Though Batman and stardom loom, Cillian Murphy has his feet firmly on the ground—the stage to be precise, says Gemma O'Sullivan.

In a Galway restaurant on a wet and windy night, Cillian Murphy shifts uncomfortably in his seat. "They're not something you can control," he says. "I hope ... Well, I suppose every actor would hope this ... I don't think I'm limited in any way. I find this very uncomfortable, talking about this."
The subject in question is Murphy's looks.
"I think there are actors who are transformative and actors who aren't. There are actors who can play the leading role, the love interest, but they can also play the loser in the ditch. I think Johnny Depp can do it magnificently.
"There's obviously an industry built around the body beautiful that sells magazines and films. There are certain people who sell magazines and people who don't. I am firmly rooted in the latter. I don't think anybody would ever sell a magazine on the back of my name."
But what of his burgeoning female following: is he entirely unaware of it? "That's bullshit," he says firmly. "I have never experienced any of that. Genuinely."
He has come from rehearsals of Druid's new production of The Playboy of the Western World. Garry Hynes, the Druid director, having made her name with the company's production of J.M. Synge's classic 25 years ago, is returning in his centenary year to the story of a man made mighty by the power of a lie.
In Druid's original Playboy, Mick Lally was a swarthy Christy Mahon, defining the role for a generation. Hynes's choice of Murphy—she had her eye on him for the part five years ago, when he was just 22—has the potential to define Mahon for another generation.
The story of a boy who grows to manhood in the reflected glow of a community's fickle admiration, it also has obvious potential as a convenient but misleading metaphor for Murphy's career, something of which he is not unaware. "He's the man who believed his own myth," says Murphy. For some self-mythologising clearly works; it's something, however, from which Murphy instinctively shrinks.
"The actors I like are the ones I know nothing about," He says. "Edward Norton, Joaquin Phoenix. I don't know who he is going out with, I don't care, I've never seen him on chat shows. I just think he is a brilliant f****** (sic) actor.
"Some celebrities live their lives completely in the papers. I abhor all that stuff. For that to be sustained it has to be fed. I haven't created any controversy. I don't sleep around, I don't go and fall down drunk."
It is perhaps just as well. On the cusp of international stardom, Murphy is on a trajectory to becoming a staple of the celebrity publishing industry.
Having appeared in one successful feature film after another since dropping out of University College Cork—his work includes Disco Pigs, 28 Days Later..., Intermission, Cold Mountain, and Girl With a Pearl Earring—he is set to move to the next level in Hollywood with a villain's role in the next Batman film. He tried out for the role of Batman, which eventually was awarded to Christian Bale.
"I never thought I was right for that actual role," he says. "I mean, they would have had to shoot it all in perspective, with dwarves playing all the villains. Obviously whatever I did made an impression on (director) Christopher Nolan."
From the outside it seems a charmed existence and an improbably swift ascent. From the inside it seems no less charmed—"Lucky should be my middle name," he says—but not quite the overnight success that some might consider it. "You do wake up in the morning and think, 'f****** (sic) hell, what the hell am I doing here?' But I'm eight years doing it. You build up a bit of confidence when you work with certain people. You do roles and learn more, so you walk into a room armed with your CV, as well as anything else you know.
"Before, because I didn't train (as an actor), I'd go into a room and go: 'Listen, I don't really know why I am here; I'm just thrilled to be here, so I'll give it my best shot and, sure, we'll see what happens.' And of course they're going 'Who the hell is this langer? We're certainly not going to hire him.' Whereas now I go in and I say: 'I can do this and this and you should hire me.'
"Before I felt like an interloper entirely. And that's only gone recently, actually."
Groomed in the academic hothouse of Cork's Presentation Brother's college, Murphy's interests were at odds with the prevailing rugby ethos.
"If you had any creative or artistic leaning, it wasn't catered for," he says, "although I had a brilliant English teacher, Billy Wall.
"I was a little bastard up until about the fourth year. I was getting suspended and all that stuff. Just messing, nothing serious. It was causing too much hassle, so I said, 'This isn't worth it' and I put my head down, worked and did well."
Wall, who is also a poet and novelist, encouraged Murphy to pursue acting in his final year in school at a time when his ambitions lay elsewhere, namely in rock 'n' roll. That was not an entirely popular option at home, in Ballintemple, a confluence of estates around the affluent Blackrock Road, where Murphy grew up the eldest in a family of four children, two boys and two girls.
"Myself and the brother caused fierce trouble at home," he says. "The girls were fantastic: brainy, bright and didn't cause any trouble. I'm lucky because I have brilliant parents; they're hugely supportive. They're like friends to me now."
He wanted to be a musician from a very young age, he says. "I was writing songs since I was 10 years old; I still do." He formed a band with his brother, Páidi, but when they were offered a recording deal they were cautious. "I was 18, Páidi was 16. The deal involved selling all our songs and signing up for five years. We turned it down. The label went belly-up two years later.
"If we had signed up that time, I think I might have turned into a bit of a dick. You're 18, people are telling you you're fantastic and you are not a fully formed adult in any way.
"You could easily turn into a dickhead. The way it turned out, I'm much happier being my own man and being autonomous."
Although Murphy readily gives credit to people for the advice and help they gave him — among them Wall, playwright Enda Walsh, theatre director Pat Kiernan and actor Brendan Gleeson—he characterises himself as tending not to depend on others.
"I do my own thing," he says. "I don't think I've ever depended on people. Even since I was young I don't think I did. I mean, I have a long-term relationship, and that's a huge support."
Half-heartedly pursuing a law degree at UCC, he persuaded Kiernan to cast him in Walsh's E-generation play Disco Pigs in 1996. "I harangued Pat Kiernan," he says. A run at the Edinburgh Fringe prompted Murphy to reconsider law studies; a transfer to the West End of London and an international tour settled the matter. "It wasn't a difficult decision to make," he says.
Having ascended, through working with Hynes, Danny Boyle, Kirsten Sheridan, and others, to the foothills of Hollywood stardom, Murphy can now afford to pick and choose his projects. "I read everything I'm sent, even the shite stuff," he says. "For me, choosing a script is about instinct. When it comes to acting it's about instinct and collaborating with a director."
Thus far his instincts and collaborators have served him well. Hollywood awaits, though he rubbishes the notion that it may change him. "But sure, how, like? You see, that's the misconception. Surely you buy a gaff for your mum and dad, you buy a nice gaff for yourself, you have kids. I don't see how it changes your life unless you are a 22-year-old who wants to put it all up his nose."
Not for him the luvvie excesses of his trade, true to the character. "Philip Seymour Hoffman is the only actor I ever approached," he says. "I was on a plane to New York with him once. He was waiting for his baggage and I was standing around for ages like a stalker. So I went up and I said: 'Listen man, I have to say that I am just in awe of you, and I loved all your films,' And he blushed, and then I blushed. And I just left."
And the novelty-hungry publishing industry waiting expectantly for Murphy to become a rip-roaring feature of the celebrity circuit? "Yeah, well, they'll be sorely disappointed."