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Cillian Murphy Biography
Cillian Murphy (born 25 May 1976) is an Irish film and theatre actor noted for intense, risky performances in diverse roles, as well as his distinctive blue eyes. He acted in a number of Irish and British film and stage productions throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, but first came to international attention in 2003 as the hero in the post-apocalyptic film, 28 Days Later. A wide range of roles followed, but Murphy's best known roles are as villains in two 2005 blockbusters: The Scarecrow in Batman Begins, and Jackson Rippner in the thriller Red Eye. Next came his Golden Globe Award-nominated performance as transgendered outcast "Kitten" in Breakfast on Pluto and a widely-praised turn as a 1920s Irish revolutionary in Palme d'Or winner The Wind That Shakes the Barley. A resident of London since 2001, Murphy often works in or near London and has no desire to move to Hollywood.
Early life
Murphy was born in Douglas, County Cork in Ireland.[9] His father, Brendan, works for the Irish Department of Education and his mother is a French teacher. The oldest of four children, Murphy has one brother named Pádraig and two sisters named Sile and Orla. Not only are his parents educators, but his aunts and uncles are also teachers, as was his grandfather. Music also ran in the family, and Murphy started playing music at about age ten.
Murphy attended the Catholic school Presentation Brothers College, Cork. He did well in school, although he was not keen on sport, which was a major part of life at PBC.[10] But it was there that Murphy got his first taste of performing, when at 16, he attended a drama module presented by Pat Kiernan, the director of the Corcadorca Theatre Company. Murphy later described the experience as a "huge high" and a "fully alive" feeling that he set out to chase. But at this stage, performing meant dreams of becoming a rock star.
From music to acting
Originally, Murphy worked toward a career as a rock musician, playing guitar in several bands alongside his brother in his late teens. Then, in 1996, their band The Sons of Mr. Greengenes, a Frank Zappa-influenced outfit that took its name from a 1969 Zappa song, was offered a record deal. They did not sign the contract, partly because Pádraig was still in secondary school, so their parents did not approve, and partly because the contract offered little money and would have ceded the rights to Murphy's compositions to the record label.
By then, Murphy was studying law at University College Cork (UCC), but flunked his first year exams because his heart wasn't in it. Not only was he busy with his band, but he had known within days after starting at UCC that law was the wrong fit for his artistic personality. Also, after seeing a stage production of A Clockwork Orange, acting had begun to pique his interest. His first major role was in the UCC Drama Society production of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, but, according to Murphy, his primary motivation then was to party and meet women rather than to start an acting career.
Acting career
In September 1996, Murphy landed his first professional role on the stage, originating the part of antisocial teenager "Pig" in Enda Walsh's Disco Pigs, directed by Pat Kiernan for Corcadorca. A Cork production, Disco Pigs ended up touring throughout Europe and in Canada for over two years, and Murphy left university. He later reprised his Disco Pigs role for the 2001 independent film version by Kirsten Sheridan. The closing credits feature Murphy performing his original song "So New", and he sings The Kinks' "You Really Got Me" in a pub karaoke scene.
From 1997 to 2002, Murphy starred in independent feature films, shorts, plays and in the BBC miniseries adaptation of The Way We Live Now, but it was not until director Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later became a sleeper hit in America in 2003, that he came to the attention of a wider audience. His performance as pandemic survivor Jim earned him nominations for Best Newcomer at the 2003 Empire Awards and Breakthrough Male Performance at the 2004 MTV Movie Awards, among others.
ComingSoon.net's rave review of the film said, "Cillian Murphy is a superb find... and he gives a breakout performance as a man torn apart by the new world into which he's awakened."
In late 2003, Murphy starred as a lovelorn, hapless supermarket stocker who plots a bank heist with Colin Farrell in Intermission, which became the highest-grossing Irish independent film in Irish box office history (until The Wind That Shakes the Barley broke the record in 2006). Murphy also appeared in supporting roles in his first Hollywood films, Cold Mountain and Girl with a Pearl Earring. For the latter film, he learned to chop meat in an abattoir to prepare for his role as a butcher, even though he is a vegetarian. 2004 found him touring Ireland in the titular role in the classic Irish play, The Playboy of the Western World, as well as filming three of his biggest movie roles to date.
2005 was the year that Murphy won wider recognition for two high-profile villain roles, as Dr. Jonathan Crane/supervillain Scarecrow in Batman Begins, and as Jackson Rippner in the thriller Red Eye. He originally auditioned for the role of Batman in Batman Begins. Though the part was given to Christian Bale, director Christopher Nolan was reportedly very impressed with Murphy's audition and persuaded him to take the role of Dr. Jonathan Crane, whose alter ego is the villain Scarecrow. In Wes Craven's critical and box office smash Red Eye, Murphy played an operative in an assassination plot who terrorizes Rachel McAdams on an overnight flight. Film critic Manohla Dargis raved that Murphy made "a picture-perfect villain" and that his "baby blues look cold enough to freeze water and his wolfish leer suggests its own terrors."
Entertainment Weekly ranked Murphy among its 2005 "Summer MVPs", a cover story list of ten entertainers with outstanding breakthrough performances. He received several awards nominations for his 2005 bad guy turns, among them a nomination as Best Villain at the 2006 MTV Movie Awards for Batman Begins.
In late 2005 (early 2006 in Europe), Murphy starred as Patrick "Kitten" Braden, a transgendered Irish orphan in search of his mother, in Neil Jordan's dramedy Breakfast on Pluto, based on the novel of the same title by Patrick McCabe. Murphy auditioned for the role in 2001, and though Jordan liked him for the part, The Crying Game director was hesitant to revisit transgender and IRA issues. For several years, Murphy lobbied Jordan to make the film before the actor became too old to play the part. In 2004, Murphy prepared for the role by meeting with a transvestite who dressed him and took him clubbing with other transvestites. Taking notice of the group's quick wit, Murphy attributed it to their constantly having to respond to insults from prejudiced people around them.
Murphy was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for Breakfast on Pluto (Joaquin Phoenix won for Walk the Line), and won the Irish Film and Television Academy Best Actor Award. Premiere cited his performance as Kitten in their "The 24 Finest Performances of 2005" feature. All three of his 2005 performances were honored by Entertainment Weekly, when they included him in their "Great Performances of 2005" year-end issue.
In 2006 (2007 in North America), he starred in Ken Loach's film about the Irish War of Independence and Civil War, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, which won the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and became the most successful Irish independent film at the Irish box office, toppling Intermission from the top spot. Murphy's performance as young doctor Damien O'Donovan was highly praised.
Murphy returned to the stage from November 2006 to February 2007 in the lead role of John Kolvenbach's play Love Song, opposite Neve Campbell, in London's West End. In 2007, he stars as a physicist-astronaut charged with reigniting the sun in the 2007 sci-fi movie Sunshine, which re-teamed him with director Danny Boyle, and as a cinephile in Paul Soter's romantic comedy, Watching the Detectives, opposite Lucy Liu.
In the late spring of 2007, Murphy shot The Edge of Love with Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller and Matthew Rhys in Wales and London. In September 2007, Murphy shoots Hippie Hippie Shake (again alongside Sienna Miller), starring as Richard Neville, editor of the psychedelic radical underground magazine Oz, which was at the center of what was then the longest obscenity trial in British history.
As for future roles, Murphy has long wanted to portray a cowboy in a Western, because as a child, he enjoyed watching John Wayne movies with his father. In 2005, he commented, "I don't know if they're going to ever make a movie about jazz trumpeter/singer Chet Baker but if they do, I'd love to play him." Not wishing to be typecast, Murphy says he does not want to play any more villains.
Personal life
Murphy married his long-time live-in girlfriend, artist Yvonne McGuinness, in August 2004 in Provence, France. The couple live in London, England, with their son Malachy, who was born in late 2005. Murphy is known for being reticent to speak about his personal life. He frequently gives interviews about his work but does not do TV chat show appearances where actors customarily share information about their private lives. He does not travel with an entourage and often attends premieres alone. Shy 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 is friends with fellow Irish actors Colin Farrell and Liam Neeson. Murphy has said that he greatly admires Neeson and looks up to him like a "surrogate movie dad." His other idols include Al Pacino, Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Music is still a big 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 is also a dedicated runner.
Though raised Catholic before turning agnostic in his teens, Murphy ultimately became an atheist after researching his role as a nuclear physicist/astronaut in the science fiction film Sunshine. He is a longtime vegetarian, but not due to any opposition to the killing of animals, which he considers part of nature, but because of qualms about unhealthy agribusiness practices.
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