Batman Villain Scarecrow

Background:

"You're an actor who's Irish, not an Irish actor and you shouldn't be limited by your extraction." Cillian Murphy (on being typecast as Irish)

Irish actor Cillian Murphy, who initially became famous in his native country while starring as Pig in the 1996 play and the 2001 film adaptation of “Disco Pigs,” garnered attention from international audiences for his starring role of Jim in Danny Boyle' “28 Days Later” (2002). He has since starred in such films as "Girl with a Pearl Earring" (2003), "Cold Mountain" (2003), "Red Eye" (2005), "Batman Begins" (2005), "Breakfast on Pluto" (2005), "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" (2006), "Sunshine" (2007), "Watching the Detectives" (2007) and "The Edge of Love" (2008).

The versatile actor recently reprised his role of villain Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow in the 2008 sequel to the 2005 movie "Batman Begins," the record-breaking "The Dark Knight," and will next be seen in the upcoming films "Hippie Hippie Shake," "Peacock," "White Male Heart" and "Dali & I: The Surreal Story."

Cillian has been married to artist Yvonne Murphy since 2004 and has two sons. He resides with his family in northwest London.

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

Cilly

Childhood and Family:

Son to a school inspector father and a French teacher mother, Cillian Murphy (first name pronounced Kill-ian, nickname Cilly) was born on May 25, 1976, in Douglas, Cork, Ireland. The oldest of four children, Murphy has three younger siblings, sisters Sheila and Orla and brother Páidi.

Fluent in French and Gaelic, Murphy attended the Catholic school Presentation Brothers College Cork, in Cork, Ireland, and studied law at the University College Cork. He was also trained at the Corcadorca Theater. In his late teens and early twenties, Murphy, who dreamed of becoming a rock star, joined a series of local bands, including a Frank Zappa-influenced band called “Sons of Mr. Greengenes.” Although he no longer plays in a rock band, Murphy still regularly plays music with friends and on his own and still writes songs.

While walking in Ireland, Murphy proposed to his live-in girlfriend of 10 years, Yvonne Murphy (born in 1972), an artist whom he met in 1996 at one of his rock band's shows. They were married in August 2004 and have two sons. They now live in northwest London, England.

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

Murphy, who is friends with fellow Irish actors Colin Farrell and Liam Neeson, is vegetarian. However, he learned to chop meat for his role in the film “Girl with a Pearl Earring” (2003). He is also a dedicated runner.

28 Days Later

Career:

"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." Cillian Murphy

While attending Presentation Brothers College, Cillian Murphy participated in a drama module presented by Pat Kiernan, the director of the Corcadorca Theatre Company. He was subsequently encouraged by his English teacher, the poet and novelist William Wall, to pursue acting. Instead of following his teacher's advice, young Murphy performed with various local bands but after seeing Corcadorca's stage production of “A Clockwork Orange,” directed by Kiernan, he was bitten by the acting bug and landed his first major role in the UCC Drama Society's amateur production of “Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme.”

“I didn't start acting until I was 20. I wanted to be a musician. I've been playing in bands for years and years and years. It was obviously the performance in me. I loved movies as a teenager, always loved, loved films, but I never thought I'd be involved, which was obviously an insane idea. It was theatre that was the main attraction to me, so I did a lot of theatre.” Cillian Murphy

Murphy tried out for the main character in the Corcadorca Theatre Company’s production of “Disco Pigs.” The 1996 play became an instant hit in his native Ireland and Murphy soon left the university and his band to go on tour with the production across Europe and North America. He would later reprise the role and win a Best Actor award at the Ourense Independent Film Festival when the play was adapted into film by Kirsten Sheridan in 2001.

During this time, Murphy also played Claudio in Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" with the Bickerstaffe Theatre Company at the Kilkenny Arts Festival in Ireland (1998), portrayed Johnny Boyle in a revival of Sean O'Casey's "Juno and the Paycock" with the Druid Theatre Company at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin (1999) and portrayed the role of Curly in a revival of John Murphy's "The Country Boy" with the Druid Theatre Company (1999). Murphy made his earliest big screen appearances in the independent films "The Tale of Sweety Barrett" (1998; starring Brendan Gleeson) and Nelson Hume's coming-of-age comedy drama "Sunburn" (1999), which was shown at the Irish Film Festival in New York City. He also starred as a sarcastic and suicidal psychiatric patient in John Carney's Irish drama "On the Edge" (2001; with Tricia Vessey, Jonathan Jackson, and Stephen Rea).

The following year, Murphy starred as Jim, a bicycle courier who wakes up from a coma in an abandoned hospital 28 days after the release of a highly contagious virus from a British research facility, in director Danny Boyle's post-apocalyptic horror film "28 Days Later" (2002; with Naomie Harris, Noah Huntley, and Christopher Eccleston). His work in the film earned him a MTV Movie Award nomination for Breakthrough Male Performance.

He was then cast as the desperately insecure John, opposite Colin Farrell, in John Crowley's motion picture ensemble drama "Intermission" (2003; Kelly Macdonald played his girlfriend), and portrayed Pieter, the butcher's son and Scarlett Johansson's potential suitor, in Peter Webber's film based on the novel by Tracy Chevalier, "Girl with a Pearl Earring" (2003; also starring Colin Firth and Tom Wilkinson).

On stage, Murphy portrayed the role of Adam in the Irish premiere of Neil La Bute's "The Shape of Things" at the Gate Theatre in Dublin (2002), Konstantin in Chekhov's "The Seagull" at The Edinburgh Festival at the King's Theatre in Edinburgh (2003) and Christy Mahon in a tour of "The Playboy of the Western World" (2004; directed by Garry Hynes).

"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." Cillian Murphy

After playing a small role in Anthony Minghella's Academy Award-winning film adaptation of Charles Frazier's 1997 novel, "Cold Mountain" (2004; starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, and Renée Zellweger), Murphy auditioned for the role of Batman in Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins" (2005), which was eventually given to Christian Bale. But, Nolan liked Cillian's audition so much that he gave him the role of Batman's arch-nemesis Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow, an insane former psychiatrist who uses a variety of drugs and psychological tactics to exploit the fears and phobias of his adversaries. 2005 also saw Murphy co-starring with Rachel McAdams in Wes Craven's airplane thriller "Red Eye.”

"I don't know if anyone will ever sit beside me on a plane again." Cillian Murphy (on his role as a terrorist in “Red Eye,” 2005)

Additionally, he starred as Patrick "Kitten" Braden in Neil Jordan's comedy-drama film based on the novel by Patrick McCabe, "Breakfast on Pluto" (with Stephen Rea, Brendan Gleeson, and Liam Neeson), which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor and an IFTA (Irish Film and Television Awards) Award for Best Actor in a Lead Role in a Feature Film.

Murphy next co-starred with Pádraic Delaney in Ken Loach's widely-praised war drama film "The Wind that Shakes the Barley" (2006). He commented, "If there's an opportunity to work with Ken Loach, you can't really turn that down. He's made some of the finest films of the past 25 years. Whether you like or dislike his movies, there's never a bad performance in them, ever. There's none of the bull****. There's no trailers, no nonsense, no pampering. It's a breath of fresh air."

Murphy also starred as physicist Capa in Danny Boyle's sci-fi thriller "Sunshine" (2007; with Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne, and Chris Evans) and played Beane in the U.K. premiere of John Crowley's "Love Song" at the New Ambassadors Theatre in London (2006-2007).

After starring as the owner of an independent video rental store whose life is turned upside down when a femme fatale (played by Lucy Liu) comes into his life in writer/director Paul Soter's romantic comedy film "Watching the Detectives" (2007), Murphy portrayed Keira Knightley's soldier husband William Killick in John Maybury's true story-based romantic drama "The Edge of Love" (2008; also starring Sienna Miller and Matthew Rhys).

Recently, Murphy reprised his role of Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow in the 2008 sequel to the 2005 movie "Batman Begins," "The Dark Knight," which broke multiple box office records and was greeted by critical acclaim upon release.

"Today I pick and choose my films very carefully. There's nothing I've done so far that I can't talk about with commitment and passion." Cillian Murphy

Murphy will soon wrap up his upcoming films projects, "Hippie Hippie Shake," a drama/comedy by Beeban Kidron in which he co-stars with Sienna Miller, and "Peacock," a thriller by Michael Lander in which he teams up with Ellen Page, Susan Sarandon, Josh Lucas, and Bill Pullman. He is also working on Peter Mackie Burns' film version of David Harrower's play, "White Male Heart," and Andrew Niccol's biopic about surrealist painter Salvador Dali (played by Al Pacino), "Dali & I: The Surreal Story," in which Murphy portrays Stan Lauryssens, the 1970s and 1980s journalist who wrote the book "Dalí and I."

Awards:

• IFTA (Irish Film and Television Awards): Best Actor in a Lead Role in a Feature Film, "Breakfast on Pluto," 2007

• Ourense Independent Film Festival: Best Actor, "Disco Pigs," 2002