WORDS Aaron Devine
After ten minutes of intermittently looking into the low February sun, my eyes begin to get sore as I stand outside Hogan’s Bar on South Great George’s Street. I am scanning the streets in all directions, with the hopeful anticipation that one Cillian Murphy is just running late and hasn’t decided at the last minute to forego our interview.
But of course, I am not disappointed: there, emerging past the flower stall on the corner of Fade Street, is Murphy’s slight figure, cloaked in a sensible puffa jacket and topped off with designer shades and his usual mop of brown hair.
In town to attend the premiere of his latest project, Broken, Murphy is accompanied by a polite yet imposing lady from the film’s distribution company. She warns me as we ascend to Kelly’s Hotel and maze our way round to the Bar With No Name that we have a strict 20 minutes to talk, so I duly agree and get down to business as we find ourselves a quiet corner in which to sit.
Murphy is thoughtful enough to remember me from our previous encounter in Grogan’s pub, when I, foot-in-mouth, told him I was a fan of his work. Rather than the embarrassment it deserves to be, it actually acts as the perfect icebreaker as we get into discussing Broken, an independent film in which Murphy plays a memorable supporting role.
Not so much a film as a meditation on a remarkable young girl’s loss of innocence, Broken lingers in the memory long after the credits roll. Sympathetically shot, it features hyper-naturalistic performances from its two leads, Tim Roth and the revelation that is thirteen-year-old Eloise Laurence.
But it was the screenplay, adapted from the Daniel Clay novel of the same name by Irishman Mark O’Rowe (writer of previous Murphy projects Intermission and Perrier’s Bounty) that first grabbed his attention. “You’ve got to take notice of anything Mark writes because he’s such a fantastic writer. I found it very emotionally compelling when I read it, and if you get that off the words on the page then you know you’re in good shape.” Murphy continues, “I really liked the part, he was a very recognisable character to me.”
That character, Mike Kiernan, is not completely dissimilar to the roles Murphy played in the other aforementioned O’Rowe scripts; always trying to do the right thing, he is a down-on-his-luck, honest and romantically naïve character.
Interestingly, this seems to be in many ways the exact opposite of the real-life Murphy, a happily married and successful actor. But he quickly shrugs this off, instead suggesting he is more interested in what’s “true”, insisting “Mark writes Irish males like nobody else. He gets inside the head of what it is to be a mid-thirties man in Ireland.”
HAVING KIDS DOES CHANGE YOUR PERSPECTIVE. IT’S EVEN HARD WATCHING FUCKING NATURE PROGRAMMES
It’s watching the protagonist Skunk (Laurence) navigate the perils of growing up that provides most of the story’s catharsis, so does being a father affect how Murphy sees the film? “Having kids does change your perspective, particularly when they’re little. It’s even hard watching fucking nature programmes because you start tearing up,” he divulges, looking away with an embarrassed laugh. “You get very, very protective.”
He is quick to reaffirm, though, that the film has a much broader focus: “I think that [Broken is] universal in its appeal; it’s not just for parents.” He leans in, adjusting one of his fingerless gloves. “Listen, it’s about family really, and I love that it’s so non-judgemental in what family is because it’s such a fluid thing nowadays.”
Indeed, on the seemingly quiet suburban street where the film is set, we witness the many different shapes a family can take, with Rory Kinnear playing one of Skunk’s violent neighbours, stepping out from his subservient role in Skyfall. His alarming portrayal as the father to a whole gaggle of Vicky Pollards anchors one of the subplots that gradually dissolve the film’s initial serenity.
Broken does occasionally tumble over into the melodramatic, but overall it’s a remarkably assured effort from respected theatre director (but first-time filmmaker) Rufus Norris. Working with him was an opportunity Murphy relished, having tried in the theatre before, which regrettably “didn’t work out”.
Although falling firmly in the indie category, for Murphy this picture tops off a few years that were all about the blockbuster, with Inception, In Time and The Dark Knight Rises on the list of his recent film projects. Always demonstrating his versatility, his work on this film was in the midst of his award-winning performance on stage in Enda Walsh’s exhilarating Misterman. The production proved to be incredibly popular in Galway, bagging Murphy an Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Actor, but it was also heralded on tour in New York and London.
Will he be doing us all a favour and reprising it for the Dublin stage? My hopes are dashed. “It was a real success and one of the best things I’ve ever done as an actor – one of the most satisfying things – but I was fucking destroyed after it, man. I was so physically broken.” There is a silver lining: “But myself and Enda are working on a new play, with Mikel Murfi as well. It’s very early stages but very exciting.”
“Enda gave me my first professional job as an actor,” Murphy acknowledges. Back in the mid-nineties, did he see them achieving the success they now both enjoy? “I wanted to be in a band, and you could tell Enda had got something, but we were kids.” It’s almost as if things have come full circle then. “We stayed friends all that time from the beginning but we just never got round to working together because he was so busy and I was working and then . . . it was beautiful, it really was like the closing of a circle when it happened again. And now, when it was so good we were like ‘We’ve got to keep it going, we can’t leave it another fifteen years’,” he says enthusiastically.
THE BEAUTIFUL THING ABOUT THEATRE IS THAT YOU CAN JUST FIND A SPACE AND YOU CAN DO IT
Misterman is an older play of Walsh’s which he performed himself, so I’m keen to know what has made Murphy such a perfect fit for the updated version. “We have the same sensibilities, we’re attracted to the same sorts of stories. And we’ve got the same sense of humour . . .” he says with a thoughtful laugh, “. . . exactly the same sense of humour.” He doesn’t need to be questioned any further about the play, instead volunteering how much he enjoys working in theatre, and how he regrets having taken so long to get back on the stage: “The beautiful thing about making theatre is like when we were making Misterman: it was me and Enda in a room, just firing our imaginations. Film is by committee, you know? With theatre you can just find a space and you can do it.”
The latter part of his career has been heavily dominated by film, so does he have a preference for either medium? He takes a moment to consider, running his hand through his hair, as if in search of the answer there. “I’ve always loved both of them but I need to do theatre. Before I did Misterman I left it for about six years and it was too long, so if I can do it once a year I’d be very happy.”
A different format Murphy is dipping his toes into is television, where he plays a criminal gang leader in the upcoming BBC series Peaky Blinders. Written by Oscar-nominee Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises) and due to be broadcast in the autumn, it’s not exactly Downton Abbey, more of a British midlands version of Terence Winter’s Boardwalk Empire. “It’s set against the backdrop of World War I, so all these guys have come back and they’re all a bit emotionally fucked, you’ve got the suffragette movement happening, communism, what’s going on in Ireland, so it’s a very tumultuous time to set a story against.”
With US cable networks practically draining talent from Hollywood, can he see himself then following suit and committing to something like Mad Men or Game of Thrones? Ever pragmatic, he instead wants to leave his options open. “The thing with the BBC is that it’s only three months of the year, so it gives you great freedom to go and do other things, but some of those shows [on HBO, AMC etc.] can take up nine months of the year and I wouldn’t want to do that. I don’t want to lock myself into anything.”
WHEN I WAS YOUNGER I FELT LIKE I NEEDED TO PROVE THAT I COULD PLAY ENGLISH OR PLAY AMERICAN. NOW THAT I’VE DONE THAT, I FEEL IT’S IMPORTANT TO MAKE WORK AT HOME
That he wants to remain open to new opportunities is not surprising. In a relatively young career he has enjoyed an incredibly diverse range of roles, but if there is one thing that has remained constant it is that he is always returning to work on Irish films. He hasn’t moved stateside and his agent is based in Dublin. Has this all happened consciously? “It’s funny isn’t it,” he says, almost defensively. “It’s sort of assumed in Ireland that you disappear to America, never to return.” But is that not because a lot of Irish actors have? “Maybe. When I was younger I felt like I needed to prove that I could play English or play American. Now that I’ve done that, I feel it’s very important to make work at home – we’ve got such fantastic filmmakers. And for me, culturally, to up sticks and move to Los Angeles would be too weird.”
But as we are such a small nation, does he sense there is an inferiority complex among our artists? “Not personally, no. There’s certainly the need to go away and come back. I felt that draw, to show people that you are an actor that happens to be Irish as opposed to an Irish actor, but I’ve never felt the inferiority thing,” he says, before offering a vague mumble of “cocky little shit” under his breath in reference to his younger self.
As ambitious as he might be, his career rise has been very gradual. But it’s a route he claims to favour: “I started off doing theatre exclusively for like four years, then a couple of short films, small little parts . . . and I think that arc is much better for your health than the steep one which can fuck you up a little bit.” I mention Irish-actor-of-the-moment Jack Reynor and wonder how Murphy would have dealt with such rapid success. His response is polite if not disappointingly anodyne (“He’s a great actor, so each to their own”), but he does offer a nugget of wisdom that seems to sum up his ethos as an actor: “You’ve got to be authentic to yourself.”
As we wrap up our conversation, I can’t avoid thinking there are two big elephants in the room. Blue ones. In fact this is probably the longest any interview with Murphy has gone without them being mentioned. So I ask before he goes . . . does it bother him how people fawn over his eyes? Impressive peepers though they are, wouldn’t he rather they focussed on the acting instead? Coolly, he laughs it off. “Nah, it doesn’t bother me . . . never did Paul Newman any harm did it? You can only work with the face you’ve been given. It’s never been a problem. But I did have this woman in Galway who came up to me and said, ‘Your eyes aren’t really that blue! Are they?!’ ”
At this point, I’m feeling the pressure from his minder, who no doubt wants to get him on to his next engagement, so we return down the stairs back into the crisp afternoon air. We shake hands and say goodbye, and as I cross the road I overhear Murphy ask her, “Where am I going now?”
My guess? Surely the only way is up.
