Section:GDN 12 PaGe:8 Edition Date:190808 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 7/8/2019 16:52 cYanmaGentaYellowblac

• The Guardian
  8 Thursday 8 August 2019

PHOTOGRAPHS: JOHNNY SAVAGE/THE GUARDIAN; TIGER ASPECT/BBC; CARYN MANDABACH PRODUCTIONS/BBC; KOBAL/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

called Enda Walsh. “It did feel kind

of pivotal, and it wasn’t just that

summer – everything happened in

the month of August,” says Murphy.

In the space of four weeks his life

dramatically changed course. Law

and music went by the wayside,

while acting and life long

relationships with Walsh and

McGuinness were set in motion. “I

remember the confi dence of youth

that you have. You’re just going to

go for it and when you’re 19 or 20

nothing seems permanent. It was an

adventure but, looking back, it does

seem hugely formative.”

When I meet Murphy in the lounge

of a Soho hotel his hair is well on

the way towards shoulder length,

and he has a short beard peppered

with a few grey hairs – a byproduct

‘I hope the violence is always made to lo

Peaky Blinders star

Cillian Murphy talks

to Lanre Bakare

about gangsters,

PTSD, #MeToo,

what Brexit means

for Ireland – and

James Bond

fi de pop culture phenomenon.

Try to pick up a men’s magazine

and avoid its presence. You have

probably noticed the rise in people

wearing Blinders-esque three-piece

suits. There are a video game and a

fi lm in the works , and, next month,

a music festival. David Beckham

started a clothing line inspired by

its sartorial style ; Arsenal ’s Basque

coach Unai Emery watches it to

improve his English , and it has

the marker of any self-respecting

cultural curio: its own dedicated

podcast.

Murphy was surprised by the

success after taking the role, his

fi rst TV job in years. “I didn’t

understand the title,” he admits,

but says he was impressed by

Steven Knight’s story , which was

of his role in another Walsh play, an

adaptation of Max Porter’s Grief Is

the Thing With Feathers. Dressed

in a pair of jeans and a bomber

jacket, he looks like a quietly cool

dad who has been sent out to fetch

a complicated coff ee order. So

what does he think the earnest and

ambitious 19-year-old Murphy would

think of his career? “I think he would

be surprised ... and probably a bit sad

that the music thing didn’t work out.”

Makers of fl at caps and henley

shirts everywhere will be thankful

Murphy didn’t choose the musical

route. He is about to return to TV

screens as Tommy Shelby, the

patriarch and mob boss in the BBC’s

Birmingham-set gangster series

Peaky Blinders, which is now in its

fi fth season and has become a bona

I n the summer of 1996,

Cillian Murphy was at a crossroads.

He had failed his law exams at

University College Cork. He had

turned down a three-album record

contract with his Frank Zappa-

infl uenced “funk-jam band”, the

Sons of Mr Green Genes. He had

met his wife (the artist Yvonne

McGuinness ), and he had decided to

audition for – and was cast in – Disco

Pigs , a play about Cork teenagers

by a then largely unknown writer

‘If you look at

Oswald Mosley

you hold a mirror

up to what is

happening now’

... Cillian Murphy

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