The most brilliant actor Cillian Murphy has ever worked with: “Just extraordinary”
After winning an Oscar for his portrayal of the titular physicist J Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan’s sweeping biopic last year, Cillian Murphy solidified himself as one of the greatest actors of his generation. In reality, he’s been at it for years, starting with roles in Danny Boyle’s early work like 28 Days Later and Sunshine, and then in Nolan’s Batman franchise and that so-bad-but-so-good thriller Red Eye.
Whether he’s playing a baddie, a hero, or a deeply flawed antihero, Murphy is riveting. His cold blue stare might be the reason he’s excelled at playing villains, but there is always something vulnerable there, too, which makes him endearing in nearly every performance. His role in Oppenheimer felt more like a long overdue showcase for the talents he’s been exhibiting for years rather than a challenge he had to up his game to meet. He is the beating heart of the film despite the star-studded cast, and his performance is magnetic.
Still, Murphy felt outflanked by one of his co-stars. He had plenty of them, too. Emily Blunt played his wife, Kitty Oppenheimer. Matt Damon played the director of the Manhattan Project, Leslie Groves. Florence Pugh played his on-again-off-again lover, Jean Tatlock. And Tom Conti played Albert Einstein. But it was Robert Downey Jr who stunned Murphy more than anyone else.
In the film, Downey plays Lewis Strauss, a high-ranking member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission who makes it his mission to trash Oppenheimer’s reputation and strip him of his security clearance in a private hearing. You might think that the actor playing his character’s enemy would be Murphy’s least favourite colleague, but he was bowled over by Downey’s ability to improvise.
The movie is three hours long, and Murphy is in almost every scene. Memorising the script would have been nearly impossible, but he did his best. When he turned up to do his scenes with Downey, however, he found that the specific lines he’d learned had to be thrown out. “It was quite loose and quite improvisational,” he said in an interview with GQ. “I mean, acting with him was just extraordinary. He’s just electrifying, the most available, engaged, present, unpredictably brilliant actor I’ve ever worked with.”
Some actors might panic about having to work opposite an unpredictable co-star, but it clearly worked for Murphy and for the film as a whole. While Murphy took home the ‘Best Actor’ Oscar, Downey went home with the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ statuette. Just as the role of Oppenheimer gave Murphy a long-overdue opportunity to demonstrate his immense gifts as an actor, the role of Strauss finally gave Downey an opportunity to show that he can do far more than land a snarky punchline in an Iron Man suit.
As for how Downey felt about Murphy’s performance, it’s safe to say that the admiration was mutual. “It’s literally a generation-defining performance,” he said in a joint interview with Murphy on Extra TV (via The Irish Star). “It was a gift to do all these scenes with you as you carry this film as exceptionally as you do was just an honour.”
