Cillian Murphy Quotes

Irish actor (born 1976)

Cillian Murphy (born 25 May 1976) is an Irish actor. He made his professional debut in Enda Walsh's 1996 play Disco Pigs, a role he later reprised in the 2001 screen adaptation. Murphy began his collaboration with filmmaker Christopher Nolan in 2005, playing the Scarecrow in The Dark Knight trilogy (2005–2012) as well as appearing in Inception (2010) and Dunkirk (2017). He also gained greater prominence for his role as Tommy Shelby in the BBC period drama series Peaky Blinders (2013–2022) and for starring in the horror sequel A Quiet Place Part II (2020). He won a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, and an Academy Award for portraying the American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer in Nolan's Oppenheimer (2023).

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But to clarify the thing about interviews, I love talking about the movie, I love talking about music and books and art. I'm not a huge fan of talking about myself. And I don't, and I don't think anyone really is, but I fully believe in this movie, and I love promoting it. So I'm very comfortable with all of that. And in terms of, you know, how it changes your life or anything like that, or changes how people perceive you that that hasn't changed for me, you know, my life has been exactly the same as it always was.

I come from theater, and I love acting with my body. You get to do that an awful lot in theater, but you don’t get to do it as much in film because film is about the close-up generally. And theater is always by necessity in a wide shot.

Well, first of all, it's imperative not to judge the character. Because then you've lost as a performer. You have to try and understand [them]. You have to be like a kind of emotional detective. But your job primarily is to define the truth in the character to try and portray them in a truthful way.

We made a film about the man who created the atomic bomb, and for better or for worse, we’re all living in Oppenheimer’s world. So I would really like to dedicate this to the peacemakers everywhere.

Inevitably, if you play a character for a long time, and I was researching him for six months, then shooting it for however long that was.. And you're playing them 18 hours a day every day. By osmosis, you're exchanging atoms, You become consumed or immersed [by it], that's just the way it is.

The majority of my buddies are not in the business. I also love not working. And I think for me a lot of research as an actor is just fucking living, and, you know, having a normal life doing regular things and just being able to observe, and be, in that sort of lovely flow of humanity. If you can’t do that because you’re going from film festival to movie set to promotions…I mean that’s The Bubble. I’m not saying that makes you any better or less as an actor, but it’s just a world that I couldn’t exist in. I find it would be very limiting on what you can experience as a human being, you know?

Method is like a euphemism. We all have a method to get to the final result. And whatever that method is, it's personal and unique to each actor. It's become sort of confused, I think, with the Stanislavski approach. But every actor has their own individual method.

I love it when it becomes an immersive experience. I love getting lost in it. In the early days, that was with theater. It felt kind of extraordinary that with just the power of will and a couple of lights and a good script, we were creating this world. And so, it's that's kind of addictive, when it works well.

I think instinct is your most powerful tool that you have as an actor. Nothing must be predetermined. So therefore, you mustn't have a plan about how you're gonna play stuff. And I love that. It's like being buffeted by the wind and being buffeted by emotion.

I was a Chris Nolan fan. That’s how I was when I met him for the first time … So, it feels absurd that I’ve been in six of his films.

But, when a film connects with audiences like this particular one has in a way that none of us could have anticipated... it's hugely flattering and hugely humbling and it's lovely to see that.

I don’t really partake. I don’t go out. I’m just at home mostly, or with my friends, unless I have a film to promote. I don’t like being photographed by people. I find that offensive.

There’s a wealth of stuff out there and I will read it all. I am never, ever going to understand quantum mechanics, no matter how hard or how many times people try to explain it to me. There’s 0.0001 per cent of the population on the planet who have the brainpower to understand that.

You find so much empathy in novels, you know, because there you are putting yourself into somebody else's point of view, and I've always been a big reader. When a movie can connect with someone, and they feel seen or feel heard, or a novel can change somebody's life, or a piece of music-- an album-- can change someone's life. And I've had all that happen to me. And that's the power of good art, I think.

I know everyone says this, but you never go into making a film thinking about awards. That's not what we do. It's impossible to make a film that way.