In his sixth film with director Christopher Nolan, Golden Globe Award-winning actor Cillian Murphy stepped into a lead role as the title character in the biographical film Oppenheimer, about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leading figure behind the development of the atomic bomb. The performance has given Murphy the highest acclaim out of any role in his long career, which has included hit films like Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy and TV series like Peaky Blinders. In a conversation with Deadline, Murphy speaks about how he prepared for the most celebrated role of his career so far.
Though Murphy appeared in supporting roles in five films directed by Nolan before Oppenheimer, he was still surprised to receive a call from the filmmaker to appear in a lead role in his latest film. He remembers, “When he called me, he called me and I think it was September ’21, and that was a bit of a shock, but then I instantly went from shock and delight into work. I switched into work the next day and started working. And I worked all of those six months in prep. And I would’ve taken another six months. But sometimes you can get lost in that prep, and sometimes you just need to go to work.”
Murphy’s work involved researching for the role to learn about Oppenheimer, but he was careful not to outright copy what he discovered in the archival materials of the scientist. He shares:
“Alongside while I was doing all the reading, I was also working from the outside in on his physicality and getting that silhouette right. Because he was very physically slight, so I had to get that right and drop a bit of weight and condition myself for that. And I did notice the hand on the hip thing was in a lot of pictures, he had that. So I stole that.“And then I got to speak to people who were lectured by him, and they mentioned a lot how he held his pipe and stuff. So I stole that […] mimicry isn’t really one of my strong suits. But he spoke in a very unique way. No one else spoke like him at that time. But it’s somewhere in the world of that period of American accents, which you don’t hear anymore. Mr. Rogers spoke like. And Orson Welles. We wanted it to be somewhere in there. But again, to give it that Oppenheimer feel.
“And inevitably when you play any character, there’s some of you in there, it’s a synthesis of you and the character and the script.”
Murphy points out that it is important for him to feel empathy for the characters he portrays, even if he does not agree with their actions. He explains, “I have empathy for all of the characters that I play. I think that’s the most important tool you have in your kit bag as an actor is empathy. Because the definition of empathy is to walk in another person’s shoes. And that’s what we do as actors. And you don’t have to agree with them, but you must above all never judge the characters. And so I never ever judged his behavior or his decisions. I just tried to figure out the motivation for them and to present them to the audience. And if they wish to judge, they can. Or if we provoke them to ask questions, that’s fine. But that was not really my job. My job was to try and make him as human as possible and to try and do that as sensitively as possible.”