Cillian Murphy Quotations

What we do as actors is we go through phases where you superficially learn all this information.

Neil Jordan is one of my favorite directors. Not just because he's Irish and I'm Irish. In the world of directors, he's one of those guys.

I am very different to Colin Farrell. I admire him tremendously. We are both Irish and are both the same age,

I enjoy all aspects of it, I don't have a preference for any medium. I think each of them has its attractions and I would hope they each inform the other in some way.

For me, this is a film about people under pressure. That's what it fundamentally boils down to.

He needs the girl. It's that simple. There's no question of morality for him.

He obviously knows through his movies how to exploit terror, and he seems to be able to investigate fears that we all have and exploit them or magnify them. There's a particular way of doing films like this. There's a particular way to manipulate the audience to get sort of a reaction out of them, and he can do that.

He's a wonderful, beautiful misfit, and he tends to trust and fall in love with people immediately.

I think one of those comes around once in every career, that type of role. I play a character called Kitten Brady, who everyone knows is a transvestite. That's part of it, but it's not the whole story.

That was the first time people noticed me in the U.S..

That was a fun script and a lot of great Irish actors.

That's the point. You think you could be in that situation. It brings up all those universal anxieties about flying, even before the story turns dark.

You need to be as clean of a slate as you can be, as an actor. You have to try to be open to every experience.

But television affords you, what you just described, to - over the course of 18 hours, now that we're doing a third season - tell the story of this man. You're not under any obligation, really, to do massive expositional stuff at the beginning. You're at liberty to say, "Come with us on this journey," and, gradually, you become aware of what his motivations are, what drives him, what his weaknesses are, what his strengths are. That's what I think's sucking people into these worlds, because it is kind of like a novel, you just go really, really deep.

And, for any performer, to be able to go deep into character is fantastic. In film you only get to do that if you're the leading character. But in television you get 18 hours to really test the audience and take them to the edge of how far they will go with this character. I can step over this line and I love that.

It's a very organic kind of way that people are discovering it, by word of mouth, which I always think is the best way for things to grow. In terms of the affect it's been having on me, I don't even notice that. It's lovely to be able to talk about a piece of work that you're very proud of, that I think's a complex piece of work and not superficial and has depth to it.

In terms of trying to improve as an actor, for me it's always important to return to the stage. After doing a piece of theater for a prolonged period, I can think I must have surely improved in some way as an actor - you must be fitter than you were prior to doing it. For me, theater is very, very important in keeping things fresh and dangerous.

I hope that I have gained some wisdom, but I don't know. I have kids, and that certainly puts things into perspective. I think I'm a more patient person. I hope I'm a more patient person. I'm a little more relaxed about the peripheral side of this business, which I used to find very confusing and alarming.

I feel very lucky to be making good work still. The confidence of youth, or that sort of competitiveness you get when you're 22 or 23, the impatience - that's probably been tempered. Hopefully I'm slightly better company.

It's always nice to be challenged.

I think every director has a different methodology.

I don't consider myself a shy person necessarily, but there's something about getting under the skin of a character and allowing you an abandon or a sense of courage that you would never have in your own life.

I've always felt kind of safe on stage, protected. I've talked to other performers about this and they feel the same things, particularly in the live arena. I never get nervous going on stage to do a play. Doing film or television I'll have more butterflies.

Then, at age 20, I discovered theater sort of by accident. Quite quickly, theater became more important to me than music. I began to realize that maybe my talents as a musician were quite limited, or had a ceiling to them, whereas acting seemed to sort of stretch before me. I got very passionate about it very quickly.

I've had the pleasure and the great luck to work with some incredible actors over the years and you have to observe and learn and take something from it and try and become better yourself.

I never make a distinction between doing a film in Hollywood or doing a film independently. It's just the story. It's always the story for me. The constants are that it should challenge me and I shouldn't repeat myself. And the story should always be a story worth telling.

I like the little bit of distance that London affords me and I like living in a world capital. I like having the culture at my fingertips.

I'm pretty adamant to do an American accent because you get it immediately.

I don't care if people perceive me as always selling out because I'm doing a studio picture. For me, the whole thing is you should be diverse in your choices; that's the beauty of being an actor, you should be able to do that.

The boring people are the worst. I think it's obvious, I think people have always had phobias about flying for years even before 9/11 and everything like that. It just taps into that and it taps into who you are going to sit next to on the plane.

I think if you play characters, it's very important not to ever tag them with any sort of disorder, or diagnose them, or whatever. You have to normalize the behavior to get inside the character.

From a very young age I had an ambition to be a musician, and to do that professionally. That's what I pursued until I was about 20, playing in bands that were taken pretty seriously at that stage.

I always think it's a sign of a truly gifted director when they can move seamlessly between genres.

I think audiences are a lot more intelligent than what we give them credit for and understand that an actor is playing a role and that doesn't mean he can't play different types of roles.

All I've tried to do as an actor is follow the good writing. That's been my main drive. It's not always possible, so when you do come upon it, like when I came upon this, you realize pretty quickly this is something you need to be involved with.

I'm Irish and very proud of being Irish, but as an actor, your extraction should be secondary, really. You should be able to embody whatever character it is, wherever the character comes from. That's always been important, for me. I'm an actor who's Irish, not an Irish actor.

I guess because theater's so ephemeral and it's gone. You make this nightly contract with the audience and you redraw that contract for the next night, whereas film and television, it's forever. I suppose it's always about adopting personas, never about being yourself. I think they call it a "shy man's revenge."

I think you fall out of love with theater while you're doing your eighth show of your eighteenth week and your body is saying, "Please make this end."

You take the job very seriously and between action and cut, that's where your focus should be. And then there's a lot of levity in between and a lot of good fun.

I think for me with theater, I need to take a break and then fall in love with it again. And then go do it again.

We were able to shoot in a lot of the locations where the mission actually happened and these guys existed, so that was kind of very affecting. We had a Czech crew and a lot of Czech actors. There's a great deal of authenticity to the project [Anthropoid], and Sean [Ellis] was very anxious that that was the case from the beginning.

With some films you can sort of slide in, get a haircut and you're in.

Actors' careers are random with a capital "R."

I loved The Fall; I was kind of obsessed with that show.

You do your due diligence, you read as much as you can, and then, ultimately, I find that you discard that and you concentrate on the characters [of 'Antropoid'] and you can draw on [the research] if you wish, but I think ultimately it's about bringing as much truth and honesty to the portrayal as possible.

I started off in theater; I did exclusively theater for four or five years. In the last few years, television has come along but I can still make film. I feel very privileged that I can move between them.

[We were very lucky that Sean [ Ellis ] researched the film [Anthropoid ] for many years.] We sort of piggybacked on his knowledge, and he gave us a lot of materials, which we read. For me, the greatest resource was actually shooting the film in Prague.

There's this thing that's come about that wasn't there when I started acting which is they do this thing called a chemistry test. They put a camera in front of two people, it's usually a boy and a girl, and they go, [whispering]. It's impossible. You can't manufacture it or film it, it just has to happen.

I have a list as long as my arm but I find those lists sort of self-defeating because you start to name and then after [the interviewer] leaves the room you go 'Ah, I forgot this person or that person.' So I just don't do it anymore. Hopefully if you make work that people like, they'll get in contact with you.

The medium is secondary to the stories.

For me it's always been about the stories, not what medium. The medium is secondary to the stories.

At the moment I'm doing this space movie, so I'm obsessed with physics and space travel. I know three months down the line it's gone. Then I'll be able to superficially say stuff about space.

That's what acting is about, Funny wigs and voices, that's what we do.

I come from a long line of teachers. Not only did I not go into the family business; I had an aborted law career and I played in bands. 'Disco Pigs' was my first professional acting experience.

I'm interested in pressure, I'm interested in duress. All the great works of art, or film or literature, in my opinion, have elements of those in them.

Having started out in theatre, I feel an impulse to do it as much as I can

There's a lot of comedy in Intermission but it's got this depth. It's not comedy for comedy's sake - it's informed by something else. I like stuff like that

It's obvious that if you're going to play a character you need to amass information about that person and about their environment or their era that they're in and use as little or as much as necessary

I'm not interested in a good man's life. I'm interested in contradiction.

I’ve never done a film for the money

My wife can see always how a part affects me personally because she has to live with it.

You're an actor who's Irish, not an Irish actor. And you shouldn't be limited by your extraction.

I like watching film, I go to the cinema, but a lot of times I go to see kids' films.

Two weeks ago we couldn't pronounce your name, but you were in the lead in a film that made millions, so we're sending you all these scripts.

I'd love to work in America, some of my favourite films come from America.

It was very much about performances, the whole ensemble thing was just great - everybody working together. Sometimes it didn't feel like a film set. It wasn't technically driven, it was very, very enjoyable

The best roles you have to fight for. You have to really want to do it and you have to go after it.

I don't have a burning passion to live in America per se but I would certainly like to work there.

I don't think they'd ever make a movie about Chuck Baker but I'd love to play Chuck Baker

If you behave like a celebrity, then people will treat you like a celebrity, and if you don't, they won't. There's not much to write about me in the tabloids.

I think it's necessary to keep moving forward. I've always said that nostalgia is death, really for anyone creative.

For me, drama is conflict.

And once you're unafraid with death, I think your capacity for violence is immediately increased. Once you're unafraid of death, you are a very, very dangerous adversary

Every Irish person of my generation and earlier, we were raised Catholic and we'd have to learn it in school, we'd to learn the catechism by rote.

I was obsessed with Batman as a kid. I did the film in part just to be near the Batmobile. But I also think [director] Christopher Nolan made a very fine, intelligent film.

I think any actor that says 'I never watch my films' is a liar because you have to watch it at least once and also you're going to watch it when you're doing your ADR.

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.

I will always love film, the romance of film, sitting in the darkened room with strangers and watching a story for two hours - that will always remain and never be eroded by television.

Sociopath is a word that has sort of become shorthand for psychopath and there's a distinct difference, it's interesting if you look it up. Sociopath if you look at the medical definition, the profile of a sociopath is that they are supremely intelligent people that are also pathological liars, they have no moral structure and there is one more, they have no compassion or empathy for other people.

It seemed to work on camera. And there's very few films - because you make a lot of films and you meet people and you work very intensely and intimately and then you're gone - but there's a few where you actually make friends, and this [The Fall] was one.

I'd probably have been wealthier if I had stayed with law, but pretty miserable doing it.

I suppose I've always been attracted to this sort of outsider in general - in literature, in music, politics, whatever - and to the person that is able to be relentlessly themselves. I don't think that I have that quality, that strength of mind.

I take my hat off to the ladies. The amount of grooming-plucking and shaving and all the other things men never have to do. I went down and spent time with transvestites in London in the clubs and all that. Got an insight to that world, and it's a mad world, but they are very warm and very open people. It was a great experience.

You know, I'm a skinny Irish guy.

My only two constants are to challenge myself and to try not to repeat myself.

I like being at home with my music and my books. I’ve done all the partying, I’ve done enough partying for four or five people as a young fella. But now I like the quiet life.

I suppose I tend to like slightly darker things - people have levelled that on me before and I accept that because in my opinion, if I mention the best movies or the best books, there's always something that's involving slightly darker element of out psyche. I like seeing people under pressure. I like seeing what happens to people when they're under pressure.

I'm terrible. I'm the wrong person to talk to, I really don't know a thing.

I try not to think retrospectively. It's important, as an artist, to look forward, always. I do try to take work that involves some challenge. If you approach a piece of work and you're going, "Yeah, yeah, I can do that," then that's kind of a red flag.

I personally think if something's not a challenge there's no point doing it because you're not gonna learn much.

I don't know if anyone will ever sit beside me on a plane again.

Sometimes the darker stuff has greater potential for drama, it's always interesting to investigate things that you might come across in your own life.

Then I wanted the character to be feminine as opposed to effeminate. Because it's easy to be camp or queen. Anyone can do that. What's difficult is to play feminine.

But I don't look like Colin Farrell, I don't behave like Colin Farrell, and I do different movies than Colin Farrell.

He's this kid growing up in a small town in Ireland in the 70's--you know the height of the troubles in Ireland, ... He discovers he's an adopted orphan and that his father is actually this parish priest, played by Liam Neeson. So it's just this crazy mad journey that he goes on to find his love.

He's just a kid who was quite effeminate and obviously gay, but he wasn't a Tootsie trying to pass.

I don't worry about it, ... I just worked with Neil Jordan on 'Breakfast On Pluto,' where I play an Irish transvestite singer in a London cabaret.'