80 Facts About Cillian Murphy

Cillian Murphy's works encompass both stage and screen, and his accolades include an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe Award.

Cillian Murphy made his professional debut in Enda Walsh's 1996 play Disco Pigs, a role he later reprised in the 2001 screen adaptation.

Cillian Murphy played a transgender Irish woman in the comedy-drama Breakfast on Pluto, which earned him his first Golden Globe Award nomination.

Cillian Murphy gained greater prominence for his role as Tommy Shelby in the BBC period drama series Peaky Blinders and for starring in the horror sequel A Quiet Place Part II.

Cillian Murphy's mother taught French while his father, Brendan, worked for the Department of Education.

Cillian Murphy was raised in Ballintemple, Cork, alongside his younger brother Paidi and younger sisters Sile and Orla.

Cillian Murphy started writing and performing songs at the age of 10.

Cillian Murphy was raised Catholic and attended the fee-paying Catholic secondary school Presentation Brothers College, where he did well academically but often got into trouble, sometimes being suspended; he decided in his fourth year that misbehaving was not worth the hassle.

Cillian Murphy got his first taste of performing in secondary school when he participated in a drama module presented by Corcadorca Theatre Company director Pat Kiernan.

Cillian Murphy later described the experience as a "huge high" and a "fully alive" feeling that he then set out to chase.

Cillian Murphy later said the band "specialised in wacky lyrics and endless guitar solos".

Cillian Murphy began studying law at University College Cork in 1996 but failed his first-year exams because he "had no ambitions to do it".

Cillian Murphy played the lead in their production of Little Shop of Horrors, which was performed in the Cork Opera House.

Cillian Murphy later admitted that his primary motivation at the time was not to pursue an acting career, but to go to parties and meet women.

Cillian 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.

Originally intended to run for three weeks in Cork, Disco Pigs ended up touring throughout Europe, Canada and Australia for two years, and Cillian Murphy left both university and his band.

Cillian Murphy starred in many other theatre productions, including Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, The Country Boy, and Juno and the Paycock.

Cillian Murphy began appearing in independent films such as On the Edge, and in short films, including Filleann an Feall and Watchmen.

Cillian Murphy reprised his role for the film adaption of Disco Pigs and appeared in the BBC television mini-series adaptation of The Way We Live Now.

In 2002, Cillian Murphy starred as Adam in a theatre production of Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things at the Gate Theatre in Dublin.

Cillian Murphy was cast in the lead role in Danny Boyle's horror film 28 Days Later.

Cillian Murphy 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.

Cillian Murphy 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".

Cillian Murphy's performance earned him a nomination for Best Newcomer at the 8th Empire Awards, and Breakthrough Male Performance at the 2004 MTV Movie Awards.

Cillian 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, Cillian Murphy played the role of Konstantine in a stage production of Chekhov's The Seagull at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Cillian 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.

Cillian Murphy portrayed a deserting soldier who shares a grim scene with Jude Law's character, and was on location in Romania for only a week.

Cillian Murphy stated that it was a "massive production", remarking that director Anthony Minghella was the calmest director he'd ever met.

Cillian Murphy had a role as a butcher in Girl with a Pearl Earring with Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth.

Cillian Murphy appeared as Dr Jonathan Crane in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins.

Cillian Murphy starred as Jackson Rippner, who terrorises Rachel McAdams on an overnight flight in Wes Craven's thriller, Red Eye.

The New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis asserted that Cillian 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".

Cillian Murphy received several awards nominations for his 2005 villainous roles, among them a nomination as Best Villain at the 2006 MTV Movie Awards for Batman Begins.

Cillian Murphy 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 Cillian 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 Cillian Murphy played the character with a "bemused and hopeful voice".

Cillian 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.

In 2006, Cillian Murphy starred in The Wind That Shakes the Barley, 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.

Cillian Murphy was especially keen on appearing in the film due to his intimate connections to Cork, Ireland, where the film was shot.

Cillian Murphy auditioned six times for the role of Damien O'Donovan, a young doctor turned revolutionary, before winning the part.

Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that "Cillian 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".

Cillian Murphy returned to the stage starring 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.

Cillian Murphy starred in the science fiction film Sunshine as a physicist-astronaut charged with re-igniting the sun, directed by Danny Boyle.

Cillian Murphy starred opposite Lucy Liu in Paul Soter's romantic comedy Watching the Detectives ; the indie film premiered at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival and was released direct-to-DVD.

Cillian Murphy starred as Richard Neville, editor of the psychedelic radical underground magazine Oz in the film Hippie Hippie Shake, which was filmed in 2007, but the project, much delayed, was eventually shelved in 2011.

In 2009, Cillian Murphy starred opposite rock singer Feist and actor David Fox in The Water, directed by Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene.

Cillian 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".

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".

Cillian Murphy next starred in Christopher Nolan's Inception, playing entrepreneur Robert Fischer, whose mind is infiltrated by DiCaprio's character Cobb to convince him to dissolve his business.

That year, Cillian Murphy made an uncredited cameo as programmer Edward Dillinger Jr.

In 2011, Cillian Murphy performed in the stage monodrama Misterman, written and directed by Enda Walsh, with whom he had previously worked on Disco Pigs.

Cillian Murphy played the lead in the British horror film Retreat, which had a limited release.

Cillian Murphy appeared in the science fiction film In Time, starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, which was poorly reviewed.

Cillian Murphy starred in Red Lights with Robert De Niro and Sigourney Weaver.

Cillian Murphy played Tom Buckley, the assistant to Weaver's character who is a paranormal investigator.

Cillian Murphy considered working with De Niro to have been one of the most intimidating moments in his career.

Cillian Murphy went on to reprise his role as the Scarecrow for the third time in The Dark Knight Rises, and had a supporting role as Mike in the British independent film Broken.

Cillian Murphy's performance earned him a British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination.

Cillian Murphy picked Murphy after receiving a text message from Murphy that read, "Remember, I'm an actor".

In 2013, Cillian Murphy made his directorial debut with a music video for the band Money's single Hold Me Forever.

In 2014, Cillian Murphy starred in the drama Aloft, and Wally Pfister's Transcendence.

That same year, Cillian Murphy reunited with Enda Walsh in the play Ballyturk.

Cillian Murphy starred in Ron Howard's 2015 film In the Heart of the Sea.

In 2016, Cillian Murphy starred in Ben Wheatley's Free Fire, and portrayed Czechoslovak World War II army soldier Jozef Gabcik, who was involved in Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Anthropoid.

In 2017, Cillian Murphy played a shell-shocked army officer who is recovered from a wrecked ship in Christopher Nolan's war film Dunkirk, which emerged as a critical and box-office success.

Cillian Murphy felt that 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".

Cillian Murphy has played a role in the feature film Anna as Miller, released in June 2019.

Cillian Murphy launched the independent production company Big Things Films with Alan Moloney in February 2024.

Cillian Murphy produced and starred in the historical drama Small Things like These, which opened the 74th Berlin International Film Festival, and the upcoming drama film Steve, through a collaboration with Netflix.

Cillian Murphy prefers not to speak about his life outside of acting and did not appear on any television talk shows until 2010, when he was a guest on Ireland's Late Late Show to promote Perrier's Bounty, though he still remained reserved.

In 2015, Cillian Murphy was named one of GQs 50 best-dressed men, and in 2024, he was announced as the new face of Italian luxury fashion company Versace.

Cillian Murphy participated in the 2007 Rock the Vote Ireland campaign, targeting young voters for the general election, and campaigning for the rights of the homeless with the organisation Focus Ireland.

Cillian Murphy is closely associated with the work of Professor Pat Dolan Director UCFRC and UNESCO Chair in Children, Youth and Civic Engagement.

Cillian Murphy was a supporter of the 2018 Irish referendum to repeal the eighth amendment of the constitution that restricted access to abortions, appearing on The Blindboy Podcast to urge men to support women and vote in favour of the referendum.

In 2004, Cillian Murphy married his longtime girlfriend Yvonne McGuinness, who he met at one of his rock band's shows in 1996.

Cillian Murphy stated that he had been verging on agnosticism until his role as a physicist and astronaut in the 2007 film Sunshine, at which point his views shifted towards atheism.

Cillian Murphy was a vegetarian for around 15 years, which he said happened because he was "worried about getting mad cow disease" rather than a moral decision.

Cillian Murphy began eating meat again to bulk up for his role in Peaky Blinders.

Cillian Murphy's works include other critically acclaimed films, such as A Quiet Place II and The Wind that Shakes the Barley.