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This article was originally published on July 28, 2023.
Atthe 2024 Oscars, Cillian Murphy won the award for Best Actor for his performance inOppenheimer.
Cillian, Im making a movie.
Its calledOppenheimerand Id like you to play Oppenheimer.
After having made five previous films with Nolan, Murphy now plays the lead in the atomic-age dramaOppenheimer.
He has certainly given some staggering performances in the past, but he is particularly riveting and moving inOppenheimer.
Back in June, before theSAG-AFTRA strike, we spoke about this life-changing part.
He gave me no preparation.
There was no preamble.
He just called me in September of 2021, I think.
And he said in his very understated, low-key manner, Cillian, Im making a movie.
Its calledOppenheimerand Id like you to play Oppenheimer.
How much did you know about J. Robert Oppenheimer at that point?Honestly, not a lot.
But other than that, he was pretty sketchy, so I had to dive in straight away.
Did Nolan have any initial guidance that he gave you?
With real-life characters, it seems theres often a fine line between accuracy and impersonation.
It was a synthesis of Chriss script and all the stuff that I had in my head.
Chris creates a really safe space or environment for actors to create and to contribute.
Because of our history, I felt I could really bring things to him and try stuff out.
But it was very much a relationship between myself and Chris in developing the character.
He would send me pictures of David Bowie.
Why David Bowie?Well, it was the silhouette.
That was the Oppenheimer silhouette.
Oppenheimer was incredibly physically frail, but just so intellectually robust and strong.
And theater is always by necessity in a wide shot.
I lost a lot of weight.
So that was an unpleasant but useful exercise.
Because a lot of the movie is kind of his interior landscape.
Lets talk about that.
So much of the film becomes about his face and his bearing, not so much the dialogue.
Theyre the richest ones.
I guess thats kind of what I tried to do with him.
He goes into this fugue state.
That was us trying to communicate to the audience what he was actually struggling with in a nonverbal way.
That scene, the way its cut and sound-edited, is very similar to the Trinity scene.
Was it that way in the script?
Did you know it was going to be put together that way?Oh, a hundred percent.
Everything is stage-directed in the script, everything is there.
In Chriss films, the script is the film.
It doesnt get moved around or experimented with much in the edit.
So yes, it was all there.
Thats obviously the script, too.
So I must have resting physicists face.
I did an awful lot of research there.
I dont have the intellectual capability to do that.
My job is to go after the humanity.
But thats not my job.
My job is to convince the audience that Oppenheimer knows what hes doing.
I really spent most of the time working on his psychology.
I think I came in pretty hard on the scene a couple of times.
All of a sudden, the whole scene made complete sense.
With a note that concise and brilliant, thats why hes such a magnificent director.
Groves is so certain of who he is and where he stands on these issues.
In a way, Strauss is too.
And Kitty is the one whos always telling Robert to fight.
Shes frustrated that hes not.
The relationship with Kitty is so dysfunctional.
It shouldnt work, yet it does.
It sustains and they both need each other again.
I suppose the most complex one is with Strauss.
I dont think Downey fulfills that.
Its far more complex.
History can turn on one man feeling slighted by another.
Thats a great analogy.
I think history is littered with that, with vanity and narcissism.
It was all done really through me and hair and makeup.
So much of the film happens in close-up, and so much of the film is shot in Imax.
I know Imax cameras are huge and loud.
Hes not away in a tent somewhere.
Hes right there beside you.
So it feels very intimate.
Was that something you talked about?Chris has always been kind of haunted with this stuff.
And he has incredible luck with weather.
Similarly, when the storm kicks up before the Trinity test.
An actual storm kicked up when Im climbing up the tower.
What do you recall about shooting the films final scene with Einstein?We shot that in one day.
I remember it was me and Tom Conti and Downey.
We shot that all in a day or two in Princeton.
So it was all a real location.
I absolutely think the ending of this film is extraordinary.
I remember reading the script going, Wow, thats one of the greatest endings.
And I think its where many, many feature films fail is in the third act.
