In Hollywood’s most recent generation of heavy-hitting actors, Cillian Murphy has carved out a dynamic and diverse number of roles on the big and small screen. From heroes, villains, and tortured geniuses, to the anti-heroes toiling on a moral tightrope, the range of personalities Cillian Murphy has adopted for his roles seems to only ever expand. With his Best Actor Oscar win for his role in Oppenheimer saw the height of his career, so it’s due time to take a step back and see where this meteoric rise began.
For years, Murphy was inhabiting smaller roles in Ireland and Britain, eventually scoring a lead role in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, but it still didn’t seem like enough to get Hollywood’s attention, until a sweeping American frontier epic finally took him on for a small role. It seems like after this role, Murphy’s career got the attention of Christopher Nolan, and in turn, got him into his budding Hollywood filmmaking circle.
Cillian Murphy’s Early Career
- Athletes were cast as the Infected since their fast physicality was important to the terror they wrought in 28 Days Later.
- Aside from some pickup shoots and reshoots, the film at large was filmed entirely sequentially to its story.
In the late 90s, Cillian Murphy’s early days on film had him in the usual spot, starring in short films and indie-budget productions. However, he would gain some traction once he played Pat the Barman in Sweety Barret alongside seasoned actors Brendan Gleeson, Liam Cunningham, and Andy Serkis. This would score him roles with other up-and-comings like Daniel Craig in The Trench, and gain a lot of momentum on smaller and more artistic feature films with more discerning, film-festival audiences.
In 2002, Danny Boyle cast him as the lead in a zombie horror film that would spark a soon-to-be trilogy, 28 Days Later. Working alongside Brendan Gleeson again as well as Naomie Harris and sharing the screen with Christopher Eccleston, who would become Dr. Who three years later, bumped him into the minds of some American audiences enough for casting directors to start paying attention. Then in 2003, his chance finally came in a large film with a seasoned Hollywood ensemble.
The Bit Part That Got Him Shot By Natalie Portman
- Natalie Portman would win her first Oscar in 2010 for her performance in Black Swan.
- One of Natalie Portman’s early films was made alongside Gary Oldman and was titled Leon: The Professional.
Cold Mountain is a film that shows several perspectives around the story of a Civil War soldier in the last days of the war, just trying to get home to his sweetheart. The cast is star-studded with names like Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, to name a few. Brendan Gleeson is also part of this cast as well, which hints at the possibility that somehow Cillian Murphy’s involvement may be due to some community connection with him since they’ve worked closely together in the past. Whatever the case, Murphy’s small part in Cold Mountain as Bardolph would put him face-to-face with Hollywood a-listers, at the other end of a gun barrel.
Bardolph is a soldier who’s part of a corrupt group that decides to invade and abuse Sara (played by Natalie Portman) and her baby. Bardolph is the reluctant one in the group, especially with the treatment of the baby, but feels helpless and outranked by his slimy companions to do anything. Inman ambushes Bardolph’s superior while he tries to abuse Sara, then lets Bardolph escape in nothing but his underwear. This mercy doesn’t last long once Sara walks onto the porch bloodied, and with a side-by-side shotgun, and blasts Bardolph away as he’s running. Of course, the role is a small one; Murphy only gets to say a few lines throughout, but the moral toil he goes through while pleading with his fellow soldiers and his helpless face and small gestures of comfort and presence toward the baby is incredibly poignant. With the little screen time he received, he showed an incredible range of nuances in his performance that was worthy of such a massive production.
Cillian Murphy’s Career Is Still Going Strong
- Cillian Murphy’s long-time leading role in Peaky Blinders was also a massive pull for his career, as North American audiences were exposed to the show via streaming platforms like Netflix.
- Murphy is currently part of four upcoming projects, one of which is a Peaky Blinders film.
Two years after Cold Mountain, Murphy was cast as the Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, the start of a big trilogy that took Hollywood by storm. His fantastic and chilling portrayal of the classic villain gave him a large enough role to be springboarded into leading roles. In the same year, he would take on a leading villain role alongside Rachel McAdams in the thriller Red Eye, even though it was a smaller film than Nolan’s Batman Begins, it was a much larger co-starring role next to an A-lister like McAdams, and then in 2007, Danny Boyle would call him back for the science fiction thriller Sunshine before Nolan decides he needs Murphy to be part of his inner casting circle.
Since his huge creative rise in Hollywood, Christopher Nolan has been known to hold a roster of actors he holds in high regard to call upon for specific roles that he can trust will work as hard as he does. Since The Dark Knight trilogy, Nolan has called back Cillian Murphy for several of his hit films in leading or highly-supporting roles, like Inception, Dunkirk, and Oppenheimer. From Cold Mountain onwards, Murphy’s abilities were fully realized by Hollywood and Nolan’s discovery of his talents then triggered the trust of a big director that led straight to an Academy Award. Even since his Oscar for Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy has been a strong favorite actor on the big and small screen.
