Cillian Murphy would go to hell and back for Ron Howard: “You’d do anything for him”
In 2015, Ron Howard assembled one of the best casts of his illustrious career for a historical drama based on a harrowing real-life event that inspired one of the most famous pieces of 19th-century literature.
The film starred Chris Hemsworth and Tom Holland, the former in a brief break from Marvel duties and the latter the year before he joined the MCU. It also featured esteemed thespians like Brendan Gleeson, Michelle Fairley, and Ben Whishaw. However, it would be a future Oscar-winner who seemed to form the most profound bond with Howard while working on the picture.
When Howard first approached prospective cast members about coming aboard In the Heart of the Sea, he warned them that the production would push them to their physical and mental limits. The movie was about the New England whaling ship Essex, which was sunk by a giant whale in 1820. Howard knew this subject matter was very profound, so he intended to honour the real men who lost their lives by shooting his film in as realistic a manner as possible.
Cillian Murphy, who won the ‘Best Actor’ Academy Award in 2024 for Oppenheimer, revealed that Howard told him the cast would be wet, miserable, and hungry for much of the shoot. In order to embody the look of sailors who became lost at sea, they all had to go on a 500-600-calorie-per-day crash diet, which made the physical efforts of portraying sailors battling the elements, a cumbersome vessel, and an enormous sea beast all the more draining.
However, even though the shoot was one of the toughest of Murphy’s career, he never wavered from his commitment to the project for one reason. “When you’re doing it for Ron Howard,” Murphy told Den of Geek, “For you, Ron, we’ll do it. You have to really trust in your director and believe in your director’s vision to go to those lengths.”
What was it about the legendary Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind director that engendered such devotion from an experienced, seen-it-all performer like Murphy, though? “Ron is just a terrifically human person,” the 28 Days Later star explained. “Like, he’s so warm and approachable. You’d do anything for him. He was an actor, so he understands actors very, very well.”
According to Murphy, one of Howard’s greatest skills was being able to predict what his actors were about to say before they even uttered the words. His history as an actor truly gave him empathy and understanding for what a cast goes through on a project, making him fairly unique among Hollywood’s elite helmers.
“Not all directors have that,” Murphy insisted. “He enjoys the company of actors. Not all directors have that. So, that was one thing that was unique about him.”
Murphy also believed Howard was able to remain the same compassionate, trustworthy, understanding figurehead throughout the production, despite it pushing everyone to their limits. “He never lost it,” Murphy said. “All the way through these very difficult set-ups, he was always together, calm and focused, and that percolates down to the cast and to the crew.”
Unfortunately, In the Heart of the Sea wasn’t as well-received as Howard and his incredible cast would have liked. Perhaps the story of the incident that inspired Herman Melville’s Moby Dick was a tough sell in 2015, or maybe the movie was too old-fashioned for its own good. However, Murphy seemed perfectly happy with the film he’d made, because its throwback nature was precisely why he signed up for it in the first place.
“It seemed to me like one of those old-fashioned movies I would watch on a Sunday afternoon with my dad,” Murphy smiled. “I remember watching Mutiny On The Bounty and being just blown away by it. I think reading the script, it had a similar appeal to me. It felt like it was old-fashioned in the best way possible.”
