“I have very little interest in the lighter side of storytelling”: Cillian Murphy on his new film, Steve, and his career so far

1996 was the year everything changed for Cillian Murphy. In the space of one month, he dropped out of his law degree, met his future wife, the artist Yvonne McGuinness, and was cast in Disco Pigs, an explosive play by Enda Walsh about two violently co-dependent teens, written in a tripped-out version of Cork dialect. A record deal for his acid-jazz band Sons of Mr Green Genes was also in the mix that year, but as Disco Pigs travelled the globe and he began to secure film roles, acting took over. “That was a massive hinge moment in my life,” says Murphy. “It felt to me like such a time of potential, like the future was there to be taken”.

He became a leading man early on in Danny Boyle’s enduring zombie apocalypse 28 Days Later (2002), as well as Irish black comedies like John Carney’s On the Edge (2001) and John Crowley’s Intermission (2003), an ensemble crime caper that, for reasons only a viewing of the film can explain, led many unfortunate people to try adding brown sauce to their tea. “He had the perfect balance of vulnerability for the role and a certain formlessness – there was a sort of innocence about him,” says Crowley, remembering when he first cast Murphy. “In a way he’s an unlikely superstar. Not because of the work – the work’s always been amazing – but you don’t always know. It’s such a random and narrow-minded industry about what pops… He was never ‘the next’ anything really. He was sort of always too Cillian to be that… In a way it took a few filmmakers to back him.”

One of those filmmakers was Christopher Nolan, who put Murphy in five supporting roles before delivering the Oppenheimer (2023) script with a note: “Dearest Cillian. Finally, a chance to see you lead.” 

It was Murphy’s second role as a tormented physicist, after Robert Capa in Boyle’s underrated climate change sci-fi Sunshine (2007). By the time of Oppenheimer’s release, he was almost a decade into life as Birmingham gang boss Tommy Shelby on Peaky Blinders (2013-22) – a show so popular it was recently adapted into a piece of dance theatre. But his performance as the morally flawed ‘father of the atom bomb’ brought a stratospheric fame – the ‘record-breaking box-office’ kind, the Best Actor Oscar-winning kind. The actors’ strike mostly spared him junket promotion – Murphy is not built for viral videos where he cuddles puppies or votes on whether a song is a ‘BOppenheimer, or a FlOppenheimer’ (I made that one up, but you catch my drift).

Instead of riding that wave to blockbuster music biopics or disappearing into the black hole of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Murphy has found his own comfort level with fame by moving into producing – surrounding himself with long-time collaborators to get films off the ground. It almost feels reductive to call Small Things Like These (2024), the first film from his production company Big Things Films, a ‘passion project’, but that’s what it was – as well as being an artistic reunion. Claire Keegan’s minimalist novella about Bill Furlong, a coal merchant grappling with the unspoken wrongs of his town’s Magdalene laundry, was adapted by Enda Walsh, and starred Murphy’s Disco Pigs co-star Eileen Walsh. He signed on Tim Mielants, a Belgian indie filmmaker he’d worked with on Peaky Blinders, to direct. “We try to push each other. We love to take the scary routes, to make bold decisions,” says Mielants.

You can tell when somebody really knows Murphy when they start casually referring to him as ‘Cill’. That’s how it is for Mielants, and the author Max Porter, who first met the actor when he starred in the demanding stage adaptation of his 2015 novella Grief Is the Thing with Feathers. During lockdown, they created the short film All of This Unreal Time (2021), a “psycholo-delic apology rant”, according to the publisher of the poetic source text, which starred Murphy and was in part built on the pair’s conversations about music, fatherhood and guilt, set to a score by Aaron and Bryce Dessner and Jon Hopkins. Eager to work together again, Porter turned to Shy, his propulsive novella told from the perspective of a troubled teen as he absconds from his reform school. He turned the book on its head, switching its central focus to create a film script about the school’s caring but strung-out headmaster.

When I sit down with Murphy to talk about the film, Steve, the word that comes up again and again is ‘collaboration’. Almost every time he begins a sentence with ‘I’, he corrects himself to ‘we…’ It’s a personal role for the actor, who was raised by two teachers, and he knows exactly how to communicate the nerve-jangling toll the job exacts on the body and mind. The film is set in 1996, that “hinge moment” for Murphy, but Steve’s students are presented with a very different kind of future, one that’s limited by a school system that does not know what to do with them, and breaks the teachers who do.

Steve is again directed by Mielants, and while it’s radically different to Small Things Like These, there is a kinship in the stories Murphy has chosen to tell since Oppenheimer – novelistic films that examine acts of corruption and moral turpitude on a smaller scale, whether it’s a mafioso-like nun telling a young girl her abuse was just “a big load of nothing”, or the smile of a wealthy trustee as he announces to a team of exhausted teachers that he’ll be shutting down their school by Christmas.

Katie McCabe: You’re beginning to build a body of work with the author Max Porter – you starred in the theatre production of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, but also the short film All of This Unreal Time, which Porter adapted in part from conversations you shared. What’s your working relationship like now?

Cillian Murphy: I have such admiration for him as a writer and as a human being. He’s one of those people that actually follows through on what they believe in, in every way. And that’s rare enough these days. He’s not just saying it, he means it. We connected really quickly when we made that play. And stayed fast friends.

We have a laugh, there’s a lot of messing, but we go really deep when we have conversations and All of This Unreal Time was just a conversation about fatherhood and masculinity and boys and all of that. And then Shy obviously touches on similar themes. One of the greatest experiences of my life was that myself and Mary Hickson, my friend who produced All of This Unreal Time, and Max were away together in the west of Ireland and Max had a proof copy of Shy. He read it to us, non-stop, just through. It was truly one of the most magic moments I’ve ever had.

But at that point I never thought about making it into a film. We didn’t discuss it, it was all about the kid and there was no way in. And then we made Small Things Like These and I was trying to figure out what the next thing would be. When Max was writing Shy, he wrote this whole section on Steve that didn’t end up in the novel. He was like: “Maybe we could sort of turn it on its axis in terms of how we look at the story and see it from Steve’s point of view, but make the two characters interconnected.”

There are a lot of films and TV shows being made right now about what it means to raise young men, I don’t know if you saw Adolescence…

Everyone brings it up and it’s understandable because there’s a crossover. I think it was one of the greatest achievements in modern television.

What kind of fears do you feel you and Porter share about what it’s like to raise teenage boys?

Well, first of all, I should qualify this by saying, we’re aware that the boys we’re raising are extremely privileged youngsters who get every opportunity in life and they’re loved and have a stable home and the kids in this film don’t have any of that. And they’re the most vulnerable kids.

A lot of this kind of school exclusion now, particularly in the UK – the majority of the kids have autism or ADHD. And through cuts, there’s less places for them to go. I think the reason Max set it in the 1990s was to talk about what’s happening now, but not make it a polemic. Not that Adolescence is in any way, it’s a beautiful piece of art. They succeeded. But it’s hard to write about exactly this moment.

Whereas these problems are perennial and if you look back at the 1990s, the kids were just as isolated and struggling just as much – it’s just turned up to fucking eleven with social media and phones. What I think Max believes, and what I also believe, is that that sort of brutality and conformity and punishment and all of that doesn’t work.

What this reform school, or whatever you want to call it, is trying to do is connect with the kids. And it was special for me because my mum and dad are both retired teachers and my grandfather was a headmaster. All my aunties and uncles are teachers. My mum worked and then raised us. They were working in the mainstream system, but they were still standing in front of 35 kids going through puberty and teaching and then coming home and looking after the four of us. And so I guess I understand how much it takes from people.

It must have been something you saw a lot growing up because I understand that your dad was not only a teacher, he was a cigire – an inspector who assesses teachers’ performance. Did you draw on any of those memories, to capture the physical drain on teachers like Steve?

I could see that in both my parents, because they took their jobs very seriously. And they really, really cared about their jobs. I remember my dad was the inspector in my primary school when I was the fucking troublesome child. Genuinely. It was weird… I was just a pain in the ass, a messer, but how to navigate all of that? It takes a lot, emotionally, from teachers. And it takes a lot of their time. People say, “Oh, they’ve got three months off.” If you were doing that sort of work, every day, then you’d need three months off at least. You know what I mean? We all know how important a good teacher is, and we all know how a bad teacher or a bad experience can fuck your life up. It is kind of like a love letter to teachers. That’s what the film is supposed to be really.

It is interesting that Steve is set in 1996, as you’ve spoken about that as a pivotal year in your life, when you got your start as an actor in Disco Pigs, and met your wife, Yvonne McGuinness. Did the significance of that year influence the film for you in any way?

That was a massive hinge moment in my life. I know all middle-aged people say this, but it was a different time. It was a completely different time. And I remember it felt to me, at that point, like such a time of potential. And also, compared to now, it felt like, in the world, the grown-ups were in charge. And it felt like the future was there to be taken, whereas I don’t know if kids feel that now. And the music was fucking extraordinary back then. The people that made Steve are all around the same age, so we all would’ve been the same age as those kids in the film. I suppose that does give you some sort of an insight.

We see Steve running from room to room, always trying to grab five minutes. It kind of reminded me of Birdman [2014], as there’s this chaotic, electric feeling that follows the character around the school. I wondered if being a headmaster is at all similar to being a stage actor?

I don’t know. It’s an interesting analogy. I guess he’s just on all the time. We were very keen at the beginning – and Tim Mielants was brilliant about this… at the beginning it’s all very Dogme, handheld, and Steve can’t get a fucking second. There’s the film crew, the kids are fighting, the people want a word and he is running down… That thing of never getting to finish an action, or finish a thought or finish an impulse. You’re always clang clang clang. What would that do to your head? It’s alluded to what may have happened to him – the car crash. So, of course, you fucking medicate. Of course he would hide shit just to get a minute’s reprieve from the chaos. I don’t know how people work like that. It’s so selfless. For the real people, I mean.

As far back as your first lead role in On the Edge, you were known for doing a lot of research for your characters. Is that still how you approach things?

Generally, yeah. I remember I went to talk to counsellors who worked with kids [for On the Edge]. But Steve was less so because I felt like I’d lived that experience through my parents. And I had been that shithead in the class as well. It was written bespoke for me. I did talk to people who’d recovered from opioid addiction. I just wanted him to be in a state of complete anxiety – jangly and exhausted. 

We shot everything in order, which I’ve not done since The Wind That Shakes the Barley [2006] and it’s the greatest, most liberating thing you can do because everyone knows where we’re headed. Everybody knows the emotional arc and everyone’s feeling it. It was the same for Jay [Lycurgo, who plays Shy]. I’m not whingeing, but everyone was a bit fucked up by it, because it’s life and death shit. It was quite fun on set, but everyone needed a holiday after.

Tim Mielants, Steve’s director, also directed your last film, Small Things Like These, which told such a specific story from Irish history, about the Magdalene laundries. Mielants is Belgian, and I remember when it came out you mentioned that having someone with a different cultural background can be a benefit. How do you feel about that now?

I feel there’s a lot of proof of that. [The Scottish actor and director] Peter Mullan did The Magdalene Sisters [2002] and did a brilliant job. ’71 [2014] was made by Yann Demange [a director of French and Algerian descent who grew up in London]. Bloody Sunday [2002] is made by Paul Greengrass [who is English]. Sometimes I think it’s better because you can step out of it. And you’re not slightly straitjacketed by it, because you don’t have the perspective. That’s not to say Irish people can’t make those stories, absolutely they can. There’s gazillions of examples of that. It’s just, working with Tim on Peaky Blinders I had seen this real sensitivity that he had and he didn’t really get to explore that in the show, because it’s so on the front foot. Then he made Patrick [2019], one of my favourite films. It’s so sensitive and beautiful.

Obviously Belgium has gone through its own reckoning with institutions in the church. And so I just felt he was perfect for it. When we were thinking about Steve, I instantly said it has to be Tim because he comes from a documentary background too. He has a very loose way of working. He storyboards everything. And researches for months and months. I knew that him and Max would connect. Which they did. It’s really no coincidence that Tim Mielants has been the glue for both of these films.

Eileen Walsh, who was your co-star in the theatre production of Disco Pigs, starred alongside you in Small Things Like These. I wondered if by casting Eileen, there was an element of wanting to get back to that early-career freedom and fearlessness?

Maybe subconsciously there was. The thing that has always been a constant in my work is that I’m a serial re-collaborator. And I have these long-term relationships with writers and directors that have sustained. Making that piece of theatre with Eileen was probably the most formative thing in my whole career. Obviously I’ve worked with Enda an awful lot since. Then it just felt like the universe was telling us that we had to come back together. And I remember the first scene we shot together, Tim was there behind the camera like: “You can fucking feel the 30 years between ye.” And you can’t act that. There’s just this comfort and this ease between us. And, of course, she’s the most extraordinary actor, one of the greats. So that helps. But also it helps that we remain friends, and our kids are friends, and her and my wife are really good friends.

I truly believe – and maybe it’s only for me – but I need that comfort of trust and friendship and shorthand when I work. That’s when I do my best work. I can work with people for the first time for sure because when you’re a gun for hire, that’s what you do. But for me, the richest work comes from that – the long, long relationships.

And do you feel like Oppenheimer has given you a bit more freedom to pursue that kind of collaboration?

I mean, it probably helped. Small Things Like These was set up before I made Oppenheimer. Steve came after it. And I have to give a lot of credit to Netflix because Anne Mensah [Netflix’s UK vice-president of content] read the script and then said yes over a weekend. You know, that’s rare and brilliant and they’re giving it a theatrical release. If it gets some momentum, there’s potentially a hundred million people… I don’t know how many subscribers there are, but millions and millions of people can watch this. So that is probably more to do with the courage of her, rather than me. But if it has had any effect, I’ll take it!

You’ve recently been working with Danny Boyle again as executive producer on 28 Years Later. How much can you tell us about 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, the next film in the series, which was shot back to back with 28 Years Later?

Well, he’s totally let the cat out of the bag! I’m in the new film, which Nia DaCosta directed. If that does well, Danny Boyle and I will make the third one together – so it’s all fingers crossed at this stage. 28 Days Later was a very important film for me. Making that changed things for me. And then I made two films with him. So, again, it feels like this other relationship where there was a long gap. But I would dearly love to make that with him, so… hopefully.

You’ve had so many different roles, but I find they often have this Jekyll and Hyde effect. Are you drawn to that slightly damaged male psyche?

I suppose I’m not really interested in playing someone who’s in a position of power or contentment or satisfaction because I don’t think anyone actually really is. And the pieces of art I identify with are the ones that explore how fucking difficult it is just to get up and out of bed and get through the day. And to not think that you’re gonna fucking die, everybody you love is gonna die and the world’s going to end… Like, do we all go “La la, la, la, la, la, la, la la”? And then I’m also very interested in the fragility of it all. Like when you have kids.

But we get through it with humour and we get through it with fucking alcohol and we get through it with caffeine and we soldier on and the human mind is this unbelievably robust thing, most of the time. But why people respond to these broken or damaged characters is because they see themselves writ large in that. Even gangsters, like Tommy Shelby [in Peaky Blinders], who is reprehensible in many, many ways, people go, “Oh, well, I mean, I totally see that.” So, to me, that’s real life now. It is heightened and it’s entertaining, hopefully, but I can only come at it from a masculine point of view because I’m a man. I have really very little interest in the lighter side of storytelling. I did a lot of physical comedy with Enda [Walsh] and we’ve done a lot of black comedy and I love all of that. But I think the really important work that will remain, is the stuff that is scratching at the bigger questions. The big shit. That’s a really pretentious answer. But that’s what I think.

I was listening to this old interview with you, talking about your first major theatre experience, and how it felt so dangerous and sexy – it was a production of A Clockwork Orange by Corcadorca, the company that would eventually produce Disco Pigs. Was there a moment when you had that same feeling about screen acting?

There are so many. I can’t remember one performance particularly, or one eureka moment. But Brendan Gleeson in The General [1998] – I remember seeing that and going “Holy fuck!”. That was so amazing. This character that you’re supposed to hate, and you can’t. And he’s one of my acting heroes. But yeah, I’ve always been attracted to that, light and shade, that “What the fuck?”… hard to pin down [aspect]. Ambiguity is the most important thing in stories.

Your youngest son, Aran, is acting now, and first appeared in the stage production Hamnet in 2017. Did seeing it through his eyes change anything for you?

Back then it did, because he was just so free. It was not conscious. He would be, like, eating a Kit Kat and he’d walk on stage and deliver a monologue. It was kind of effortless. Now he’s 18 and he is still working. But it’s very different now because he’s a developed adult and you allow in other shit, all the insecurities and self-doubt and all of that comes in. But that’s why it’s wonderful working with kids – because they’re just so present.

They’re not relying on technique or anything. They’re just playing. When you’re trying to do really good work, you don’t want it to be self-conscious or intellectual. You want it to be present. I remember watching him and going, “Little fucker!” He can do all that and he has all of it. But as you get older, you can’t ever stay in that state, you know?

I have always thought of you as a very physical actor – particularly on stage. Steve is a very physical role in a lot of ways as you’re communicating the toll the job takes on his body. How has your approach to physicality in acting changed as you’ve got older?

It’s just harder with the body. I’ll be fifty next year. It’s harder to get to that place. The last play I did was with Max and Enda [Grief Is the Thing with Feathers in 2019]. And it absolutely broke me. I mean, the difference between – well, first it was the subject matter, but I was leppin’ all over the place. And the difference between being in your mid-forties to being in your late thirties – the body just doesn’t want to play ball. So I’m taking a little break from theatre. I just beat myself up and I just needed to stop. And film acting is tiring as well, but it’s about capturing moments. I absolutely adore theatre and I think I learned most on the stage. I learned way more on the stage than I’ve ever learned on film, on a set. But I just needed to rest. And I’m still resting.

Oppenheimer was physically demanding in its own way too – it involved a lot of weight loss and preparation. But you also went straight from that role, and winning the Best Actor Oscar, to working on Small Things Like These.

I’m always hesitant to make this big deal about it: “Oh my God.” You know, it’s putting on voices and dressing up – it’s quite a frivolous job. We’re not surgeons or firemen or nurses, you know what I mean? And inevitably if you do anything as best you can, it exacts some sort of cost, doesn’t it? I choose it. I ask for that stuff, but I don’t ask for any sympathy. I throw my eyes to heaven when I hear other actors whingeing.

When you were doing press for Oppenheimer in 2023, you said you’d only do the Peaky Blinders movie if the script was right. The film – titled The Immortal Man – actually wrapped shooting in 2024. What happened when you decided to move ahead?

We were working away on the script the whole time. I was just trying to fob off the press. The script just got to the place. It was just brilliant. So me and Steve [Knight], we’ve been talking about it since we were shooting series six, 2020. Then Tom Harper came on. And then it all clicked and Steve just nailed it. I’m really happy with it.

Some years ago, you co-wrote a short film, a crime comedy called The Watchmen [2001], with Paloma Baeza. Do you ever see yourself writing again, now you’re embedded in other areas of the filmmaking process?

No. I don’t think I’m a writer – no, I’m definitely not a writer and I’m not a director. I really like producing. I really like being in the edit, with directors who allow you into the edit. But no. When you work with people like Enda [Walsh] or Max [Porter], or you know, fucking Chris Nolan, or Alex Garland… you’re like, you can’t touch that. That’s a lifelong graft to get to that level of genius. I’m very happy doing what I’m doing. I’m enjoying generating work and putting people together.

Small Things Like These and Shy are both books of intense interiority. Are there other writers’ works you have your eye on to adapt?

It’s a bit of a curse, because I’m a big reader, but now I can’t read anything without going, “Well, this would be a great film or limited TV show” and it’s kind of ruined my reading experience. So I have to sort of take off the adaptation goggles when I’m reading now. Particularly Irish writers. But we’re always looking – we have stuff in development.

Emma Stone was quoted as saying, “Producing is like parenting – every kid needs different things.” What do you feel makes a good producer?

I feel like, if someone comes to you with a problem, you might not know the solution but you have to say, “Leave it with me.” And you go and pull your hair out, but you figure it out. I did three seasons of Peaky Blinders [as producer] as well, so I learned a lot there. 

And a lot of it is letting, mostly the director but also the actors and the crew and the heads of department, feel like they have some control and feel they can do it. I have to say, though, I’m working with [Steve’s producer] Alan Moloney, who’s one of the most experienced producers in the world.

Maybe this is just cultural pop psychology, but I wonder if there’s something in the Irish collaborative approach to art that lends itself to producing. A lot of major producers working now happen to be Irish – Alan Moloney, Ed Guiney, and now yourself.

I think it’s very egoless, you know? I think because Irish people can’t fucking stand it. They won’t allow it. It’s allowed in America for sure. It’s allowed, I think, in the UK a little more. I’ll probably get crucified for this. But you know what I mean? I think in Ireland, we sniff it out. Everyone has an ego right? But I think it’s sort of an arrogance or a showiness – we just can’t… we can’t allow it.

Do you ever feel like you wear your Irishness as a kind of protective shield within the industry – almost like a resistance? I ask because, I find, the longer I live in the UK, the more Irish and culturally specific I become.

We lived here [in London] for 14 years and we moved home and it just felt natural. It was the right thing to do. When I was a young actor, I just wanted to play American and play English and not be restricted by my extraction or by my nationality. Whereas as I get older, I really want to tell our stories more and more. That’s just, I think, to do with age. But I also do think there is something in the air culturally, with film and with music. There seems to be a real energy around it. Not just flag waving, it’s trying to investigate our history and our place in the world. I think it’s all very healthy.

How do you feel about the state of the film industry now you’re working as a producer? You made Small Things Like These with Artist Equity, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s artist-led production company, which uses a new business model.

It’s changing so fast all the time. Even as we speak. You have to be flexible with it. Matt and Ben – that was a great experience. They’re filmmakers, they’re writers, they’re actors, they understood the script.

They let us make the film we wanted to make – that’s ultimately all you can ask for. They were really supportive. You mentioned Adolescence – I still think, the films that connect are always the ones that surprise people. This is a truism, but never, ever underestimate your audience. Never, ever presuppose what they will or won’t enjoy. We’ve all seen, when things try to become homogenised or packaged, it fails gloriously. I’m not at all doom and gloom about the industry. But it is changing really, really quickly.

When Sight and Sound spoke to Christopher Nolan last year, he said that AI researchers are having what they’re calling “an Oppenheimer moment”. Is it something you think about now, as a producer?

It’s funny. I’ve never used ChatGPT. I’ve never interacted with it in any way, whatsoever. My kids are completely all over it. They understand it and appreciate it, and I don’t. I suppose I would be naturally very suspicious of it. I’m sure that it has really positive applications as well, but with technology, as we’ve experienced, it tends to be to create profit rather than help people. That tends to be the pattern. That’s how it goes. So I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the way this goes. But it’s a lot more dangerous than a fucking iPhone. Chris would be way, way better talking about this than I would.

You and your wife Yvonne recently bought the Phoenix Cinema in Dingle in south-west Ireland. Why did that feel important for both of you?

Well, my grandfather is from North Kerry, my dad and mum met down there. I’ve been going there since I was a baby. Dingle is a very special place for me. My dad went to the cinema when he was a kid, I went there when I was a kid. I remember watching Dances with Wolves [1990] there in the balcony, and being just completely spellbound by the whole thing. The cinema’s got this amazing history, and it’s very important to the people, the community. They’ve been advocating for an art centre for decades, literally decades. And then it shut down and it was just derelict. We felt we could make this gesture to return it to the community, so it wouldn’t be made into apartments… So we’re working on it and it’s tough because one-screen cinemas are tough. They’re the best, but it’s a tough sell. It’s too early to tell [what the programming will be], but I’d like it to be multipurpose, not just cinema, so you can have gigs in there, theatre, and maybe artist studios. Make it somewhere the community can be in all the time.

I find it interesting, the way you’re sometimes written about – as if you’re living off the grid, separate from the celebrity world. Like you’re waiting for Christopher Nolan to deliver you scripts in Ogham. But really, you’re just living in Dublin with your family…

[Laughs] Just having a nice time!

Why do you think it seems so strange to people that someone is able to live their family life and do this work at the same time?

It’s boring copy, I suppose. It’s just not interesting, is it? And I’m delighted with that. There’s a romantic thing of the artist that lives outside society. Lives by their own set of rules. It doesn’t have to be like that. I just think that’s a construct really, because it’s more interesting to write about. Also, I think if you’re not on social media, people get frustrated because they’ve no insight. You’re not publishing, you know? A lot of the people I mentioned that I work with, like Chris Nolan and Emma [Thomas], just have a lovely, ordinary, conventional life. But they happen to be extremely good at what they do.

► Steve is in UK cinemas now and on Netflix UK from 3 October.