Автор: Lewis Beale

Cillian Murphy made his reputation as an audience favorite when he starred as one of the last survivors of a viral plague in the 2002 zombie hit 28 Days Later… Since then, the 30-year old Irish actor has shown serious versatility by playing psychopaths (Red Eye, Batman Begins), an over-the-top transvestite (Breakfast on Pluto) and a lovestruck clerk involved in a robbery (Intermission). Now he's starring in The Wind That Shakes the Barley, winner of the top prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival, in which he plays an Irish medical student drawn into the 1920s civil war against British occupying forces. Freelance writer Lewis Beale caught up with the slight of stature and fine-boned actor, who appeared a bit exhausted, during a recent publicity tour.

Your new film is certainly fascinating, but seems anti-British to the point of agit-prop. There are simply no decent Brits in the entire picture. How do you respond to that?

I'm not sure how you can say that when you're talking about a civil war. The British basically were brutalized during World War I, and came back, and were given free rein to terrorize the Irish. We weren't making a film about a British soldier who's come back from the First World War, and go through his journey as he's thrown into this illegal occupying army. You have to look at it in context. We're making a film about an illegal occupying force.

Given that, it seems the parallels to present-day Iraq are obvious. Do you agree?

Ken [Loach] and Paul talked about making this film 10, 15 years ago. I think it's a universal theme, and history tends to repeat itself. You make a film like this, and it's going to have resonance, because there's always, in some part of the globe, some army occupying a country, and some sort of divide-and-conquer tactics happening. But we were not making an allegory. The film is not meant to be didactic; you take from it what you wish.

OK, let's move from the serious to the ridiculous. As the star of the really scary zombie flick 28 Days Later…, I was wondering if you could tell me what it is we like about zombies?

I don't like them; I run away from them. But really, in the case of our film, I think there hadn't been a zombie movie made in a long time, so it sort of revitalized the genre. And there were resonances; we shot it just prior to 9/11, and 9/11 happened as we were filming. Then there was the whole SARS thing as well. I think events overtook the script, which is the sign of a good script.

You recently finished Sunshine, a highly anticipated science-fiction movie from 28 Days Later… director Danny Boyle. What was it like being in a film with so many special effects?

It was effects-heavy, but the effects were never the primary concern. The performance was the primary concern. And also, it's all about imagination, which as actors you're supposed to have.

Lately you've managed to jump around from big-budget films like Batman Begins to independents such as The Wind That Shakes the Barley. What's the most notable difference between the two?

On the big pictures, it's the amount of influence noncreative people have in the process. That can be slightly alarming. There's a lot of cooks, and that can be frustrating. Whereas you know, Ken gets independent financing, but he does what he wants, makes the films he wants, cuts them as he wants. I think the big films I've been in ended up OK, but you can see when a filmmaker has had his vision distorted by what other people see as whether it's marketable or not.

Growing up in Ireland, I wonder what kinds of movies you liked when you were a kid.

I went through the whole '70s canon. I was obsessed with Mean Streets for a long time. It was the vitality and the energy of it.

Your son, Malachy, is about 15 months old now. How has fatherhood changed you?

It's hopefully made me a better person. It's certainly made me more aware of what's important in life.

I guess that's the best part of fatherhood. What's the worst part?

Lack of sleep.