He's young, he's talented, and now level-headed Irish actor Cillian Murphy is also a wanted man.

Cillian Murphy has been called, glibly, the new Colin Farrell, just because he's young and Irish. Whereas Farrell is earning more column centimetres for acting up off screen, however, Cillian (pronounced with a hard "c") Murphy is earning attention for his acting. Even better, some of modern cinema's finest directors want Murphy as their man.

Danny Boyle, who made Trainspotting, elevated Murphy from small independent Irish features to a lead in what turned out to be a zeitgeist-hitting zombie film, 28 Days Later... Anthony Minghella cast him in Cold Mountain and Christopher Nolan, the director of Memento, even toyed with the idea of casting him as the caped crusader in Batman Begins. Nolan opted to use him as the villain of the piece, Dr Jonathan Crane, or Scarecrow, instead, a clever choice for an actor with a deep-set blue-eyed stare and cheekbones that could double as weapons.

Murphy, 30 and a recent father, agrees he has been fortunate thus far, making decisions about his roles unencumbered by anything other than their merit.

"Thankfully I haven't had to make one purely for financial means yet. I've managed to choose solely on what will be a worthwhile project," he says. "Obviously you get offered rubbish and people think you're open to doing rubbish, and that's not to say I'm not going to do rubbish in two years ..."

He laughs. Too unassuming to admit to some master plan, though, he points to a happy confluence of events. How else can he explain being cast in the two Irish films presently in cinemas: Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto and Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley?

Murphy has worked hard to get such films. He screen-tested for Jordan years before the director could produce the adaptation of Pat McCabe's novel. "That wasn't a conscious decision to make an Irish film," he says. "Anyone would want to work with Neil Jordan." Murphy earned a Golden Globe nomination as best actor for his performance as transvestite cabaret singer Patrick "Kitten" Braden in Jordan's 2005 film.

And when he realised Loach would be making a film in his home county, Cork, Murphy says, he was falling over himself trying to get a meeting with him. "It's not a career plan to say: 'I'll do a big American film, then two small Irish films, then two big American films,"' he says.

Not that Loach is a conventional director. He's one of Europe's independent mavericks, a Brit famed for his kitchen-sink dramas including Riff-Raff, Ladybird Ladybird and My Name is Joe, and his sweeping tracts about political rebellion, such as Carla's Song and Land and Freedom. "He kind of works so out of the box that I actually heard about the film through a friend of mine, I didn't hear through my agent," Murphy says. "I don't think he'd ever heard of me before, which is brilliant, and I had about five improvisational scenarios with him and he offered me the part."

The Wind That Shakes the Barley combines Loach's political and personal concerns. The 70-year-old director doesn't shirk issues or shelter his actors from them. But where many of his previous works may be considered overly didactic, his latest offering is emotionally sincere after it overcomes one-dimensional parallels with contemporary politics. The film follows two Irish brothers, Damien (Murphy) and Teddy O'Donovan (Padraic Delaney), in the 1920s, during the anti-British rebellion that led to the formation of the Irish Free State but also the destructive split between the pragmatic Free Staters and the idealistic Irish Republican Army.

Murphy, a former law student, says he comes from a "very politicised family" but not one directly involved in the conflict. Nevertheless, a cousin was killed and his grandfather was shot at indiscriminately while playing a fiddle, one of the particularly Irish pastimes considered subversive by occupying British forces.
"People forget that it's only really two generations ago that this all went down," Murphy says. "And this specific period in this specific part of the country has never really been dealt with. Every family in Cork has a story about it, how it directly or indirectly affected their families, and the two main political parties trace their roots back to this fracture in Irish politics."

Loach and his screenwriter, Paul Laverty, don't attempt to conceal the brutality and wrenching choices of the period. Murphy's character is particularly committed to the independence cause, his performance heightened by Loach's style of direction.

Unlike most directors, Loach shoots chronologically. "The whole way he sets up his films is for the benefit of the actor, as far as I can see," Murphy says. "I asked him and he said it's logical the actor should experience the thing that the character is experiencing because then you react honestly."

"For me, what it's about is the intellectual versus the instinctual, and with Ken it's always about the instinctual," Murphy adds. "From the actor's perspective, so you can't rely on any tricks, you can't rely on any motivational decisions you've made based on the script. It's all based on the moment and it's totally honest. Rather than looking cool or doing a very powerful piece of grandstanding acting, it's just about being true to the character and the moment."

Loach gives that truth an almost cruel twist, though, occasionally keeping the full script from his actors. In one affecting scene, Murphy's Damien assassinates a likable turncoat on a hillside. The actor reached the top of the hill unaware his character would have to drive the heart-rending scene.

"Yeah, it is cruel but exhilarating at the same time," he says. "Just not knowing, it makes the whole thing tense."

Murphy curls up into a ball on his armchair, simultaneously smiling and recoiling at the thought of revealing Loach's secrets. "He'd hate me talking about it, he hates it being a big deal, his way of doing it," he says. "When people talk about this method, Ken gets worried that they forget there's a really, really strong script there to begin with and that's the foundation of the whole film.

"Paul Laverty probably doesn't get enough mention as the screenwriter for all of Ken's recent films, but the writing makes it work, not so much the actors. People confuse it with Mike Leigh's style, in which actors co-create the screenplay, but it's Ken and Paul who make the system brilliant."

So brilliant in this instance that The Wind That Shakes the Barley earned the main prize, the Palme d'Or, at this year's Cannes film festival. That festival is always willing to reward the liberal ahead of the artful but it is a career-topping coup for Loach nevertheless.

Murphy agrees. "It's encouraging that a film like this, given the climate we live in, was the winner. And I'm also delighted for Ken because he's been selected so many times." Loach has never before won a prize there.

Murphy's career is certain to pick up its own plaudits in years to come, with several films on his dance card, including Boyle's latest, Sunshine, a sci-fi film about a team (including a character played by Rose Byrne) sent to revive the sun.

"It's a moderately big film, budget-wise, but in terms of the classic sci-fi thing of people on a spaceship, it's small," says the slight and fashionably scruffy actor. "There hasn't been a great science fiction film made in many a year and I think Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland were inspired by the brilliant ones, like Solaris, 2001, and Alien, to return to that style of film. And again, like they did with 28 Days Later..., to try to make, within a genre film, a film that has something to say also."

Chances are it will be another worthy achievement in Murphy's brief but brilliant career. "I'm pleased I can stand behind the films I've done and talk about them all," he says. "I'm keeping the clause in there that I might do rubbish in the future but I'm trying for it not to happen."