Cillian Murphy covers GQ as part of his Oscar campaign, and this is arguably the most thorough interview I’ve read with him during the entire Oppenheimer promotion and campaign. He’s reflective and relaxed, mostly because he’s being interviewed in his small Irish village where he knows everyone and everyone knows him. It’s been a long-standing joke that Cillian hates every part of Oscar season, but the truth is probably that Cillian sees it as part of his job and he’s grateful for the opportunity, but no, he doesn’t enjoy all of this stuff. He tolerates it and doesn’t complain too much. This interview is very Irish and I enjoyed it! Some highlights:
His quiet life in Ireland with two teenage sons: “I have a couple of friends who are actors but a majority of them are not. The majority of my buddies are not in the business. I also love not working. And I think for me a lot of research as an actor is just f–king living, and, you know, having a normal life doing regular things and just being able to observe, and be, in that sort of lovely flow of humanity. If you can’t do that because you’re going from film festival to movie set to promotions…I mean that’s The Bubble. I’m not saying that makes you any better or less as an actor, but it’s just a world that I couldn’t exist in. I find it would be very limiting on what you can experience as a human being, you know?”
He loves to sleep: “I sleep a lot. I do 10-hour sleeps.” He tries to do one movie a year, preferably not in summer, when he likes to spend most of his time on the west coast of Ireland doing nothing much but finding new music for his radio program on BBC 6 or walking his black Lab, Scout. He is perfectly happy to be “unemployed” while he waits for the right new film to come his way.
He was relieved to cut short the Oppy promotion because of the SAG strike: “I think it’s a broken model,” he said of red-carpet interviews and junkets. Outdated and a drag for actors. “The model is—everybody is so bored.” Look what happened when they went on strike, he said. It all stopped. But the fact that the film was good, and Barbie was good, two at the same time, people going crazy—it just shows you don’t need it. “Same was the case with Peaky Blinders. The first three seasons there was no advertising, a tiny show on BBC Two; it just caught fire because people talked to each other about it. It’s like Joanne Woodward said. ‘Acting is like sex—do it, don’t talk about it.’ ”
He actually loves talking about the work: “People always used to say to me, ‘He has reservations’ or ‘He’s a difficult interviewee.’ Not really! I love talking about work, about art. What I struggle with, and find unnecessary, and unhelpful about what I want to do, is: ‘Tell me about yourself…’ ”
His life changed in August 1996: “It all happened to me in one month, in August ’96: We got offered a record deal, I failed my law exams, I got the part in Disco Pigs, and I met my wife. I now look back and go: Oh, shit, I didn’t know then how important all these things were—the sort of domino effect that they would have on my life.” I asked Murphy, who has, in the past, said he identified as an atheist, if such a confluence ever made him wonder if there was indeed a higher power organizing all of this. “Ohhh,” he said. “I love the chaos and the randomness. I love the beauty of the unexpected.”
He doesn’t do photos with fans: “Oh, I don’t do photos,” he said, to a disappointed lad, who nonetheless got 20 seconds of Murphy’s time to chat. “Once I started doing that it changed my life. I just think it’s better to say hello, and have a little conversation. I tell that to a lot of people, you know, actor friends of mine, and they’re just like: I feel so bad. But you don’t need a photo record of everywhere you’ve been in a day.”
He loves Paul Mescal. “He is the real deal. He is like a true movie star. They don’t come along that often. But luckily, they seem mostly to come from Ireland. It’s a good time to be an Irish actor, it seems.”
He admires Nolan, who doesn’t use email or have a smartphone. “I aspire to that life. I was just clearing stuff off my phone, but have to keep the apps for music and music discovery. I still have all my CDs and DVDs and Blu-Rays. I cannot get rid of them. I did get rid of my VHS, though. I just left them on the street because nobody wanted them. I went and brought them to a library and was like, Look at this pretentious collection of art films!—and they were like, No thanks, man…”
I still have DVDs too and I’m not giving them up for anything. Maybe that’s dated and impossibly analog but I have collected physical media all my life and I will not stop! I still have CDs as well but mostly because I’m a pack rat. That’s interesting that he also doesn’t do fan photos but he’ll have a conversation with fans. It’s probably easier to do in Ireland. It’s fascinating to hear him talk about how the promotion/junket model is broken too – I think it is as well, but I’m curious what Cillian thinks should replace it. I would say… more sit-down interviews (like this one) ahead of time and then just a regular premiere schedule within a two-week period, maybe with press conferences (like they do at film festivals).
Cover & IG courtesy of GQ.