Cillian Murphy Quotes

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

Cause things look beautiful when they're away from you, things look beautiful when they're so new and things look beautiful when they're away from you. They seem to stay away from you.

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.

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

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.