Cillian Murphy reveals ‘main thing' he relied on to play Oppenheimer

Cillian detailed his experience of filming for his Oscar-nominated titular role in Oppenheimer.

Cillian attended a screening of Oppenheimer at BFI IMAX Waterloo on Wednesday. The 47-year-old star was asked to detail his biggest take away from playing the “father of the atomic bomb.”

“The main thing I learnt or relied upon was that he was a human being, that was the main thing I wanted to access - his humanity.”

The Peaky Blinders star famously lost 25 pounds for the role of Robert Oppenheimer. He previously admitted: “I love acting with my body, and Oppenheimer had a very distinct physicality and silhouette, which I wanted to get right.”

“I had to lose quite a bit of weight, and we worked with the costume and tailoring.”

However, the Inception actor went on to discourage people from trying such extreme dieting, saying, “You become competitive with yourself a little bit, which is not healthy. I don't advise it.”

Oppenheimer’s shooting schedule’s also helped Cillian lose weight. He told The Guardian: “It’s like you’re on this f***ing train that’s just bombing. It’s bang, bang, bang, bang. You sleep for a few hours, get up, bang it again.”

“I was running on crazy energy; I went over a threshold to where I was not worrying about food or anything. I was so in it, a state of hyper...something.”

“But it was good because the character was like that. He never ate,” he said.

This comes as Best Actor nominations continue to pour in for Cillian’s remarkable performance in Oppenheimer. He’s been nominated for the Oscar alongside Bradley Cooper for Maestro, Colman Domingo for Rustin, Paul Giamatti for The Holdovers, and Jeffrey Wright for American Fiction.