The irresistible rise of Irish actor Cillian Murphy had led to the inevitable comparisons. But the 27-year-old, who plays the villain in the next Batman movie, is very much his own man. Donal O'Donoghue met him at Galway's Druid Theatre.

Upstairs at the Druid Theatre, Galway, all is quiet. Rehearsals for The Playboy of the Western World have been suspended for the day, as one of the principal players has taken ill. Now I'm awaiting the arrival of the other lead. Cillian Murphy appears clutching a bag, out of which peeks a copy of The Playboy. He is a slight figure with ebony hair that flops over a finely featured face punctuated by piercing blue eyes. Physically, he seems almost too delicate to capture the comic savagery of playboy Christy Mahon. But the young Cork actor's track record has proven just why he's being trumpeted as one of Ireland's most promising talents. Not that, I suspect, Murphy would have much truck with such claims.
Murphy, who lives in West London, spent the previous weekend in Galway. He went to see Lost in Translation and had a few pints in the city's boozers. "The graveyard of ambition," he sighs, as he pushes back his chair so that it teeters on two legs. For most of the interview it remains like this: a man on the edge who sucks in the questions, tasting them to see what they might look like when the answers are recycled in print. But as he later details, the actor has reasons to be caution. "I'm 27," he says, contrary to reports that have placed him anywhere between 25 and 30. "My mother is appalled at that misinformation because it makes her older. Of course I'm six foot one." And you played rugby? "I never played f***ing (sic) rugby."
Truth, the first victim of fame, is being twisted around Cillian Murphy's ever-rising profile. Next to Colin Farrell (with whom the inevitable if wearing comparisons are made), Murphy is the most in demand young Irish actor in Hollywood. Last month Vanity Fair, the glossy bible of makers and movers, devoted a page to the Irishman's rise. His potted biography pivoted around the highpoints that he was the star of the U.S. sleeper hit of last year, 28 Days Later..., and is set to play the Scarecrow in the next Batman movie.
Still, Murphy is wary of being promoted as being the next big thing: and even more wary of believing in it. "Christy Mahon is a fellow who begins to believe in his own myth which is something that we are surrounded by today," he says of his latest role. The underlying inference is clear.
I first met Murphy when he was cast in a minor role in a 1998 production of Juno and the Paycock at Dublin's Gaiety Theatre. Apart from an award-winning performance in the scintillating stage play Disco Pigs, the Corkman (from Ballintemple) was a virtual unknown: just another pretty face with high hopes. But in that interview he was bright, personable and sharp as a tack, and a few months later I briefly bumped into him in a Dublin pub where he thanked me for giving his granny honourable mention in the article.
Not much has changed. Murphy loves the art of acting but is anxious that the machine doesn't swallow him up or change him into something not true to his ideals. Maybe for this reason he splits the career between stage and screen, between productions like The Seagull and The Playboy and Intermission and Girl With a Pearl Earring. Everything he does, he says, he wants to be able to look back and say it was good. It is a commendable ambition, but as the world wants more and more of Murphy it might become increasingly difficult to stick to his guns. He has Los Angeles in his sights but has no plans to live there. Hollywood makes good movies as well as bad, he argues, just as nothing in life is black and white.
His C.V. suggests an actor drawn to darker, more ambiguous characters but he says that there is no reason why he wouldn't do a romantic comedy if the script was right. In short, his plan is simple: to do work that he believes in.
Cillian had no formal acting education. In fact, early on he nurtured ambitions to be a rock star. "Musician, I'd prefer," he says. "Yes, since I was about ten or eleven. There was a lot of music in our house. Both my father and grandfather played music and I was in several bands with my brother Padraig." The most serious of these outfits was the Frank Zappa influenced, Sons of Mr. Greengenes. They wrote their own songs and Cillian played rhythm guitar and "sang a bit." "It got pretty serious with the offer of a record deal but we didn't bother going down that road," he says, "My parents would have been (he searches in vain for the right word)... at losing myself and my brother to the clutches of the music industry."
At this time Murphy was studying law at UCC, an unhappy affair that lasted eighteen months. "I didn't have a great experience in college but it was probably my own fault," he says and leaves it at that. At UCC he scored his first major role in the drama society's production of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme. "It was more to get the chicks and to get drink," he says of his involvement. "I didn't think it was really going to lead to anything."
In any case, he was busy with Sons of Mr. Greengenes and he wanted to bail out of academia asap. "I wanted to get out of college, I wanted to get out of home. It's like what every 19-year-old kid wants to do." He considers his answer for a moment, as if anticipating where the narrative might be going. "Every article is like called 'Murphy's Law' and it's made more of a deal than anything else. (Leaving college) wasn't such a big deal. It's what you're supposed to do as a young man, isn't it? To try things out?"
Murphy got his first big break when he was literally picked off the streets to play Pig in the stage-play, Disco Pigs: Enda Walsh's dazzling original that stormed Cork, Edinburgh, and London in 1996 and 1997. "It was a brilliant opportunity to see the world and have a laugh," he says. "I had never been to America or many places in Europe. I got to do all that and meet loads of interesting people and get drunk and it was great. There was no question in my mind that I wouldn't do it and I learnt a lot. Corcadorca (the production company behind Disco Pigs) were brilliant to me and took a big chance in casting this young fella off the streets."
After Disco Pigs he moved to Dublin where, after treading the boards for sometime, Murphy began to get a toe-hold on the screen including Sunburn (which failed to get a theatrical release in Ireland), The Trench and TV mini-series The Way We Live Now. Despite positive reviews 28 Days Later..., a post-apocalyptic zombie flick passed by largely unnoticed in this country and the U.K. America was different. "They got it on every level over there," he says. "In a way it overtook events like SARS and the war in Iraq. And it was very cleverly marketed."
Afterwards, the scripts arrived but he was careful about making his next move. "I was 26 when that happened so you're not like a 17-year-old kid who is overwhelmed by America and all that. You realise that you should be in it for the long haul and try and pick stuff that is a bit more artistic and worthwhile.
In recent months Murphy has had minor roles in Cold Mountain and Girl With a Pearl Earring and played the lead in the hit Irish movie, Intermission. But the movie that could change everything is Batman: Intimidation. He auditioned for director Christopher Nolan for the title role last year. It was great," he says, "You got to dress up n the suit and say: 'I'm Batman.' It was one of the most exciting things that I have ever done." Murphy didn't get the lead, but was signed up to play arch villain, The Scarecrow. When I mention this he clams up. "I don't know how much I'm supposed to say about this. I don't even know if I am or not. I'm not allowed to talk about the script."
But he will talk about Batman, his favourite superhero. "It's not just about kryptonite and tights, it was real dark drama," he says. "A lot of my favourite films (La Haine and Mean Streets) would be of a dark nature and I don't think it has anything to do with me being unhinged. I just find those things more interesting."
"Hollywood makes great movies as well as schlock," he continues. "It's very openly cynical about that. They will say if you do this we'll allow you to do this and this. So it's about making choices and for me it's about creating a legacy that you can be judged on. So far I can put my hand on my heart in saying that most projects I have done I have believed in. That's what I want to continue to do. Ultimately, you want it to be about art, and while that might sound pretentious or idealist, that's my agenda.
And so it goes. Next up is Red Light Runners, a thriller in which Murphy co-stars with Harvey Keitel and over the coming months The Playboy of the Western World will retrace the wanderings of Christy Mahon's odyssey across the western seaboard. "And then," says Cillian, "I do that Bat thing."