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| Birth Name(s) : Cillian Murphy |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
artist Yvonne McGuinness (2004–present) |
| Profession:
N/A |
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Full Cillian Murphy Biography
Cillian Murphy (born 25 May 1976) is an Irish film and theatre actor active since 1996. He is often noted by critics for chameleonic performances in diverse roles, as well as for his distinctive blue eyes.
A resident of London since 2001, Murphy often works in or near London and has no desire to move to Hollywood. Uncomfortable on the celebrity circuit, he customarily gives interviews about his work, but does not appear on television talk shows or discuss details of his private life with the press.
Born in Douglas, County Cork in Ireland, Cillian Murphy is the oldest of four children. His father, Brendan, works for the Irish Department of Education and his mother is a French teacher. Not only are his parents educators, but his aunts and uncles are also teachers, as was his grandfather. Musicianship also runs in the family, and Murphy started playing music at about age ten.
Murphy attended the Catholic school Presentation Brothers College, where he did well academically, though he was not keen on sport, a major part of life at the school. There, Murphy got his first taste of performing, when he participated in a drama module presented by Pat Kiernan, the director of the Corcadorca Theatre Company. Murphy later described the experience as a "huge high" and a "fully alive" feeling that he set out to chase, but said that at this stage, performing meant dreams of becoming a rock star.
Also in 1996, Murphy began studying law at University College Cork (UCC), but he failed his first year exams because, as he put it, he had "no ambitions to do it." Not only was he busy with his band, but he has admitted that he knew within days after starting at UCC that law was the wrong fit for his artistic personality. Furthermore, after seeing Corcadorca's stage production of A Clockwork Orange, directed by Kiernan, acting had begun to pique his interest. His first major role was in the UCC Drama Society's amateur production of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, but, according to Murphy, his primary motivation then was to party and meet women, not to begin an acting career. Nonetheless, he began to transition away from working as a rock musician, about which he later remarked, "I think there's such a thing as a performance gene. If it's in your DNA it needs to come out. For me it originally came out through music, then segued into acting and came out through there. I always needed to get up and perform."
In late 2003, Murphy starred as a lovelorn, hapless supermarket stocker who plots a bank heist with Colin Farrell in Intermission, which became the highest-grossing Irish independent film in Irish box office history (until The Wind That Shakes the Barley broke the record in 2006). Murphy also appeared in supporting roles in his first Hollywood films, Cold Mountain and Girl with a Pearl Earring. For the latter film, he learned to chop meat in an abattoir to prepare for his role as a butcher, even though he is a vegetarian. In 2004, he toured Ireland in the titular role of The Playboy of the Western World, a Druid Theatre Company production under the direction of Garry Hynes, who had previously directed Murphy in Seán O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock and John Murphy's The Country Boy, also for Druid.
Murphy received several awards nominations for his 2005 bad guy turns, among them a nomination as Best Villain at the 2006 MTV Movie Awards for Batman Begins. Entertainment Weekly ranked him among its 2005 "Summer MVPs", a cover story list of ten entertainers with outstanding breakthrough performances. The New Yorker's David Denby wrote, "Cillian Murphy, who has angelic looks that can turn sinister, is one of the most elegantly seductive monsters in recent movies."
Critic Denby described Murphy's approach to the part of Damien: "Murphy is normally very quiet in movies; he has attained his mystique as an actor by staring at people with baby-blue eyes. In this film, too, he has, at times, a deep stillness, but he has idiosyncratic moments as well, such as when Damien has to execute a teen-ager who has ratted on the I.R.A. Murphy, writhing, shoots the boy and stumbles away, nausea struggling against duty." Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times wrote, "Murphy is especially good at playing the zealotry as well as the soul-searching and the regret, at showing us a man who is eaten up alive because he's forced to act in ways that are contrary to his background and his training." Scotland on Sunday commented, "Cillian Murphy ... exudes a doe-eyed sensitivity that is central to our emotional involvement in the character's development. He is not a macho figure itching for a fight, but a man of peace, reluctantly drawn to the use of force. When he makes a commitment to Irish independence, it is unyielding and entirely believable." GQ UK presented Murphy with their 2006 Actor of the Year award for his work in The Wind That Shakes the Barley.
Music is still an important part of Murphy's life. In 2004, he said, "The only extravagant thing about my lifestyle is my stereo system, buying music and going to gigs." He no longer plays in a rock band, but regularly plays music with friends and on his own. Unlike many other famous actors who are also musicians, he does not plan to start another band: "Even if I was good, the very notion of being an actor with a rock band on the side would mean I'd never be taken seriously." Murphy is also a dedicated runner. |
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