06/30/07
Text: Derrick Jefferson
Photographers: Dustin A. Beatty
It’s rare that Cillian Murphy has a day off. However, finding one wedged in between promoting his new film, Sunshine, and shooting his next feature, he spends some time with his wife and son at their home in London. A self-confessed “culture vulture,” Cillian (don’t forget that hard K pronunciation) Murphy would love to take advantage of the opportunities London presents when it comes to art—not surprising, considering the fact that his wife is video artist Yvonne McGuinness. It’s his loss (and our gain) that the busy actor is often too occupied playing The One to Watch to find time to take in other people’s creative work.
Probably best known for the one-two punch of baddie roles in 2005’s Red Eye and Batman Begins, Murphy began his acting career almost by accident. Music was his first love, and he’d been playing in bands from the age of 12. “I think you have a performance gene, and it needs to come out one way or the other,” he says. “For me, for many years, it was through music and performing and writing and singing songs.” Everything changed when, at the age of 19, he saw a piece of experimental theater in his hometown of Cork, Ireland. “[It was] a version of A Clockwork Orange done in a nightclub, all promenade style…just very cool, and it really blew me away. I chased down the theater company and asked them for an audition, and they gave me one.” His perseverance led to a touring gig with the award-winning stage version (and eventual film adaptation) of Disco Pigs.
In Murphy’s own startling blue eyes, however, it’s Danny Boyle and the apocalyptic epic 28 Days Later that are responsible for launching his career. “It was my big break, really. I was very young and very inexperienced. I’d done a couple of films in Ireland, but I’d never done a film with an experienced director like that. I was a very different actor then.” Now equipped with the clout that exposure and honest talent brings, Murphy has had the opportunity and the luxury to work in smaller, less commercial fare with directors such as Neil Jordan. In Breakfast on Pluto, Murphy portrays Patrick “Kitten” Braden, a transvestite who longs for the mother who abandoned him on the steps of a church as an infant. Set in the 60s and 70s, the film’s uncontrived and optimistic story of Kitten’s search for mom is set against the historical backdrop of violent IRA bombings. “I read the book [by Patrick McCabe] when it came out and fell in love with the story and with the character, and never thought that I’d ever get to play Kitten,” Murphy admits. Eventually, Jordan found a producer who wrangled up the money for the film’s production in just six weeks’ time. “We just did it,” Murphy says. “We just jumped in, and I went and hung out with a lot of transvestites and spent a lot of time trying to find the character. Dressing as a lady was not the primary attraction of the part—it was because it was such a brilliant character, and such a brilliant script, and such a wonderful director.” Murphy’s work was celebrated with his first Golden Globe nomination in 2006.
A succession of solid roles came quickly after that: Girl With a Pearl Earring and Cold Mountain, as well as stage work in Chekhov’s The Seagull and Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things. Then there was the 2006 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, directed by the well-respected Ken Loach. The historical drama tells the Cain and Abel story, beginning in 1919, of two Irish brothers, their participation in the Irish Civil War and the subsequent founding of the Irish Republican Army. “It’s purely about instinct,” he says in reference to the critically acclaimed English director’s unconventional techniques. “[Normally] you get a script a few months in advance, let’s say, and you sit down and pore over it, and you make choices, and you spend hours highlighting and fucking reading, and by the time you come into it, it’s very heavy, it’s very intellectual, you know. With Ken, all you’re armed with is your instincts.” Murphy’s dedicated to researching his roles in preproduction simply because he feels the characters he represents are owed that much. “It’s the only way I know, because I’m so terrified when I take on a role. The only way I can counteract the terror is to just dive in, y’know?”
