "He has the most extraordinary eyes, and I kept trying to invent excuses for him to take his glasses off in close-ups."
He starred as Jackson Rippner who terrorises Rachel McAdams on an overnight flight in Wes Craven's thriller, Red Eye (2005). New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis asserted that Murphy made "a picture-perfect villain" and that his "baby blues look cold enough to freeze water and his wolfish leer suggests its own terrors." The film was favourably reviewed and earned almost $100 million worldwide.
Murphy received several awards nominations for his 2005 bad guy turns, among them a nomination as Best Villain at the 2006 MTV Movie Awards for Batman Begins. Entertainment Weekly ranked him among its 2005 "Summer MVPs", a cover story list of 10 entertainers with outstanding breakthrough performances. The New Yorker's David Denby wrote: "Cillian Murphy, who has angelic looks that can turn sinister, is one of the most elegantly seductive monsters in recent movies."
Murphy starred as Patrick/"Kitten" Braden, a transgender Irish woman in search of her mother, in Neil Jordan's comedy-drama Breakfast on Pluto (2005), based on the novel of the same title by Patrick McCabe. Seen against the film's kaleidoscopic backdrop of 1970s glitter rock fashion, magic shows, red-light districts and IRA violence, Murphy transforms from androgynous teen to high drag blond bombshell. He had auditioned for the role in 2001, and though Jordan liked him for the part, the director of The Crying Game was hesitant to revisit transgender and IRA issues. The actor lobbied Jordan for several years in a bid to get the film made before Murphy became too old to play the part; in 2004, he prepared for the role by meeting a transvestite who dressed him and took him clubbing with other transvestites. The role required "serious primping" with eyebrow plucking and chest and leg hair removal, and Roger Ebert noted the way that Murphy played the character with a "bemused and hopeful voice". While even lukewarm reviews of Breakfast on Pluto still tended to praise Murphy's performance highly, a few critics dissented: The Village Voice, which panned the film, found him "unconvincing" and overly cute. Murphy was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for Breakfast on Pluto and won the fourth Irish Film and Television Academy Best Actor Award. Premiere cited his performance as Kitten in their "The 24 Finest Performances of 2005" feature.
Murphy starred in The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), a film about the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War, which won the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and became the most successful Irish independent film at the Irish box office. Murphy was especially keen on appearing in the film due to his intimate connections to Cork, Ireland, where the film was shot. Murphy had to audition six times for the role of Damien O'Donovan, a young doctor turned revolutionary, before winning the part. Murphy considered it a very special privilege to have been given the role and stated that he was "tremendously proud" of the film, remarking that the "memories run very, very deep – the politics, the divisions and everybody has stories of family members who were caught up in the struggle." Critic Denby noted Murphy's moments of deep stillness and idiosyncrasies in portraying the character. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that "Murphy is especially good at playing the zealotry as well as the soul-searching and the regret, at showing us a man who is eaten up alive because he's forced to act in ways that are contrary to his background and his training." GQ UK presented Murphy with its 2006 Actor of the Year award for his work in The Wind That Shakes the Barley.
Murphy returned to the stage opposite Neve Campbell at the New Ambassadors Theatre in London's West End from November 2006 to February 2007, playing the lead role of John Kolvenbach's play Love Song. Theatre Record described his character of Beane as a "winsomely cranky" mentally unstable "sentimentalised lonely hero", noting how he magnetically, with "all blue eyes and twitching hands", moves "comically from painfully shy "wallpaper" to garrulous, amorous male." Variety considered his performance to be "as magnetic onstage as onscreen", remarking that his "unhurried puzzlement pulls the slight preciousness in the character's idiot-savant naivete back from the brink".
He starred in the science fiction film 05–2012). In the mid-late 2000's, he starred in films such as The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), Sunshine (2007) as a physicist-astronaut charged with re-igniting the sun, which teamed him up again with director Danny Boyle. He starred opposite Lucy Liu in Paul Soter's romantic comedy Watching the Detectives (2007); the indie film premiered at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival and was then released straight to DVD. Murphy had starred as Richard Neville, editor of the psychedelic radical underground magazine Oz in the film Hippie Hippie Shake, which was shot in 2007, but the project, much delayed, was eventually shelved in 2011.
Murphy made a brief re-appearance as the Scarecrow in Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008), the sequel to Batman Begins, before starring in The Edge of Love—about a love quadrangle involving the poet Dylan Thomas—with Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller and Matthew Rhys. Murphy also made a debut appearance in another medium—on a postage stamp: in July 2008, the Irish Post Office, An Post, released a series of four stamps paying homage to the creativity of films recently produced in Ireland, including one featuring Murphy in a still from The Wind That Shakes the Barley. In 2009, Murphy starred opposite rock singer Feist and actor David Fox in The Water, directed by Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene. The 15-minute Canadian short film, released online in April 2009, is nearly silent until the Feist song of the same title plays close to the end. Murphy was attracted to the role as a fan of Broken Social Scene and the prospect of making a silent movie, which he considered to be the "hardest test for any actor". Murphy also starred in Perrier's Bounty, a crime dramedy from the makers of Intermission, in which he portrayed a petty criminal on the run from a gangster played by Brendan Gleeson.
In 2010, he also made a return to theatre in From Galway to Broadway and back again, which was a stage show that celebrated the Druid Theatre Company's 35th birthday.
The direct-to-video psychological thriller Peacock (2010), co-starring Ellen Page, Susan Sarandon and Bill Pullman, starred Murphy as a man with a split personality who fools people into believing he is also his own wife. Christian Toto of The Washington Times referred to the film as "a handsomely mounted psychological drama with an arresting lead turn by Cillian Murphy", and noted that although Murphy wasn't a stranger to playing in drag, his work in the film set a "new standard for gender-bending performances".
Murphy next starred in Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), playing entrepreneur Robert Fischer, whose mind is infiltrated by DiCaprio's character Cobb to convince him to dissolve his business. That year, Murphy also made an uncredited cameo appearance as programmer Edward Dillinger Jr., son of original Tron antagonist Ed Dillinger (David Warner) in Tron: Legacy.
In 2011, Murphy performed in the stage monodrama Misterman, written and directed by Enda Walsh, whom Murphy previously worked with on Disco Pigs. The production was initially put on in Galway and was then taken to St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York City. Murphy commented of the role, "The live nature of it makes it so dangerous. You're only there because of the good will of the audience, and that's compounded by its being a one-man show". His performance earned critical acclaim, garnering Irish Times Theatre Award and a Drama Desk Award. Sarak Lyall of the International Herald Tribune described Murphy's character Thomas Magill to be a "complicated mixture of sympathetic and not nice at all – deeply wounded, but with a dangerous, skewed moral code", praising his ability to mimic wickedly. Lyall noted Murphy's "unusual ability to create and inhabit creepy yet fascinating characters from the big screen to the small stage in the intense one-man show Misterman", and documented that on one evening the "theater was flooded, not with applause but with silence", eventually culminating in a standing ovation at his powerful performance. He played the lead in the British horror film Retreat (2011), which had a limited release. He also appeared in the science fiction film In Time (2011), starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, which was poorly reviewed.
Murphy starred in Red Lights (2012) with Robert De Niro and Sigourney Weaver. He played Tom Buckley, the assistant to Weaver's character who is a paranormal investigator. Murphy considered working with De Niro to have been one of the most intimidating moments in his career. He remarked: "My first scene when I come to visit him my character is supposed to be terrified and intimidated. There was no acting involved. The man has presence. You can't act presence. I'll never have that. Watching him use it...when you put a camera on it, it just becomes something else." The film was panned by critics and did not make its budget back at the box office. Murphy then went on to reprise his role as the Scarecrow for the third time in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and had a supporting role as Mike, the favourite teacher of the main character Skunk, in the British independent film Broken (2012). His performance earned him a British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination.
Since 2013, Murphy has played the lead role in the BBC television series Peaky Blinders, a series about a criminal gang in post-First World War Birmingham. He explained his enthusiasm for the show in an interview with The Independent: "[the scripts] were so compelling and confident, and the character was so rich and complex, layered and contradictory. I was like, 'I have to do this.'" Peaky Blinders was critically praised and a ratings success. A second series began broadcasting on the BBC in October 2014. Also in 2013, Murphy made his directorial debut with a music video for the band Money's single Hold Me Forever. The video features dancers from the English National Ballet and was filmed at The Old Vic Theatre in London.
In 2014, he co-starred in the film Aloft, with Jennifer Connelly, and Wally Pfister's Transcendence, which also starred Johnny Depp and Rebecca Hall. Murphy also reunited with Enda Walsh for the play Ballyturk in 2014. He starred in Ron Howard's 2015 film, In the Heart of the Sea, which also features Benjamin Walker and Chris Hemsworth. Cillian contributed spoken vocals to the tracks "8:58" and "The Clock" from Paul Hartnoll's album 8:58 (2015). The two previously met whilst Hartnoll was scoring the second season of Peaky Blinders. Murphy portrayed Czechoslovak World War II army soldier Jozef Gabčík, who was involved in Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Anthropoid (2016).
Murphy played a shell-shocked army officer who is recovered from a wrecked ship in Christopher Nolan's war film, Dunkirk (2017). Murphy felt his character, who is nameless and was credited simply as "Shivering Soldier", was "representative of something experienced by thousands of soldiers, which is the profound emotional and psychological toll that war can have".
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