‘I hope the violence is always made to look ugly’ ... Cillian Murphy.
Photograph: Johnny Savage

Interview

Cillian Murphy: ‘I think James Bond should be a woman, which rules me out’

Lanre Bakare

Thursday 8 August 2019

With Peaky Blinders series five on TV soon, its star Cillian Murphy talks about gangster violence, PTSD, #MeToo, what Brexit means for Ireland – and 007

In the summer of 1996, Cillian Murphy was at a crossroads. He had failed his law exams at University College Cork. He had turned down a three-album record contract with his Frank Zappa-influenced “funk-jam band”, the Sons of Mr Green Genes. He had met his wife (the artist Yvonne McGuinness), and he had decided to audition for – and was cast in – Disco Pigs, a play about Cork teenagers by a then largely unknown writer called Enda Walsh. “It did feel kind of pivotal, and it wasn’t just that summer – everything happened in the month of August,” says Murphy.

In the space of four weeks his life dramatically changed course. Law and music went by the wayside, while acting and life-long relationships with Walsh and McGuinness were set in motion. “I remember the confidence of youth that you have. You’re just going to go for it and when you’re 19 or 20 nothing seems permanent. It was an adventure but, looking back, it does seem hugely formative.”

Cillian Murphy / ‘It is getting absurd with the dumbing down'

Cillian Murphy.
Photograph: Nadav Kander

Cillian Murphy: ‘It is getting absurd with the dumbing down'

Cillian Murphy swaps Peaky Blinders in Birmingham for gun running in Boston in his latest role. Here he talks about moving back to Ireland and being an old-fashioned actor

Will Lawrence
Sunday 12 March 2017

Adirector, I forget who, told me that it takes 30 years to make an actor,” Cillian Murphy says. “And I believe that. You have to learn your craft, learn your trade – and also you have to live a life and experience things. I have been doing this for 20 years now so, hopefully, in another 10 years I will be an actor.”

 

If you stick around long enough and don’t make an idiot of yourself people go, ‘All right. He is here to stay'

Though his modesty is sincere, it’s difficult to agree. The Cork-born actor is already loved by millions courtesy of his role as the cold-eyed Brummie gangster Tommy Shelby in BBC2’s Peaky Blinders. He’s proved a huge success on stage and in independent cinema, while also emerging as a bona fide movie star. He’s been acting professionally for half his life. “Honestly,” he adds, “if you stick around long enough, don’t make an idiot of yourself and aspire to make good work, people go: ‘All right. He is here to stay.’”

Murphy is certainly here to stay and has now reached a point, he insists, where he feels comfortable – with the press, industry and, most importantly, himself. “Having just turned 40 I hope I’ve achieved some sort of wisdom or patience,” he says in his soft, evenly paced brogue.