Cillian Murphy has reflected on how his career was affected by his Oscar win, saying he didn’t notice a particular increase in demand for his services.
The Irish actor won Best Actor at the Academy Award in 2024 for playing the title role in Christopher Nolan’s epic Oppenheimer.
He has since appeared in the historical drama Small Things Like These and is currently promoting the classroom drama Steve.
Asked by Variety whether the success of Oppenheimer had put him in “hot demand” to lead big, studio films, Murphy responded: “No, because I had these other two films straight away. I just wasn’t available, so it didn’t happen.”
He added: “Maybe some day it will. Or maybe it’s too late.”
Murphy is next expected to appear in a small role in 28 Days Later sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and will then reprise his acclaimed Peaky Blinders role as Thomas Shelby for the Netflix movie The Immortal Man.
Speaking about the former film, Murphy told Variety that he couldn’t reveal too much: “But I will say that I think Nia DaCosta has made an extraordinary film, and it’s an amazing accompaniment to Danny’s movie. I’m only in it a tiny bit, but I’m really proud of it.”
Steve has received mixed reviews from critics. The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey handed the film three stars and wrote:“Steve, a film Max Porter adapted from his own novella Shy, asks us to consider what we expect from adaptation. On the page, we enter inside the mind of a teenage boy. It’s chaotic in there. We’re torn violently between love and self-obliteration, between the feeling of being very big to the feeling of being very small, always in flux and never safe.
“The boy, Shy, is at a boarding school for troubled kids in England in 1995. It’s known as their ‘Last Chance’. Porter’s writing is a provocation to sympathy. He’s asking us, before we cast our judgment, to at least live a little while inside this maelstrom.
“For the screen, however, Porter chose to – in his words – ‘rewrite’ rather than to adapt. Steve tells the same story from the point of view of the school’s headteacher, who in the novella is a rare, unwaveringly kind voice. It’s nice to see an author treat cinema as something more than an accessory to their own work. Ultimately, it’s a daring choice that yields limited results.
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“As Steve becomes the centre of our attention – and how could he not be, when he’s played by the extraordinary Cillian Murphy – Shy (Jay Lycurgo) is sidelined. He becomes the curious, tragic puzzle everyone’s trying to solve.”
