Danny Boyle Explains What Made Cillian Murphy So Special from the Start

For some viewers, Cillian Murphy’s presence in “Oppenheimer” might have been confusing: I know I’ve seen that guy in something, but what? It’s a credit to the 47-year-old actor that, as in-demand as he is, he remains malleable enough not to be defined by any one role.  A veteran of theater, film and television, Murphy spent nearly a decade playing the menacing mob boss Tommy Shelby on “Peaky Blinders,” while moviegoers might recognize him as the Scarecrow in “Batman Begins,” which was directed by Christopher Nolan, who has continued to work with the actor in subsequent films like “Dunkirk” and “Oppenheimer.” He was a scary survivor in “A Quiet Place Part II,” the first time he and Emily Blunt shared the screen. And Murphy has also been acclaimed on stage, earning raves for his performances in Misterman and Grief Is the Thing with Feathers. But after portraying J. Robert Oppenheimer—and emerging as a strong contender to win Best Actor at next Sunday’s Oscars—it’s likely no one will ever wonder again where they’ve seen Murphy before. Two of his earliest films were directed by Danny Boyle. In 2002’s “28 Days Later,” Murphy played Jim, an everyman who wakes up in the hospital, discovering that society has been eviscerated by a rage virus. In the wake of 9/11, this post-apocalyptic horror movie tapped into the zeitgeist, and it remains the scariest film of this young century. Then, five years later, Murphy reunited with Boyle for “Sunshine,” a meditative, moving sci-fi drama in which his moody physicist must work with his fellow space travelers (including Michelle Yeoh, Chris Evans and Rose Byrne) to try to save humanity by reigniting Earth’s dying sun.  These two excellent genre films were bolstered by Murphy’s calm, intelligent demeanor, and both he and Boyle have gone on to even greater heights since. (Boyle, of course, won Best Director for “Slumdog Millionaire,” which took home a grand total of eight Oscars, including Best Picture.) On the eve of the Academy Awards—and with the possibility that they may work together again on a “28 Days Later” sequel—I spoke to Boyle about casting the then-relatively unknown actor.  Our phone line wasn’t always clear, but the director’s enthusiasm for his collaborator and friend was. Below, Boyle discusses why Murphy is so good in “Oppenheimer,” the crucial difference between theater actors and film actors and the project he’s working on that he thinks will be perfect for Murphy—although he hasn’t told Murphy about it yet. Cillian Murphy has said he had to audition six times to get the role in “28 Days Later.” Is that how you remember it? I couldn’t swear it was six. I have read that—it just sounds a lot, doesn’t it? [Laughs] Especially when you think where he’s ended up now.  We read scenes together, and you could tell he was a really good actor. It’s partly finding out about the part as well, which you do through the audition process. It isn’t like you’ve got a definitive oil painting in your mind of how it should be—you’re arriving at it together. In fact, the casting of him is partly the reason that it ended up as it ended up, because what they bring to the part isn’t just specific suggestions—they bring something else to it. The manifestation of them as people is part of the writing of the film—it becomes the writing of particular characters. The thing about Cillian, it’s his changeability. For “28 Days Later,” you thought, “He’s so perfect as an affable, carefree bike messenger, but how is he going to turn into an avenging angel?”—which is what he ends up as, capable of the kind of violence that the infected are capable of. “How is he going to do that?” We had the same [transformation] in “Sunshine”: “How can a thoughtful, careful physicist turn into a kind of action hero?” It’s the same with “Peaky Blinders”: You think, “Can this shy, kind gentleman turn into that fierce [crime boss]?”  The core, I think, is his physicality. That comes from the stage—if you’ve ever seen him on stage, he is unrecognizable. I saw him in [Grief Is the Thing With Feathers] most recently, and his physicality is absolutely extraordinary, and quite belying how sofa-bound he is [in the play] for most of the time. Even when you see him in those Oscar interviews, he can barely get up from the sofa—but you see him on stage, and that transformation is incredible. That’s what Nolan’s done with him in “Oppenheimer.” He’s taken that changeability of him—that beauty and that ability to transform into something that’s as powerful as the atom splitting the world asunder—and he’s condensed it into a close-up, which binds the whole film together. It’s extraordinary what [Nolan] attempts to do—the range of characters, the range of the casting, it’s incredible. It’s the challenge for Cillian: “Can he hold all of it together?” And the way Nolan’s done it is through a close-up—that IMAX close-up that he adores—and it’s the most challenging close-up there is because, on IMAX, you’ve just nowhere to go, oth