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Cillian Murphy
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Cillian Murphy (born 25 May 1976) is an Irish film and theatre actor. He is often noted by critics for his chameleonic performances in diverse roles
and distinctive blue eyes.
A native of Cork, Murphy began his performing career as a rock musician. After turning down a record deal, he made his professional acting debut in the play Disco Pigs in 1996. He went on to star in Irish and UK film and stage productions throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, first coming to international attention in 2003 as the hero in the post-apocalyptic film 28 Days Later.
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Encyclopedia
Cillian Murphy (born 25 May 1976) is an Irish film and theatre actor. He is often noted by critics for his chameleonic performances in diverse roles
and distinctive blue eyes.
A native of Cork, Murphy began his performing career as a rock musician. After turning down a record deal, he made his professional acting debut in the play Disco Pigs in 1996. He went on to star in Irish and UK film and stage productions throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, first coming to international attention in 2003 as the hero in the post-apocalyptic film 28 Days Later. Murphy's best-known roles are as villains in two 2005 blockbusters: the Scarecrow in the superhero film Batman Begins, and Jackson Rippner in the thriller Red Eye. Next came two contrasting, widely acclaimed starring roles: his Golden Globe Award-nominated performance as transgender outcast "Kitten" in 2005's Breakfast on Pluto and a turn as a 1920s Irish revolutionary in the 2006 Palme d'Or winner, The Wind That Shakes the Barley. In 2008, Murphy starred in the romantic drama The Edge of Love and made a cameo as Scarecrow in the Batman sequel, The Dark Knight.
A resident of London since 2001, Murphy often works in or near London and has expressed no desire to move to Hollywood. Uncomfortable on the celebrity circuit, he customarily gives interviews about his work, but does not appear on television talk shows or discuss details of his private life with the press.
Early life and music
Born in Douglas and raised in Ballintemple, two suburbs of Cork, Cillian Murphy is the eldest of four children. His father, Brendan, works for the Irish Department of Education and his mother is a French teacher. Not only are his parents educators, but his aunts and uncles are also teachers, as was his grandfather. Musicianship also runs in the family, and Murphy started playing music and writing songs at age ten.
Murphy attended the Catholic school Presentation Brothers College, where he did well academically, although he did get into trouble often, sometimes getting suspended, until deciding in his fourth year that misbehaving was not worth the hassle. Not keen on sport, a major part of life at PBC, Murphy found that creative pursuits were not fully nurtured at the school. Still, it was there that he got his first taste of performing, when he participated in a drama module presented by Pat Kiernan, the director of the Corcadorca Theatre Company. Murphy later described the experience as a "huge high" and a "fully alive" feeling that he set out to chase. His English teacher, the poet and novelist William Wall, encouraged him to pursue acting, but at this stage, to Murphy, performing meant dreams of becoming a rock star.
In his late teens and early twenties, Murphy worked toward a career as a rock musician, playing guitar in several bands alongside his brother Pádraig. The Beatles-obsessed pair named their most successful band The Sons of Mr. Greengenes, after a 1969 song by another idol, Frank Zappa. Murphy sang and played guitar in the band, which he has said "specialised in wacky lyrics and endless guitar solos." In 1996, The Sons of Mr. Greengenes were offered a five-album record deal by Acid Jazz Records, but they did not sign the contract. Because Murphy's brother was still in secondary school, their parents disapproved. Additionally, the contract offered little money and would have ceded the rights to Murphy's compositions to the record label.
Also in 1996, Murphy began studying law at University College Cork (UCC), but he failed his first year exams because, as he put it, he had "no ambitions to do it." Not only was he busy with his band, but he has admitted that he knew within days after starting at UCC that law was the wrong fit for his artistic personality. Furthermore, after seeing Corcadorca's stage production of A Clockwork Orange, directed by Kiernan, acting had begun to pique his interest. His first major role was in the UCC Drama Society's amateur production of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, but, according to Murphy, his primary motivation then was to party and meet women, not to begin an acting career. Nonetheless, he began to transition away from working as a rock musician, about which he later remarked, "I think there's such a thing as a performance gene. If it's in your DNA it needs to come out. For me it originally came out through music, then segued into acting and came out through there. I always needed to get up and perform."
Acting career
Early work
Murphy hounded Pat Kiernan until he got an audition at Corcadorca, and in September 1996, he made his professional acting debut on the stage, originating the part of a volatile Cork teenager in Enda Walsh's Disco Pigs. He later observed, "I was unbelievably cocky and had nothing to lose, and it suited the part, I suppose." Originally slated to run three weeks in Cork, Disco Pigs ended up touring throughout Europe, Canada and Australia for two years, and Murphy left 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.
From 1997 to 2003, Murphy starred in independent films, such as John Carney's On the Edge, in short films, including the Irish/English language short Filleann an Feall, and in the BBC television miniseries adaptation of The Way We Live Now. In addition to Disco Pigs, he starred in many other plays, including Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things, and Chekhov's The Seagull; Murphy considers this stage work to have been his "training ground." Murphy also reprised his Disco Pigs role for the 2001 indie film version by Kirsten Sheridan, performing his original song "So New" over the closing credits and singing The Kinks' "You Really Got Me" in a pub karaoke scene. During this period, he moved from Cork, relocating first to Dublin for a few years, then to London in 2001.
Murphy's onscreen performance in Disco Pigs caught the eye of director Danny Boyle when casting the lead for 28 Days Later. Released in the UK in late 2002, by the following July 28 Days Later had become a sleeper hit in America and a major success worldwide, putting Murphy before a mass audience for the first time. His performance as pandemic survivor Jim earned him nominations for Best Newcomer at the 2003 Empire Awards and Breakthrough Male Performance at the 2004 MTV Movie Awards. ComingSoon.net's review of the film said, "Cillian Murphy is a superb find... and he gives a breakout performance as a man torn apart by the new world into which he's awakened."
In late 2003, Murphy starred as a lovelorn, hapless supermarket stocker who plots a bank heist with Colin Farrell in Intermission, 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). Murphy also appeared in supporting roles in his first Hollywood films, Cold Mountain and Girl with a Pearl Earring. For the latter film, he learned to chop meat in an abattoir to prepare for his role as a butcher, even though he is a vegetarian. In 2004, he toured Ireland in the titular role of The Playboy of the Western World, a Druid Theatre Company production under the direction of Garry Hynes, who had previously directed Murphy in Seán O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock and John Murphy's The Country Boy, also for Druid.
Critical success
2005 was the year that Cillian Murphy won wider recognition, first for two high-profile villain roles: Dr. Jonathan Crane in Batman Begins, and Jackson Rippner in the thriller Red Eye. Originally asked to audition for the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman in Batman Begins, Murphy never saw himself as having the right physique for the superhero, but leapt at the chance to connect with director Christopher 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." In Wes Craven's Red Eye, Murphy starred as an operative in an assassination plot who terrorizes Rachel McAdams on an overnight flight. 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."
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 ten entertainers with outstanding breakthrough performances. The New Yorkers David Denby wrote, "Cillian Murphy, who has angelic looks that can turn sinister, is one of the most elegantly seductive monsters in recent movies."
In late 2005 (early 2006 in Europe), Murphy starred as Patrick "Kitten" Braden, a transgender Irish orphan in search of his mother, in Neil Jordan's dramedy Breakfast on Pluto, based on the novel of the same title by Patrick McCabe. Murphy had auditioned for the role in 2001, and though Jordan liked him for the part, The Crying Game director was hesitant to revisit transgender and I.R.A. issues. For several years, Murphy lobbied Jordan to make the film before the actor became too old to play the part. In 2004, Murphy prepared for the role by meeting with a transvestite who dressed him and took him clubbing with other transvestites. Taking notice of the group's quick wit, Murphy attributed it to their constantly having to respond to insults from prejudiced people around them.
Against Breakfast on Pluto’s kaleidoscopic backdrop of 1970s glitter rock fashion, magic shows, red light districts and I.R.A. violence, Murphy transforms from androgynous teen to high drag blond bombshell. The San Francisco Chronicles Ruthe Stein said of his performance, "Murphy projects enormous energy onscreen, as he's already shown in 28 Days Later... and Red Eye. He's supremely well cast as the androgynous Kitten ... [and] smoothly makes the transition from broad comedy to drama. He delivers Kitten's favorite line, 'Oh serious, serious, serious!' with the full implications of its dual meaning." 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 Irish Film and Television Academy Best Actor Award. Premiere cited his performance as Kitten in their "The 24 Finest Performances of 2005" feature. All three of his 2005 performances were honored by Entertainment Weekly, when they included him in their "Great Performances of 2005" year-end issue. A late 2005 Back Stage feature labeled Murphy "a chameleonic performer, a character actor trapped in a leading man's bone structure."
In 2006 (2007 in North America), he starred in Ken Loach's film about the Irish War of Independence and Civil War, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, 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. Director Loach, a social realist who shoots films in sequence, is strict about casting actors from the areas where his films are set, rarely casting well-known faces. Because the film was set in Cork, Murphy was given a chance at the role of Damien O'Donovan, a young doctor turned revolutionary, but he had to audition six times before winning the part. Murphy's family goes back in Cork for many generations; during the time period in which The Wind That Shakes the Barley is set, his grandfather was shot at by British soldiers for playing Irish music.
Critic Denby described Murphy's approach to the part of Damien: "Murphy is normally very quiet in movies; he has attained his mystique as an actor by staring at people with baby-blue eyes. In this film, too, he has, at times, a deep stillness, but he has idiosyncratic moments as well, such as when Damien has to execute a teen-ager who has ratted on the I.R.A. Murphy, writhing, shoots the boy and stumbles away, nausea struggling against duty." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "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." Scotland on Sunday commented, "Cillian Murphy ... exudes a doe-eyed sensitivity that is central to our emotional involvement in the character's development. He is not a macho figure itching for a fight, but a man of peace, reluctantly drawn to the use of force. When he makes a commitment to Irish independence, it is unyielding and entirely believable." GQ UK presented Murphy with their 2006 Actor of the Year award for his work in The Wind That Shakes the Barley.
Recent roles and the future
Murphy returned to the stage from November 2006 to February 2007 in the lead role of John Kolvenbach's play Love Song, opposite Neve Campbell, in London's West End. In April 2007 (July in North America), he starred onscreen as a physicist-astronaut charged with reigniting the sun in the sci-fi movie Sunshine, which re-teamed him with director Danny Boyle. Murphy appeared opposite Lucy Liu in Paul Soter's romantic comedy Watching the Detectives; the indie film premiered at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival and was said be coming out on Valentine's Day 2008, but it never appeared in theaters, as the film ended up going straight to DVD.
In 2008 in cinemas, Murphy stars in The Edge of Love, a love quadrangle/biopic with Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller and Matthew Rhys as poet Dylan Thomas; the film comes out in the UK in June. He also makes a brief reappearance as the Scarecrow in The Dark Knight, the sequel to Batman Begins. In 2009 comes the biopic Hippie Hippie Shake (again alongside Sienna Miller), in which Murphy stars as Richard Neville, editor of the psychedelic radical underground magazine Oz, which, in 1971, was at the center of what was then the longest obscenity trial in British history. He will also star in Peacock, a psychological thriller about a man with a split personality who fools people into believing he is also his own wife; Ellen Page co-stars as a woman from his past.
Murphy has three new screen roles scheduled for production. In November 2008, he will shoot Perrier's Bounty, a crime dramedy from the makers of Intermission, in which he will portray a petty criminal on the run from a gangster played by Brendan Gleeson. He is slated to film another biopic, Dali & I: The Surreal Story (though it was put on hold due to a possible actor's strike), paired with Al Pacino, an actor with whom Murphy has said he hoped to work. He has credited a teenage viewing of Pacino in 1973's Scarecrow (his favorite film) as awakening him to the potential power of film acting. Murphy has also signed on to star in the Scottish drama White Male Heart.[Jaafar, Ali. , Variety, 18 May 2008. Accessed 18 May 2008.]
As for future roles, Murphy has long wanted to portray a cowboy in a Western, because as a child, he enjoyed watching John Wayne movies with his father. In 2005, he commented that he'd like to play the jazz musician Chet Baker. Murphy would like to work with director Michel Gondry someday; among the actors he hopes to work with are Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. He also admires Jeff Bridges, Sean Penn, Edward Norton and Joaquin Phoenix. When Jane magazine asked him which celebrity he'd like to make out with, he picked Maggie Gyllenhaal, calling her "pretty foxy" and "smart." Not wishing to be typecast or repeat himself, Murphy says he does not want to play any more villains. Although he does not want to move to Los Angeles because of the cultural differences and distance from his family, Murphy feels it is both wise and artistically worthwhile for him to make both big Hollywood pictures and smaller independent films.
Personal life
In mid-2004, Murphy married his long-time live-in girlfriend, Yvonne McGuinness, an artist whom he met in 1996 at one of his rock band's shows. The couple live in northwest London with their two young sons, born in 2005 and 2007. Murphy is known for being reluctant to speak about his personal life. He frequently gives interviews about his work but does not do TV chat show appearances where actors customarily share information about their private lives. He does not have a stylist or a personal publicist, travels without an entourage, and often attends premieres alone. Shy and private, Murphy professes a lack of interest in the celebrity scene, finding the red carpet experience "a challenge... and not one I want to overcome." He intentionally practices a lifestyle that will not interest the tabloids: "I haven't created any controversy, I don't sleep around, I don't go and fall down drunk." Murphy is friends with fellow Irish actors Colin Farrell and Liam Neeson, looking up to the latter like a "surrogate movie dad." But primarily, Murphy's close friends are those he made before becoming a star.
Music is still an important part of Murphy's life. In 2004, he said, "The only extravagant thing about my lifestyle is my stereo system, buying music and going to gigs." He no longer plays in a rock band, but regularly plays music with friends and on his own, and still writes songs. Unlike many other famous actors who are also musicians, he does not plan to start another band: "Even if I was good, the very notion of being an actor with a rock band on the side would mean I'd never be taken seriously." Murphy is also a dedicated runner.
Though raised Catholic before turning agnostic in his teens, Murphy ultimately became an atheist after researching his role as a nuclear physicist/astronaut in the science fiction film Sunshine. He is a longtime vegetarian, not due to any moral objection to the killing of animals, but because of qualms about unhealthy agribusiness practices. Son-in-law to John J. McGuinness, a TD in the Irish parliament, Murphy participated in the 2007 Rock the Vote Ireland campaign targeting young voters for the general election. He has also campaigned for the rights of the homeless with the organization Focus Ireland.
Stage and screen credits
Feature films
Short films
Television
Stage
Awards and nominations
Golden Globe Awards
BAFTA Awards
Irish Film & Television Awards (IFTA)
- Nominated: Best Actor in a Feature Film (2003, January's biennial ceremony), Disco Pigs
- Nominated: Best Actor in a Film, and Best Actor/Public Vote (2003, November's first annual ceremony), 28 Days Later
- Nominated: Best Irish Actor in a Feature Film (2005), Red Eye
- Nominated: Best Supporting Actor in a Feature Film (2005), Batman Begins
- Won: Best Actor Lead Film (2007), Breakfast on Pluto (also nominated for The Wind That Shakes the Barley in the same category)
- Nominated: Actor in a Lead Role in a Feature Film (2008), Sunshine
Other awards
- Nominated: Empire Movie Awards Best Newcomer (2003), 28 Days Later
- Nominated: MTV Movie Awards, Breakthrough Male Performance (2004), 28 Days Later
- Nominated: London Film Critics Circle Awards, British Actor in a Supporting Role (2005), Batman Begins
- Nominated: Satellite Awards, Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical (2005), Breakfast on Pluto
- Nominated: British Independent Film Awards, Best Actor (2006), The Wind That Shakes the Barley
- Nominated: European Film Awards, European Actor of the Year (2006), The Wind That Shakes the Barley and Breakfast on Pluto
- Won: European Film Festival Palic, Best Actor (2006), Breakfast on Pluto
- Nominated: MTV Movie Awards, Best Villain (2006), Batman Begins
- Nominated: Saturn Awards, Best Supporting Actor (2006), Red Eye
- Won: GQ UK Men of the Year Awards, Actor of the Year (2006)
- Nominated: British Independent Film Awards, Best Actor (2007), Sunshine
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