His face is on posters all over America after playing the lead in Danny Boyle's zombie thriller, 28 Days Later... (which has grossed $33m in the U.S.). But Irish actor Cillian Murphy is following up his film success with a return to the stage. He plays the young writer, Konstantin, in Peter Stein's Festival production of Chekhov's The Seagull.

I was a bit of a Chekhov virgin, which is probably what appealed to Peter. I didn't have any preconceived notions about how Konstantin should be played. We met up and I read for him. I actually don't think he knows anything about 28 Days Later..., which is refreshing.
I started out doing theatre and I try to do at least one play a year. It's imperative to keep the old muscles exercised. You don't get those classic, brilliantly written roles in film or TV as you do on stage. For me, it's all about learning as an actor, and to work with people of this calibre is a real treat.
I hope I can glean something from them and use it in the future. Fiona Shaw is playing my mother, Arkadina, and we've had a good old laugh about that. We're both from the same part of Cork, which helps the family dynamic.
Konstantin is one of the great roles you want to tick off as an actor. He goes on this amazing journey through the play, so I just hope I can do him justice. I think he comes to realise there's no point being an iconoclastic writer just for the sake of it, and that the search for new forms has to have something behind it.
I think that's very valid for me as an actor, too, because I started off thinking Peter's production had to be new and modern and that I wouldn't be involved in hoary old drawing-room theatre. But now I appreciate it's not going to be a traditional English production in the slightest.
We're not Russian actors; we don't have that soul Peter speaks about so frequently, but we did go out to Russia to immerse ourselves in the atmosphere. We went to Melikhovo, where Chekhov had his estate, and saw the little outhouse where he wrote The Seagull.
The other thing I've got on at the Festival is the Irish film Intermission, with Colin Farrell and Kelly Macdonald. Written by playwright Mark O'Rowe, it's a great sprawling multi-narrative story. No idea how it will play in Edinburgh, but I think it's great.