For someone who once admitted that his primary motivation was not to pursue an acting career but meet women at parties, Cillian Murphy has come a long way. A consummate actor who has proved his versatility numerous times, the actor finally got his due when he won the Best Actor Oscar in 'Oppenheimer'. (Compiled by Sajin Shrijith)
Christopher Nolan's layered and complex cinematic epic on the life and times of the titular theoretical physicist, the "father of the atomic bomb", gave Cillian Murphy an opportunity to play someone who was a genius and struggled with personal demons.
An underappreciated performance where Murphy's feminine features worked to the advantage of his character, a trans woman seeking the whereabouts of his mother while running into complicated events involving the IRA.
Murphy fetched a lion's share of mainstream moviegoers' attention with his chilling portrayal of Batman villain Scarecrow/Dr. Jonathan Crane whose experiments with a fear-inducing toxin to spread chaos. Interestingly, Nolan initially considered him for Batman.
Eight years later, Murphy's fanbase grew further with his six-season lead role as Tommy Shelby, a World War-I hero-turned-mobster, whose story will continue in an upcoming film 'The Immortal Man'.
That one emotional scene involving Murphy's character and his father alone makes Nolan's dream-heist film 'Inception' worthy of including in the list of best performances of the Irish co-star of Leonardo DiCaprio.
In the same year of 'Batman Begins', Murphy played a psychopathic terrorist who holds Rachel McAdam's character hostage aboard an airliner where he plans to carry out a nefarious plan.
An intense, incredibly complex relationship drama told through the stories of two married couples in their 40s, 'The Delinquent Season' is one of those films that, despite having strong performances and actors like Andrew Scott, somehow missed the radar of many.
In one of his most moving performances, Murphy plays a coal merchant and family man dealing with a past trauma, and the memories of which dictates his benevolent actions in the present, tied to a local convent which houses dark and painful truths.