Tommy Shelby and Robert Oppenheimer are, at first sight, men with starkly different biographies. Shelby was a gang leader in 1920s Birmingham who wore a razor-trimmed cap, ran gambling rackets, smuggled drugs and killed in cold blood. He\u2019s also a fictional character. Oppenheimer wore a fedora and was the real-life American scientist dubbed \u201cthe father of the atomic bomb\u201d. But Cillian Murphy<\/a> thinks they have more in common than you might expect.<\/p>\n He played Shelby in the popular, influential Peaky Blinders<\/a> for six series and returns to 20th-century period drama to take on the title role of Oppenheimer<\/a> in Christopher Nolan<\/a>\u2019s latest film. What the men have in common, Murphy tells me, is that they\u2019re unusually contradictory. \u201cI love the naughty, strange, weird, unpredictable areas of psychology that you get into where it doesn\u2019t seem straightforward. They\u2019re the best characters.\u201d<\/p>\n Alongside his cruelty, Shelby defends the oppressed and is traumatised from fighting in the First World War; Oppenheimer, having helped create the atom bomb, becomes deeply ambivalent about his role in history. \u201cChris [Nolan] used the expression that, in terms of his morality, Oppenheimer was always dancing between the raindrops,\u201d says Murphy. \u201cThat\u2019s the stuff that I\u2019m interested in \u2013 human behaviour and what pressure does to the human psyche.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s 21 years since Murphy\u2019s major film debut in Danny Boyle\u2019s 28 Days Later and, in his relationship with burgeoning fame, he has effected a similar dance. He\u2019s been the star of huge international hits but chooses to live in Ireland rather than London or LA. His face \u2013 with distinctive pale blue eyes \u2013 is instantly recognisable around the world, but he hates being photographed by fans in public. \u201cWhen I\u2019m not working, I disconnect completely from the business. I need that. That\u2019s the way I\u2019ve always worked.\u201d<\/p>\n He prefers, he says, to let the work speak for itself. His roles have ranged from a transgender foundling in Neil Jordan\u2019s Breakfast on Pluto and an Irish republican soldier in Ken Loach\u2019s The Wind That Shakes the Barley, to the supervillain Scarecrow in three Nolan-directed Batman movies. Oppenheimer<\/a> is Murphy\u2019s sixth film with the director, but until now he was only cast in supporting roles. Does it feel that, after 18 years, Nolan has finally given him a job promotion?<\/p>\n Murphy laughs. \u201cI\u2019ve done my apprenticeship. I feel incredibly privileged to have worked with him all these years and it\u2019s changed my life creatively and professionally, but I think he knew that I would love to play a lead for him. It just happened that this project came along and he felt I was right for it.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, Nolan wrote the script for Oppenheimer with Murphy in mind, calling him \u201cone of the great actors of his generation\u201d \u2013 and the admiration is mutual. When Murphy got the screenplay, he considered it the best he\u2019d ever read. \u201cIt was the ambition, scale, intelligence and profundity of it.<\/p>\n \u201cOppenheimer is one of the most notable figures of the 20th century, and Chris managed to distil the book [the film is based on American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin] into a screenplay that has elements of thriller and horror. It\u2019s definitely not your run-of-the-mill biopic.\u201d<\/p>\n Taking on such a big role could have been daunting \u2013 but after working with Nolan for two decades, Murphy says they\u2019ve developed a shorthand. \u201cYou get to a level where you really understand each other and there\u2019s a trust. I used to play a lot of music and what I loved about music was the non-verbal communication you get when you\u2019re playing with someone.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, before he aspired to acting, Murphy wanted to be a rock star. Born in 1976, the eldest of four children (with both parents working in education), he grew up in Ballintemple, Cork, as a music-obsessed teenager. It wasn\u2019t long before he started making his own songs, playing guitar and singing in a band called Sons of Mr Green Genes (named after a Frank Zappa song).<\/p>\n \u201cIt was kind of jazz and early Pink Floyd,\u201d is how he describes their sound. \u201cIt was long, long songs with guitar solos.\u201d And they were good \u2013 in fact, the band were offered a multi-album deal by Acid Jazz records in the summer of 1996. The only reason we have \u201cCillian Murphy: actor\u201d instead of \u201cCillian Murphy: Glastonbury headliner\u201d is down to his parents, who vetoed the deal because they thought his brother, who was also in the band, was too young. \u201cIt was pretty devastating, but music is a young man\u2019s game,\u201d he says. \u201cThe world isn\u2019t lacking our music, so I feel like perhaps we did swerve something.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a remarkably magnanimous outlook on what must have been a crushing disappointment \u2013 though, admittedly, Murphy\u2019s quick swerve into an even more successful creative path probably helped soothe the pain.<\/p>\n The year before his music ambitions stalled, he had seen Cork theatre company Corcadorca\u2019s production of A Clockwork Orange staged in a nightclub. \u201cIt was life-changing. It blew my mind and sowed a seed in my head about this other world of performance.\u201d In 1996 \u2013 the same year he met Yvonne McGuinness, whom he\u2019d later marry and have two children with \u2013 Murphy was cast in Disco Pigs, a two-hander play written by a then-unknown Enda Walsh.<\/p>\n \u201cLooking back,\u201d says Murphy, \u201cthat was a massive crossroads in my life.\u201d Disco Pigs was booked to run for a few weeks at an arts theatre in Cork, but was so successful it eventually transferred to Dublin, then to Edinburgh, London, Europe, Australia and North America. When Danny Boyle saw it and cast him in the film 28 Days Later, Murphy was on his way. And among those who noticed him in Boyle\u2019s film was Nolan, who asked him to audition for the title role in Batman Begins.<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t get to play the Caped Crusader (the role went to Christian Bale) but was cast to play Scarecrow in all three Batman<\/a> films, and took supporting roles in Nolan\u2019s Inception and Dunkirk. On the small screen, Murphy was catapulted to a new level of fame in the BBC\u2019s Peaky Blinders, the stylishly violent historical drama about a criminal gang in Birmingham, first broadcast in 2013.<\/p>\n \u201cIt started off as a tiny show on a Sunday evening and it grew very slowly and without any hype, without any billboards, without any advertising campaign,\u201d he says. \u201cIt just grew because people told other people to watch it. I\u2019m really proud that it has never plateaued and each series has become richer and stronger than the last. That\u2019s a tribute to [writer and creator] Steven Knight<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n![\""Cillian\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2023\/07\/GF-02770-f3c9799.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"OPPENHEIMER\\"")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>![\""Cillian\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2023\/07\/GF-07748MSG-3dbe1f4.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"OPPENHEIMER\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>![\""Tommy\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2022\/04\/372396-2128f5d.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"Peaky\\"")
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