Cillian Murphy

Cillian Murphy (born 25 May 1976) is an Irish actor.

Murphy was born on 25 May 1976 in Douglas, Cork.

His mother taught French while his father, Brendan, worked for the Department of Education.

His grandfather, aunts, and uncles were also teachers.

He was raised in Ballintemple, Cork, alongside his younger brother Páidi and two younger sisters Sile and Orla.

He started writing and performing songs at the age of 10.

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.

Not keen on sports, which was a major part of the school's curriculum, he found that artistic pursuits were neglected at the school.

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.

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

Novelist William Wall, who was his English teacher, encouraged him to pursue acting but he was set on becoming a rock star.

In his late teens and early 20s, he sang and played the guitar in several bands alongside his brother, Páidi, and the Beatles-obsessed duo named their most successful band The Sons of Mr. Green Genes, which they adopted from the Frank Zappa song of the same name.

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

They were offered a five-album deal by Acid Jazz Records, which they rejected because Páidi was still in school and the duo did not agree with the small amount of money they would get for giving the record label the rights to Murphy's compositions.

Murphy later confessed, "I'm very glad in retrospect that we didn't sign because you kind of sign away your life to a label and the whole of your music."

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 studying law at University College Cork (UCC) in 1996, but failed his first-year exams because he "had no ambitions to do it".

Not only was he busy with his band, but he knew within days after starting at UCC that law was not what he wanted to do.

After seeing Corcadorca's stage production of A Clockwork Orange, directed by Kiernan, he began directing his attention to acting.

His first major role was in the UCC Drama Society's amateur production of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, which starred Irish-American comedian Des Bishop.

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

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

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, and Juno and the Paycock (both 1999).

He began appearing in independent films such as 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.

His early film credits include the horror film 28 Days Later (2002), the dark comedy Intermission (2003), the thriller Red Eye (2005), the Irish war drama The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), and the science fiction thriller Sunshine (2007).

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

Writing for The Irish Times, Fintan O'Toole praised Murphy's performance, "Murphy measures out his metamorphosis with an impressive subtlety and intelligence".

He played a transgender Irish woman in the comedy-drama Breakfast on Pluto (2005), which earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination.

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).

Murphy won the Drama Desk Award for the 2011 one-man play Misterman.

He 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).

Murphy portrayed J. Robert Oppenheimer in Nolan's Oppenheimer (2023), for which he received the Academy Award for Best Actor, along with a BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe Award.

In 2020, The Irish Times named him one of the greatest Irish film actors of all time.