Background

Cillian Murphy was born on May 25, 1976, in Douglas, a suburb of Cork city, Ireland. Cillian is the oldest child of Brendan Murphy, an employee of the Irish Department of Education and his French-tutor wife. He has a brother, Páidi, and two sisters, Orla and Sile. Raised in Ballintemple, another suburb of Cork, Cillian began playing music and composing songs at ten years of age.

Education

Cillian Murphy attended the Catholic school Presentation Brothers College, where he did well academically but got into trouble often, sometimes getting suspended, until he decided in his fourth year that misbehaving was not worth the hassle. Also there he had his initial taste of acting. His English teacher, poet William Wall, encouraged him to continue pursuing acting, but at that age, Murphy was more interested in music.

Murphy enrolled at the University College Cork to study Law in 1996. But as he himself said, there was “no ambition behind it”. He was busy for the most part with his band, and his love for performing had begun to take definitive shape. As a result, his education suffered and he could not pass the first year exams.

Career

In his late teens and early twenties, Cillian Murphy worked toward a career as a rock musician, playing guitar in several bands alongside his brother Páidi. 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: "specialized 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 due to Murphy's brother still being in secondary school and the little money involved in ceding the rights to Murphy's compositions to the record label. Murphy 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."

Murphy’s love for acting increased exponentially after watching Corcadorca Theatre Company’s production of A Clockwork Orange in Dublin. His first major role was in the University College Cork Drama Society's amateur production of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, which also starred Irish-American comedian Des Bishop. Murphy also played the lead in a University College Cork Drama production of Little Shop of Horrors, which was performed in the Cork Opera House. According to Murphy, his primary motivation then was to party and meet women, not to begin an acting career. In September 1996, he debuted as a professional actor in the play Disco Pigs. About a year later, he acted in Declan Recks’ short film Quando. In 1999, he starred in his debut feature film, Sunburn, alongside Paloma Baeza and Sinead Keenan.

After a succession of independent films, Murphy was cast as the lead in 28 Days Later (2002). Made with an $8 million budget, Boyle’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi horror earned $84.7 million at the box office. They worked together again in the sci-fi thriller Sunshine (2007). For his role as the nuclear physicist/astronaut Robert Capa, Murphy consulted with physicist Brian Cox.

Cillian Murphy first worked with Nolan in 2005 superhero film Batman Begins, playing Jonathan Crane or Scarecrow. In the film, Scarecrow is a corrupt psychopharmacologist serving as the Chief Administrator of Arkham Asylum. Murphy wanted to make the character less theatrical in Nolan’s film which was grounded in realism, to begin with. He reprised the role in both sequels of the movie, The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) and provided the voice for the character in Batman Begins video game (2005). His second film with the visionary director was Inception (2010). He was cast as Robert Michael Fischer, who is the heir of a business empire and the target of the team of thieves led by Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Dom Cobb. Murphy identified Fischer as a “petulant child who needs a lot of attention from his father” and read about Rupert Murdoch’s sons to add depth to his portrayal.

In Wes Craven’s Red Eye, Murphy’s vivid blue eyes and natural good looks perfectly juxtaposed with the ruthless and terrifying aspects of the character he played. In 2006, he played Damien O'Donovan in Ken Loach’s Palme d'Or winning film The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Besides these, Murphy has played a transgender foundling looking for love in Breakfast on Pluto (2005), romanced Lucy Liu in Watching the Detectives (2007), and starred alongside Robert De Niro and Sigourney Weaver in Red Lights (2012). He played Tom Buckley, the assistant to Weaver's character who is a paranormal investigator. Murphy considered working with De Niro to have been one of the most intimidating moments in his career.

Since Disco Pigs, Murphy has built up a respectable resume as a stage actor as well. He has performed in the productions of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (1998), Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things (2002), and Walsh’s Misterman (2011) and Ballyturk (2014). He also appeared in the science fiction film In Time (2011), starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, which was poorly reviewed.

Murphy's most important outing on the small screen is in the British crime drama Peaky Blinders (2013-present). He stars as Tommy Shelby, the cunning and ambitious leader of the Romanic-Irish gang Peaky Blinders. Tommy Shelby is a soldier returning to Birmingham after the Great War in 1919 to re-exert his family’s criminal authority while communists, IRA men, and rival gangs jockey for position. Peaky Blinders was critically praised and a ratings success.

In 2014, he co-starred in the film Aloft, with Jennifer Connelly, and Wally Pfister's Transcendence, which also starred Johnny Depp and Rebecca Hall. Murphy also reunited with Enda Walsh for the play Ballyturk in 2014. He starred in Ron Howard's 2015 film, In the Heart of the Sea, which also features Benjamin Walker and Chris Hemsworth. Cillian contributed spoken vocals to the tracks "8:58" and "The Clock" from Paul Hartnoll's album 8:58 (2015). The two previously met whilst Hartnoll was scoring the second season of Peaky Blinders. He also served as the narrator for BBC’s nature documentary Atlantic: The Wildest Ocean on Earth in 2015. Murphy portrayed Czechoslovak World War II army soldier Jozef Gabčík, who was involved in Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Anthropoid (2016).

Murphy and Nolan partnered up once again for the war drama Dunkirk (2017). Credited simply as the Shivering Soldier, Murphy researched about the psychological trauma that a soldier endures having a better grasp of his character’s PTSD. Murphy felt 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".

Achievements

• Cillian Murphy is a talented actor, who is highly praised by critics for his outstanding performances both in theatre and cinema. He was nominated to prestigious awards and won several of them, including Irish Film and Television Award, Drama Desk Award and GQ UK Award. Murphy was also chosen as the patron for the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre at the National University of Ireland Galway.
  
  In 2015, Cillian Murphy was named one of GQ's 50 best-dressed men.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • The Edge Of Love

    (In the bohemian underground of World War II London, a sti...)

    2008
  • Red Lights

    (A psychologist (Sigourney Weaver) and her assistant (Cill...)

    2012
  • Perrier's Bounty

    (A Dublin ne'er-do-well tries to dodge his debt payment to...)

    2009
  • Red Eye

    (Moments after takeoff, Lisa's seatmate, Jackson (Cillian ...)

    2005
  • Girl with a Pearl Earring

    (Nominated for three Academy Awards, Girl With a Pearl Ear...)

    2003
  • In the Heart of the Sea

    (In the winter of 1820, the New England whaling ship Essex...)

    2015
  • The Dark Knight |

    (The Dark Knight reunites Christian Bale with director Chr...)

    2008
  • The Dark Knight Rises

    (In this epic conclusion to the Dark Knight trilogy, the e...)

    2012
  • Anthropoid

    (Based on the true story of Operation Anthropoid, the miss...)

    2015
  • The Party

    (An intimate gathering of friends goes haywire when an une...)

    2017
  • Dunkirk

    (Trapped on the beach with their backs to the sea, British...)

    2017
  • Breakfast On Pluto

    (Patrick "Kitten" Braden (Cillian Murphy) was abandoned as...)

    2005
  • Sunshine

    (In the year 2057, Earth's last hope lies with a spacecraf...)

    2007
  • 28 Days Later

    (Hailed as the most frightening film since The Exorcist, a...)

    2002
  • Aloft

    (A renowned healer (Connelly) encounters the son (Murphy) ...)

    2014
  • Sunburn

    (A group of Irish college students is about to leave for t...)

    1999
  • Batman Begins

    (In the wake of his parents' murder, disillusioned industr...)

    2005
  • Watching the Detectives

    (Video store owner/film noir buff Neil (Cillian Murphy) fi...)

    2007
  • Inception

    (Leonardo DiCaprio is a criminal who specializes in invadi...)

    2010
  • The Wind That Shakes the Barley

    (Legendary director Ken Loach's epic tale of two brothers ...)

    2007
  • Cold Mountain

    (At the dawn of the civil war, the men of Cold Mountain, N...)

    2003
  • In Time

    (Every second counts in this sexy, stylish action-thriller...)

    2011
  • Peacock

    (A train accident in rural Nebraska gradually unveils a my...)

    2010
  • Sweety Barrett

    (Sweety Barret is a big man with a gentle nature, who is n...)

    1998
  • The Trench

    (The Trench is about a group of soldiers' last days before...)

    1999
  • Intermission

    (Cillian Murphy stars in this urban story about the journe...)

    2003
  • Disco Pigs

    (Pig and Runt - born on the same day, in the same hospital...)

    2001
  • Transcendence

    (A terminally ill scientist downloads his mind into a comp...)

    2014

• TV series

  • Peaky Blinders

    (Britain in 1919 is a tumultuous mix of despair and hedoni...)

    2013

Religion

Cillian Murphy was raised Roman Catholic and attended the Catholic secondary school, but he had been an agnostic for the majority of his adult life. Murphy told in an interview: "I was baptized and confirmed and all that, but I came into adulthood just as the Catholic church was losing its grip." Later, Murphy confirmed his atheism after researching his role as a nuclear physicist/astronaut in the science fiction film Sunshine (2007).

Politics

Cillian Murphy participated in the 2007 Rock the Vote campaign in Ireland. His target was the young voter in Ireland for the General Election. Murphy shared that he actually found the right to vote quite empowering when he was 18: “I remember being 18 and being fed up with everything, fed up with society, fed up with the political system, fed up with myself and then you kind of go ‘actually this voting thing is amazing’ because you have a chance to change it, right?”

Views

Cillian Murphy campaigned for the rights of the homeless with the organization Focus Ireland. In 2011, he became a patron of the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre at the National University of Ireland Galway. He is closely associated with the work of Professor Pat Dolan Director UCFRC and UNESCO Chair in Children, Youth and Civic Engagement. In February 2012, he wrote a message of support to the former Vita Cortex workers involved in a sit-in at their plant, congratulating them for "highlighting [what] is hugely important to us all as a nation"

Murphy has made an impassioned call for men to "come out and support women" by voting in Ireland's referendum on abortion legislation on May 25, 2018. He said: “Men and women are custodians of this society and we both decide what’s going to happen for our future. I feel that very, very strongly, and I think, you know, that you can be well-intentioned and say ‘look, it should be for women to decide this’, but we need to go out and support women on this."

Murphy was a vegetarian for many years, not due to any moral objection to the killing of animals, but because of qualms about unhealthy agribusiness practices. He began eating meat again for his role in Peaky Blinders.

Quotations: "It's easy to take the check, you know, but if you want to have any longevity, just take things that have artistic merit in them. I want to do quality. If it's good telly, I'll do it. If it's good theater, I'll do it."

"If you behave like a celebrity, then people will treat you like a celebrity, and if you don't, they won't. There's not much to write about me in the tabloids."

"Today, I pick and choose my films very carefully. There's nothing I've done so far that I can't talk about with commitment and passion."

"Too many filmmakers today are trying to put their work into a box. I can't stand that! Making movies is a lot of work. Let's take some risks."

"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."

"For me, drama is conflict. I'm not interested in a good man's life. I'm interested in contradiction. I'm interested in pressure, I'm interested in duress. All the great works of art, or film or literature, in my opinion, have elements of those in them. Because who wants to write about happy people?"

Personality

An introvert, Murphy prefers to lead a reclusive private life. He does not have a personal publicist, or a stylist, and often attends premiers of his films alone. It wasn’t until 2010 that he appeared on a live television chat show. Reserved 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". In 2005, Murphy stated he was friends with fellow Irish actors Colin Farrell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Liam Neeson, looking up to the latter like a "surrogate movie dad". But primarily, Murphy's close friendships 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.

Cillian Murphy is fluent in four different languages; Irish, Gaelic, English and French.

Physical Characteristics: Murphy has a height of 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 m) and he weighs around 70 kg or 154 lbs. His hair color is dark brown and his eye color is bright blue.

Interests

• video games, writing music

• Writers

  Ernest Hemingway, J.P. Donleavy, Patrick McCabe, John Banville, Richard Ford, Geoff Dyer, Max Porter, John Healy, John O'Hara

• Sport & Clubs

  Running

• Music & Bands

  Nick Cave, Led Zeppelin, Fionn Regan, PJ Harvey, Frank Zappa, Radiohead

Connections

Cillian Murphy met visual artist Yvonne McGuinness in 1996 at one of his band’s performances in Dublin. After almost eight years of dating, Murphy proposed to his future wife while hill-walking in Ireland. They married on August 1, 2004. The couple has two sons together, Malachy (born on December 4, 2005) and Aran (born 2007). Both Malachy and Aran Murphy were both born in Sweden. The family currently resides in Monkstown, County Cork. He has reiterated time and again that he has no desire of moving to Hollywood.

Father:

Brendan Murphy

Spouse:

Yvonne McGuinness

colleague:

Harry Styles

Sister:

Orla Murphy

Sister:

Sile Murphy

Brother:

Páidi Murphy

Son:

Malachy Murphy

Son:

Aran Myrphy

colleague:

Chris Hemsworth

Friend:

Jonathan Rhys Meyers

Friend:

Colin Farrell

Friend:

Liam John Neeson

colleague:

Justin Timberlake

colleague:

Christopher Nolan

colleague:

Olivia Wilde