Christopher Nolan‘s name is synonymous with creative brilliance, and Cillian Murphy has emerged as one of the few luminaries of the silver screen who aces every complex role that comes his way. The highly-anticipated biographical thriller, Oppenheimer, marks the first film where the Peaky Blinders star plays the lead in a Nolan-directed feature. The 47-year-old actor will portray the titular character of J. Robert Oppenheimer, “one of the most complicated and layered people” in history.
Oppenheimer marks Cillian Murphy’s sixth collaboration with the legendary director in 18 years. “As a lover of film, as a cinephile, I’m a Chris Nolan fan,” Murphy said in an interview with THR. He also joked that he would “always show up for Chris, even if it was walking in the background of his next movie holding a surfboard.” But thankfully, Nolan’s films feature Murphy in some of his most compelling performances rather than merely having him in the background.
Here are all six collaborations between the two gems of Hollywood, ranked by Murphy’s performance.
6. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
In the third and final film of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Cillian Murphy reprises his role as the DC supervillain Dr. Jonathan Crane, a.k.a. Scarecrow, though only in a cameo.
The Scarecrow is portrayed in DC Comics as a brilliant psychologist turned criminal mastermind. As a young man, he becomes obsessed with fear due to being abused and bullied. He utilizes a hallucinogenic medication called “fear toxin” to prey on the fears of the residents of Gotham City and the city’s guardian, Batman. Murphy appears in The Dark Knight Rises during Philip Stryver’s kangaroo court hearing, which is presided over by Dr. Crane.
The Dark Knight Rises is often considered one of Nolan’s weakest works and was the fourth collaboration between him and Murphy. The film was made after the passing of Heath Ledger, who portrayed the iconic villain Joker in the second film of the trilogy.
5. The Dark Knight (2008)
In the second installment of Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, Cillian Murphy briefly appears as the person who initiates the events that lead to the movie’s plot. The Dark Knight was both the highest-grossing superhero movie of its era and the highest-grossing movie of 2008. It is regarded as the greatest comic book movie ever.
Murphy’s Dr. Crane appears in the movie as a minor enemy, conspiring to give his fear toxin to prisoners at Gotham City’s Blackgate Prison. Dr. Crane is apprehended by Batman at the start of The Dark Knight and imprisoned as a result of The Dent Act. However, in The Dark Knight Rises, Tom Hardy’s revolutionary antagonist, Bane, frees all the inmates of Blackgate Penitentiary, including Murphy’s Crane.
While his appearance in the film is relatively short, it is nonetheless memorable. The Scarecrow’s appearance provides the trilogy with a sense of continuity by acting as the connecting thread. And as always, Murphy does a fantastic job of capturing Dr. Crane’s ominous and threatening demeanor.
4. Dunkirk (2017)
Cillian Murphy appeared in Nolan’s gripping Oscar-winning WWII epic Dunkirk as the Shivering Soldier, representing the heartbreaking reality of many soldiers during the historical Dunkirk evacuation in the summer of 1940.
Murphy makes his first appearance as one of the soldiers rowing themselves out to sea in lifeboats, hoping to locate a boat that will ferry them across the English Channel. In the following sequence dubbed “The Sea,” he is discovered struggling on a piece of floating debris by Mr. Dawson, who is sailing to Dunkirk with his son and friend George. Murphy, now experiencing PTSD or shell shock as the sole survivor of the U-boat attack, onboards the boat, thinking they’re sailing to England.
Soon, Murphy learns they are going to Dunkirk and starts acting irrationally and anxiously. To take control of the boat away from Mr. Dawson, he engages in a fierce conflict that leaves George blind. With limited dialogues, Murphy relies on his expressive eyes and body language to convey the enormous pain and internal conflict that dominates his character. His portrayal of the Shivering Soldier vividly captures the inescapable terror, pleading, and fragility of a man who has experienced the unspeakable atrocities of battle.
3. Batman Begins (2005)
Among all three of Murphy’s appearances as Scarecrow, his performance in the first film in Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy stands out the most. The 2005 film Batman Begins marked Murphy’s introduction to the DCU as Dr. Jonathan Crane, a corrupt psychologist, Chief Administrator of Arkham Asylum, and supervillain enemy of Batman.
Murphy’s character first appears when Tom Wilkinson’s Falcone is arrested and sent to prison. There he meets Dr. Crane, whom he helped smuggle drugs into Gotham. Crane then sprays Falcone with a fear-inducing hallucinogen, which drives him insane, and he is transferred to Arkham Asylum. He sprays Batman with the same hallucinogen and sets him on fire. After Batman subdues him later, Crane reveals he works for Batman’s adversary Ra’s al Ghul.
Murphy wonderfully embodied the Scarecrow’s cold and calculating character with his striking appearance and chillingly calm demeanor. He masterfully evokes the idea of underlying craziness hiding underneath Dr. Crane’s outward façade as a normal psychopharmacologist. Despite his limited screen time, Murphy established himself as a formidable adversary for Batman.
2. Inception (2010)
Inception is counted among the most mind-bending sci-fi thrillers of all time, delving deep into the idea of lucid dreaming. Cillian Murphy portrayed Robert Fischer, the heir to a vast corporate empire, as a part of Nolan’s talented cast led by Leonardo DiCaprio.
Murphy’s character is a young man trying to live up to his father’s legacy and struggling under the weight of his expectations to inherit his business empire. He becomes the target of extractors Cobb and Arthur (DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who are persuaded to do so by the Japanese businessman Saito in exchange for erasing Cobb’s criminal record. He is a key character in the intricate plot with an equally complex role.
Murphy’s character experiences significant transformations as the plot develops within the subconscious and maze of dreams. Murphy skillfully and precisely navigates these changes throughout the various levels of the dream. He delivers a sincere and captivating portrayal of a man juggling his past, present, and unknown future. Robert Fischer is one of Murphy’s most emotionally engaging performances, making Nolan’s Inception a one-of-a-kind sci-fi thriller.
1. Oppenheimer (2023)
The most recent project by Christopher Nolan and Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer, has already been compared to the Oscar-winning 2011 biographical masterpiece The Social Network. Murphy plays the film’s lead J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Jewish-American theoretical physicist who led The Manhattan Project. He brilliantly portrays Oppenheimer’s inner experience before and after developing the atomic bomb.
Shot in a shocking 57-day schedule, Cillian Murphy portrays Oppenheimer at various stages of his life, from his lonely and disturbed college days up until his devastating later days after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Murphy spends much of his on-screen time against Matt Damon’s Leslie Groves, a military engineer put in command of The Manhattan Project’s security, or David Krumholtz’s charming character Isidor Isaac Rabi.
Playing a real-life historically-celebrated figure, Murphy skillfully mirrors Oppenheimer’s complex thoughts and overarching feelings. His piercing ocean-blue eyes are a “window to the physicist’s lofty intellect.” Murphy uses his expressions to convey Oppenheimer’s pain and humiliation when Lewis Strauss questioned his loyalty to America as a Jewish with former ties to the communists. The film reaffirmed Murphy’s unmatched acting prowess, which also yielded great appreciation from Nolan himself.
