Accidental superstar

It was always rock'n'roll that flowed through Cillian Murphy's blood, the acting just happened.
But it has its compensations – especially seeing the Batmobile, he tells Donald Clarke

THE BLUE-EYED, sharp-featured Cillian Murphy really is infuriatingly good looking. Sit him next to, say, Zac Efron and the American would immediately take on the appearance of a syphilitic baboon. When he positions himself opposite me, I feel myself transforming into a lump of fetid flesh rammed rudely on a filthy stick. He’s smart as well. Though reluctant to talk too closely about his private life, he will happily launch into an articulate paragraph on the dynamics of blockbuster cinema or the joys of his first significant experience at the theatre.

"I had a very life-changing experience when I was about 18 or 19," his unnecessarily smooth Corkonian face says. "I saw this production of A Clockwork Orangethat Corcadorca were doing and I immediately realised that theatre can be affecting and moving. I thought: this is something quite exhilarating."

Since that moment of revelation, Murphy has gradually developed into our secondbiggest movie star (young Mr Farrell probably remains at the front). Following a minor breakthrough in the film version of Enda Walsh's play Disco Pigs, he secured roles in such hits as 28 Days Later, Batman Beginsand Sunshine. Now, if a producer wants a slightly enigmatic, faintly fragile leading man, Murphy will find himself top of the wish-list.

He can be seen this week in Ian Fitzgibbon's sweary comedy Perrier's Bounty. Written by Mark O'Rowe, the man behind Intermission, an earlier Murphy hit, the picture finds our hero rattling about the Dublin Mountains while a crime kingpin bays for his blood. Oddly, much of the film was shot in London.

“Yeah. About two-thirds of it was shot there for financial reasons which are beyond me,” he says. “Anyway, the film does not play naturalistically. It is never mentioned which city we are in. You do see the Luas, but it’s kept vague. Anyway, most of the brilliant locations have been used too often in films about Dublin.”

As it happens, Murphy now lives in London. So the shooting arrangements suited him quite nicely. It comes as a bit of a shock to discover that he has been lurking in the city’s bohemian north-western quarters for nearly a decade. Having barely aged over that period, he still seems comes across like an absurdly promising young aspirant.

If things had gone differently, he might have become a rock star. Born and raised in suburban Cork, the son of teachers, Murphy was fixated on music long before he saw that production of A Clockwork Orange.

“I was just totally obsessed with music,” he says. I wanted to perform. I’d be up on stage whacking away on a wheelbarrow or whatever. But, at that stage, it never occurred to me that acting could be the outlet for performance. The acting came as a natural accident.”

So, when Corcadorca, the distinguished independent company, opened his eyes, he immediately, I imagine, took on the aspect of a newly converted zealot. “No. Not quite. It certainly wasn’t a ‘eureka’ moment. But I thought: well, this is kind of cool. And gradually acting became more important than the music.”

Coming from a respectable background and having done well at his Leaving Cert, Murphy still did the decent thing and signed on at UCC. He now admits that – beware, younger, smarter readers – he really only studied law because he had the points. After a relaxed year, he removed himself from the university and embarked on the creative life.

“I didn’t apply myself very well. We laugh about this now at home, but it was a tense time in the Murphy household. And I am the oldest, so it was more serious. I wasn’t following any family history. It wasn’t like I was walking into the family law firm. If I was going to university, I obviously should have done arts. I really disagree with the points system.”

When he was just 20, he secured one of the two roles in Enda Walsh's seminal Disco Pigs. Produced by Corcadorca, featuring deliciously tricky language, the production followed two lifelong friends as their relationship begins to turn dangerously septic. To that point, Irish theatre had been somewhat backward in dealing with contemporary youth culture. The play, thus, seemed like a lunge into under-explored territory. A European tour and, ultimately, Kirsten Sheridan's film version followed.

“We travelled everywhere. I actually got to live the rock’n’roll lifestyle, but, rather than being in a band, I was in a play. After all, I was just 20 when I got the part. Then there was a year being unemployed in Cork. To be honest, I loved it. All I needed was money for pints. I could live off bread and cheese.”

You wouldn't say that there were any massive breaks in Murphy's career. He did a play here. He did a film there. Then, before you had time to register his rise, he was playing The Scarecrow in Batman Begins.

“That was how it was. I got a big part in theatre, then I got a small part in a film, then a larger part in a film and so on. There was no great snowballing. That is the way it should happen. You get to learn as you go along. I had periods learning my craft with, say, Garry Hynes at the Druid, interspersed with periods on the dole. To be honest, the idea of being catapulted into immediate recognition would have been absolutely terrifying to me.”

Now happily domiciled with his wife Yvonne McGuinness, a distinguished artist, and their two sons, Murphy has never seemed all that comfortable coping with the rampaging publicity machines that trundle in the wake of movie fame. He has never been snapped falling drunkenly out of the Bouncy Bouncy Club. He does not, so far as I am aware, frequent Hugh Hefner’s yacht.

Still, if you want to remain in these waters, you will have to swim with the odd shark and barracuda. I wonder how he manages to maintain his apparent normality.

“I work six months on and then have six months off,” he says. “That’s how it’s been for the past few years. And I am mostly working in America. You quickly realise that – even if a film is shite – if it makes money, then you will be listened to. You will get a meeting. As long as you realise that it is about the money and not to do with you being so charming, then you’ll be all right.”

Shooting Perrier's Bountymust have been a very different business from filming those big pictures in the dream factory. I imagine you get a better class of trailer on Christopher Nolan's Batman Beginsor the same director's upcoming Inception.

"They took very good care of me on Perrier's," Murphy (a polite boy) says. "But you are working so hard you don't have time to enjoy it. When you are working with Chris, it's not that they sit around for hours debating, but they can sit around and, say, wait for the perfect light. That's the difference in the work. But both are a pleasure."

What about Inception? Nolan's follow-up to The Dark Knightis already the most gossiped-about film of 2010. The bewildering (if rather brilliant) trailer gives little away bar the facts that it stars Leonardo DiCaprio and has something to do with a tilting city. Let us in on the gossip, Cillian.

“I haven’t seen it and all I am allowed to reveal is what’s in the trailer,” he says. “I can say that in an age when we think we’re inured to surprises, it should shake things up a little bit. He really is an amazing director.”

So, as the latest round of annoying junkets come to a close, Murphy finds himself at home for a spell. He will be “cutting the grass and filling the dishwasher”. Is it hard to work up the enthusiasm to get back on the treadmill? Does the excitement of walking on to a big set ever pale?

"Ah no. That would be mad. It's never a drag. You are pampered and looked after. It's impossible not to be excited when you see the scale of those sets for the first time. Especially when it's Batman. There's the Batmobile! How could you not be excited?" Well put, sir.

- Perrier’s Bounty opens today