Oscars 2024: Cillian Murphy wins ‘Best Actor’ for ‘Oppenheimer’ performance
Cillian Murphy has won the Oscar for ‘Best Leading Actor’ for his performance in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, beating Paul Giamatti and Bradley Cooper, who were nominated for The Holdovers and Maestro, respectively.
Becoming the very first Irish actor to take home the illustrious award, Murphy took to the stage to thank his fellow nominees, as well as Nolan and the wider team who brought Oppenheimer to the big screen. “I’m a very proud Irishman standing up here tonight,” he started, “We made a film about the man who created the atomic bomb and, for better or for worse, we’re all living in Oppenheimer’s world, so I’d really like to dedicate this to the peacemakers everywhere”.
A frontrunner to take home the award for quite some time, Murphy was also successful in winning the Bafta for ‘Best Leading Actor’ as well as the Golden Globe award for ‘Best Actor: Motion Picture Drama’ back in January.
Starring in Oppenheimer alongside such acclaimed actors as Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, Emily Blunt and Benny Safdie, Murphy stars as the real-life nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who created the atomic bomb during WWII. A mighty cinematic epic as well as a considered biopic that picked apart the conflicted morality of the individual, Oppenheimer helped resurrect the 2023 summer box office alongside Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.
One of the most curious inspirations behind Murphy’s performance was the iconic British musician David Bowie, with the actor admitting: “We worked very closely with our costume designer to design the clothes…and particularly, I wanted to get his silhouette. He was very fragile, he was very, very slim and I wanted to get that silhouette right”.
Continuing, he added: “Chris sent me a couple of shots of David Bowie, certain periods in David Bowie’s career, like Thin White Duke and around ‘Young Americans’ time…He had these massive trousers and he was so emaciated but so fucking cool…So we used that, weirdly, for some of Oppenheimer’s trousers”.
Murphy now joins a long list of esteemed ‘Best Leading Actor’ winners, including recent winners like Brendan Fraser, Will Smith and Anthony Hopkins.
Where was Oppenheimer filmed?
Oppenheimer was filmed in and around Los Alamos and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Much of the film was shot on location at Manhattan Project National Historical Park, as were the scenes at Oppenheimer’s house. Built in 1929, the house was originally the school for the local ranch until the Manhattan Project stepped into the area, with Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty, and his children living there from 1943 to 1945.
Much of Los Alamos proved a little too modern to be used, however, so Nolan and the production crew recreated many of Los Alamos’ exteriors at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Such maintained the authenticity of the scenes without having to spend millions of dollars to make Los Alamos look like the 1940s.
During an interview, producer Charles Roven said of the director’s process: “Chris wants everything to feel authentic, whether shooting in the actual places where the people in the Manhattan Project lived or building things from scratch…He also likes films to feel hand-made, not made in a studio or generated with computer-generated imagery. You feel that throughout the movie, particularly in the area of practical effects”.
How much did Cillian Murphy make from Oppenheimer?
A star at the very height of his powers, unconfirmed reports suggest that Cillian Murphy made $10million for Oppenheimer, a movie that cost $180million to make. Nolan’s movie, of course, made its money back, earning over $960million in an extraordinary summer for the industry, being released on the same day as Barbie, which became the highest-grossing movie of the year thanks to its $1.4billion box office earnings.
Understandably, Murphy earned considerably more than his co-stars in the movie, with Emily Blunt and Matt Damon earning $4million a piece, despite their fairly sizeable contributions to the film, according to Variety. Elsewhere, Florence Pugh made just $1million for her role as Jean Tatlock, and Benny Safdie gained $700,000 for his performance as Edward Teller, $300,000 more than Josh Harnett would take home.
Indeed, Nolan has become such an icon in the world of cinema that actors are prepared to take considerable pay cuts to be a part of his movie, especially if such an opportunity carries the potential for Oscar greatness.
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