Interview with Cillian Murphy
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Cillian Murphy
Irish actor from Cork who started on stage in Disco Pigs. Known for 28 Days Later, Batman Begins, Peaky Blinders and Oppenheimer.
Source: SAG-AFTRA Foundation on YouTube
These answers are taken from Cillian Murphy Career Retrospective | SAG-AFTRA Foundation Conversations on SAG-AFTRA Foundation's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What was your very first experience with acting?
We had this thing in Ireland where between the exam cycles there's what we call a transition year, where you kind of just don't do much work and you get to try out different things. So there was a drama module, when I was about 16 or 17, and the head of a Cork theater company came in and did the workshop with us. I just had a huge man crush on him. He was so cool. We just messed around and improvised, and I did little sketches with my buddies.
Then I would see him around in the pubs in Cork, and I eventually went to see a play that they put on, which was a production of A Clockwork Orange in Cork City. It was in this very famous nightclub, a promenade version, and it was unbelievably dangerous and kind of sexy and wild. It was my first time seeing theater, so I kind of bypassed all the traditional theater and saw this really experimental, wild piece. And then I just began to pester him for an audition, and eventually he gave me an audition for a play.
What attracted you to begin a career as an actor?
That's really what I wanted to do since I was very little. I was playing music and listening to music and writing music and playing with my brother and my friends, and that's all I really thought about doing. I had never even been to the theater. When I was 20, the band got offered a record deal, and we didn't take the record deal because my brother was still in school. So it all kind of fell apart.
When I was doing theater, it felt a little bit like playing live music, because it was that electricity you feel with an audience. That's what I wanted in playing music, but it didn't work out, so I felt it was a stand-in for playing live music.
It felt very at home. I felt very natural, and I loved being someone else.
What do you enjoy most about acting?
I think it's just the freshness of it. It's the danger of it, it's the fragility of it, and it's the audience connection. And again, it's pushing yourself and testing yourself, getting up and doing it every single night at 8:00. I've always had less nerves on stage than I have with film, because when you're on stage and you have a bad night or it doesn't work out, you get up and do it again tomorrow and you fix it, and you get better and better. On film, it's committed to celluloid. You have more ownership of a character when you're on stage, and in a one-man show you have complete ownership.
And I loved the rehearsal process. I loved sitting in a room just dismantling a character and putting it back together and trying to figure out everything about all the other actors, and then getting it up on its feet in the gradual process of making a piece. It felt very creative.
What was a great moment for you as an actor?
It came out of the blue. I didn't know that he was writing the part. I didn't know that he was writing the script. So I got the call, and your first reaction naturally is sort of shock, and then the second one is joy and euphoria, and then I really quickly switched into: I need to start working now. Within a couple of hours I was like, right, I need to start working, because I knew it was a huge thing and a massive responsibility.
He came to Dublin with the script. He always brings the script printed on red paper. This has always happened over the 20 years of me working with him. He gives it to you, then he leaves the room, and you read the script. I said yes before I'd ever read the script, by the way. It was written in the first person, which I'd never encountered before. It was a long read, three hours to read the thing, and it was vast and dense. Every single thing in the movie is scripted. That was a big day, to read it.
How did your acting career unfold?
In film and telly it was really gradual: a little part here and there, a slightly bigger part here. There was nothing immediate, and I think I would have found that quite terrifying if I was landed a huge role in a huge movie at 22. I don't think I could have survived that. I'm not made that way. I needed to pay my apprenticeship.
I had great support from a casting director in Ireland called Maureen Hughes. She had seen [the play] on stage, but she knew I wasn't very confident in the room. She would bring me in the room and was really kind, and people began to believe in the work as I went along.
[28 Days Later] was a long audition process, six auditions. I desperately wanted to do that. Then Chris Nolan saw that movie, and all of a sudden I had a meeting with Chris. That was the beginning of the relationship with Chris.
What advice do you have for new actors?
On-the-job training, and theater. I'm a huge advocate of theater. I think it's the best way you can possibly learn. It's the most terrifying thing to do, in an exhilarating way: to go up in front of a live audience and bring the character to life and do it repeatedly, over and over, two shows a day.
The other thing I would say is, if you can, just make stuff. Make films, make short films, get your friends together and do all of that. I didn't have the technology to do that when I was younger, but now you can do it on your phone.
And persevere. Write letters. People love a letter nowadays. Actually write a letter with a pen to somebody, to say how much you love their work and would love to work with them. I used to do it all the time.
Believe your instincts. Instinct over intellect, always. Just because you can rationalize it doesn't mean it's right. If you feel it, then it's right.
Who is your favorite actor, and why?
My first ever film partner was Brendan Gleeson. I've worked with Brendan five or six times now. He's one of my all-time heroes, and the kindest, sweetest man, and just an absolute legend.
I remember on that first film I was playing Pat the barman, and I had to pour him a pint of Guinness, and my hand was shaking. But he was so kind. I was just a kid, and he would spend the time and talk to you. I think that shows the measure of the man.
Describe your acting style.
I've always found that I need it to be really immersive. I don't treat it like going to the office nine to five. It's probably not a very healthy life-work balance for me, both plays and film. I tend to cancel everything and just focus on the work, and it becomes all-consuming. I've gotten a bit better at it over the years, but I've found it necessary to go that kind of distance.
I'm always against anything being prescriptive or dogmatic. I think it needs to be up to the audience to decide. I don't ever try to prejudge a character or prejudge how they're going to behave. You should pose the question rather than answer it. The acting that I love and the acting that I aspire to is the one where you withhold more than you reveal. Rather than add to it, withhold from it, and that leaves the audience more to put into it.
Tell me about a time where you had difficulty with a character. What was the role and why was it challenging?
I'd say to date it's probably been Oppenheimer. That was the most challenging or demanding, certainly the most scary, but also probably the most rewarding.
It was all challenging. That hearing, I loved that whole sequence, because it felt like we were a company of actors in this tiny little room. We shot that at the end of the movie over two weeks, and it was incredibly intense. You had all these stunning actors come in and do their piece, and most of those actors would come in and do their last bit and then leave, so it was quite emotional. That was a big challenge, because it was a lot of text and a lot of dialogue, but I relished it.
We shot the film in 57 days, so that's why the prep was so important. But you can also get lost in prep. I personally don't think you should ever be fully prepped when you get to a set. The unknown has to be there. I was fully ready, but you're never finished.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your resume.
I was actually hitchhiking in France when I got sent the script [for my first audition]. I was in a campsite, and they sent the script to my tent. They sent it to the campsite, and the guy was like, oh, it's those two Irish losers. I didn't know quite how to prepare it, so I just read it, and then I came back and did the audition.
I had always loved stories as a kid. There were an awful lot of books in our house, so I loved story, and I had an instinct that this was a good story. He was a very damaged kid, but it was all set in Cork, where I'm from, and written in this kind of made-up language, so it was kind of familiar to me and it felt natural. It was kind of musical.
What are some of your professional goals for the future?
Most actor careers are so haphazard and not by design. Anyone who says you have a career plan is lying. You're just trying to figure it out day by day, and you never know what the universe is going to throw at you or what the industry is going to spit out next. So you just try and find the good work in that. I have no dream role. The dream is to just keep working and challenging yourself.
I'd maybe like to do a play at some point. As a writer, no. As a director, no. Directors think on a different level that I just don't understand. It's a vocation. I'm lucky enough to have worked with such directors that I never want to try it.
Cillian Murphy's Full Biography
Irish actor Cillian Murphy was born in Douglas, Co Cork, the oldest child of Brendan Murphy, who works for the Irish Department of Education, and a mother who is a teacher of French. He has three younger siblings. Murphy was educated at Presentation Brothers College, Cork. He went on to study law at University College Cork, but dropped out after about a year. During this time, Murphy also pursued an interest in music, playing guitar in various bands. Upon leaving University, Murphy joined the Corcadorca Theater Company in Cork, and played the lead role in "Disco Pigs", among other plays.
Various film roles followed, including a film adaptation of Disco Pigs (2001). However, his big film break came when he was cast in Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later (2002), which became a surprise international hit. This performance earned him nominations for Best Newcomer at the Empire Awards and Breakthrough Male Performance at the MTV Movie Awards.
Murphy went on to supporting roles in high-profile films such as Cold Mountain (2003) and Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003), and then was cast in two villain roles: Dr. Jonathan Crane, aka The Scarecrow, in Batman Begins (2005) and Jackson Rippner in Red Eye (2005). Although slight in nature for a villain, Murphy's piercing blue eyes helped to create creepy performances and critics began to take notice. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times cited Murphy as a "picture-perfect villain", while David Denby of The New Yorker noted he was both "seductive" and "sinister".
Later that year, Murphy starred as Patrick "Kitten" Braden, an Irish transgender woman in search of her mother in Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto (2005), a film adaptation of the Pat McCabe novel. Although the film was not a box office success, Murphy was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical and he won Best Actor for the Irish Film and Television Academy Awards.
The following year, Murphy starred in Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006). The film was the most successful independent Irish film and won the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Murphy continued to take roles in a number of independent films, and also reprised his role as the Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008). Nolan is known for working with actors in multiple films, and cast Murphy in Inception (2010) as Robert Fischer, the young heir of the multi-billion dollar empire, who was the target of DiCaprio's dream team. His most well-known work is starring as Thomas Shelby in the British TV show Peaky Blinders (2013) beginning in 2013.
Murphy continues to appear in high-profile films such as In Time (2011), Red Lights (2012), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), the final film in Nolan's Batman trilogy.
Murphy is married to Yvonne McGuinness, an artist. The couple have two sons, Malachy and Aran.