The only actor who left Cillian Murphy starstruck: “I am in awe of you and I loved your films”
There are some actors who emanate enthusiasm. Jack Black, Anne Hathaway, Will Smith, and Jennifer Lawrence channel pure, unadulterated energy on and off screen, making them easy talk show guests and unabashed fanboys and girls. One need only see footage of Black discussing Kate Winslet or the moment when Lawrence saw Jack Nicholson on the red carpet. There is something extremely endearing about a top-tier actor being reduced to a puddle of admiration when their professional hero appears, even if it’s partly an act.
On the other end of the spectrum are the stars who keep their cards close to their chest. In all fairness, this probably has more to do with modesty and the desire to keep themselves to themselves rather than any sense of superiority. This is where Cillian Murphy comes in. The Oscar winner has never gone out of his way to dominate the news cycle, and he’s generally known as a very private person. However, there was one occasion when he just couldn’t keep himself from fawning.
In a 2004 interview with The Times, the 28 Days Later star revealed that there was only one actor who forced him out of his shell. “Philip Seymour Hoffman is the only actor I ever approached,” he said. “I was on a plane to New York with him once. He was waiting for his baggage, and I was standing around for ages like a stalker.”
Movie stars are probably pretty used to that sort of behaviour, though most of them try to avoid it by not hanging around baggage claim. The fact that Hoffman was doing so is surprising, although he did have the uncanny ability to disappear into character and may have been equally masterful at disguising himself as a member of the public when it suited him.
At the time of the interview, Murphy was more than two decades away from his Oppenheimer Oscar and hadn’t even collaborated with Christopher Nolan for the first time on Batman Begins. Depending on when his interaction with Hoffman happened, it’s possible that he hadn’t even gotten his big break in 28 Days Later yet.
Hoffman would also have been at an early stage in his career. For a while, he was the actor who showed up all too briefly in movies like Magnolia, Almost Famous, and Punch-Drunk Love, but from the beginning, he was the type of performer who left his peers in awe. He would finally earn the respect he deserved with movies like Capote and The Master, but when he died tragically in 2014, it still felt as though he had much more potential to explore.
According to Murphy, his interaction with Hoffman was a bit awkward. “I went up and I said: ‘Listen man, I have to say that I am just in awe of you, and I loved all your films,’” he recalled. “And he blushed, and then I blushed. And I just left.” That, if anything, is a perfect example of why it’s probably better to leave celebrities alone if you see them in public.
