Why having two back-to-back hit movies “pissed off” Cillian Murphy
When the book is written on this era of cinema, there will be quite a large chapter devoted to Cillian Murphy.
The skinny superstar isn’t just one of the finest actors of his generation, but he’s also the most headstrong. Seemingly as comfortable in a major blockbuster as in a small independent drama, Murphy has always done exceedingly well picking his projects, protecting his reputation and personal life better than almost any other actor working today, which you really have to admire.
One of the other remarkable things about his career is how different so many of his most famous roles are from each other, where his Oscar-winning performance as J Robert Oppenheimer is absolutely nothing like his turn as Jim in 28 Days Later or as Thomas Shelby in Peaky Blinders. A master of accents, he is able to seamlessly shift into basically any role, making him an invaluable asset to any filmmaker lucky enough to land his services.
This ‘character actor’ mentality is baked deep into Murphy’s ethos, as he absolutely hates the thought of being typecast, which is what he explained to the AV Club. In 2005, he was in two movies back-to-back playing very similar characters, which he attributed to a “quirk of distribution”, stating, “I did Batman [Begins] and then I went off and did Breakfast on Pluto, then I went to do Red Eye, but Batman and Red Eye ended up coming out in the same year, so I was the go-to bad guy.”
He revealed, “I was pissed off about that, to be honest, because your whole career is based on variety in playing a bunch of different characters, which I think I’d demonstrated up to that point. It just happened that they came out one after the other… For a year, I thought I was set up with the bad guy tag, but thankfully, I’ve shut that off.”
The Irishman, who had been passed over for the title role in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, plays the villainous Scarecrow, whose famous ‘fear toxin’ plays a key role in the plot. Murphy became something of an unofficial mascot for the franchise, making brief appearances in both The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, and a kind of talisman for Nolan, having appeared in a total of six of the director’s films since first donning the Scarecrow mask.
Directed by the great Wes Craven, Red Eye hasn’t had quite the same cultural legacy as Batman Begins, which sees Murphy start as a terrorist who kidnaps hotel manager Rachel McAdams as part of a plot to assassinate a high-ranking US government official. The film was a critical hit and a moderate commercial success, but now finds itself occupying more of a cult status, with Murphy himself declaring he’s had a complicated relationship with it over the years.
While some actors are happy to play the same character over and over again, not naming any names, but you know who we mean, it’s clear that’s not what Murphy’s about. One of the joys of acting is the opportunity to live somebody else’s life, so why would you only want to do that with one type of person, and don’t say money, even if that is the answer.
