Oppenheimer, Peaky Blinders’ Cillian Murphy: Everything to know

Cillian Murphy is known all over the world for his depiction of the dangerous gang leader Tommy Shelby in BBC’s gangster family epic: Peaky Blinders.

In regards to his personal life, the Irish stage and cinema star often keeps details very much to himself, so here’s everything to know about the Oppenheimer star.

Early Life:

Born on May 25, 1976, Murphy comes from a family of teachers. The heartthrob started writing and performing songs at the age of 10, and later formed a band with his brother Páidi and named it The Sons of Mr. Green Genes. 

The duo made impressive music and were offered a five album deal from Acid Jazz Records, which they rejected due to the low compensation they were offered for Murphy’s compositions.

Discussing the record deal, he later told The Armchair Expert podcast: “In retrospect, the music industry is just terrible. Unless you're super successful it's really hard to make a living. We’d have crashed and burned pretty quickly in that industry,”

Education and theatrical debut:

Murphy took up Law at the University College Cork but failed his first exams as he "had no ambitions to do it".

“I foolishly decided to pursue a law degree. But I was playing music. I was playing in a band, and I just started acting then.”

“Those two things were happening and they became much more important than going to college. I didn't really go in at all, and I failed gloriously in the first year.”

After seeing a local production of A Clockwork Orange, he realzed that his talents lay in acting and began acting in local plays. The Red Eye alum got his first professional acting debut with Enda Walsh’s Disco Pigs.

He went on to star in many theatre productions, including Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (1998), The Country Boy, and Juno and the Paycock (both 1999). The theatre productions led to indie films like On the Edge and the film adaptation of Disco Pigs. He moved to London in 2001.

'28 Days Later' and early Hollywood journey:

2002 saw the rise of Cillian Murphy in Hollywood with his role as a lone pandemic survivor in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. The film was not only successful in Britain but also a hit with North Americans. 

The movie got Murphy a nomination for Best Newcomer at the 8th Empire Awards, and Breakthrough Male Performance at the 2004 MTV Movie Awards.

Reminiscing about his first major role, Murphy said: “The film did so well. And you watch zombie stuff [now], we were the first people to make zombies run, and [that] changed everything. It has a very special place in my heart, that movie.”

Murphy wins critics over with villainous roles:

Murphy won the critics over as he began playing villainous roles in 2005. His portrayal of Dr. Jonathan Crane (whose alter ego is the supervillain Scarecrow) in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins was hailed by critics. 

The New York Times film critic Manhola Dargis dubbed him a “picture-perfect villain” and added that his "baby blues look cold enough to freeze water and his wolfish leer suggests its own terrors.”(sic)

He also played the antagonist in Wes Craven’s thriller Red Eye. The film features an overnight flight where Jackson Rippner (Cillian Murphy), a terrorist forces Rachel McAdams into helping him a top U.S. official.

Praising his performance, The New Yorker’s David Denby wrote: "Cillian Murphy, who has angelic looks that can turn sinister, is one of the most elegantly seductive monsters in recent movies.”

His most famous and beloved role of Thomas Shelby came in 2013 in BBC's Peaky Blinders and set him up for worldwide recognition. Murphy plays the leader of a family gang in the post World War I period.

He worked with Nolan again in Dunkirk, and now plays the lead in the high anticipated Oppenheimer, which is the story of American Scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in the invention of the atomic bomb.

Marriage and personal life:

He met his now wife, Irish artist Yvonne McGuinness in 1996 during one of his band’s shows and the pair tied the knot in 2004. The couple have two children together, Malachy, 17, and Aran, 16.

Speaking about his wife’s support toward his career, he told GQ: “I couldn't do this without [my wife] and her understanding. But it is a struggle.”

"I make sure that I try not to go from job to job to job, because that means you live in a bubble of set, hotel, set, hotel, plane, film festivals - which, to me, is not reality. So I just check out from that for six months a year."(sic)

Murphy is quite the Irish national and moved to Dublin with his family in 2015 to return to his country and parents. “We wanted the kids to be Irish, and they were sort of at that age where they were preteens and they had very posh English accents and I wasn’t appreciating that too much. Our parents are a certain age and it was just a nice time to come home.”

The 47-year-old now lives in a Victorian townhouse in Dublin with his wife and two kids.