Cillian Murphy talks Peaky Blinders: The Immortal man, career, and the footballer he'd play in a movie

Martin Macdonald

• Updated: 20 Mar 2026 06:01 CDT
• 7 min read

News

Cillian Murphy has long been one of the most respected actors in Hollywood and he reached the apex of his career in 2024 when he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Oppenheimer.

The Irishman combines big-budget blockbusters like Inception, Batman Begins and Sunshine with smaller, more intimate productions like The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Small Things Like These, and Steve.

Perhaps the role he is most known for is a television one, however, as since 2013 he has played Birmingham gangster Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders. It follows the exploits of the Peaky Blinders crime gang in the direct aftermath of the First World War.

The series stopped in 2022 but has been revitalised for a streaming feature-length movie on Netflix; Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man.

It stars Murphy, Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Roth, Stephen Graham, Sophie Rundle and Barry Keoghan and is released worldwide on Netflix on 23rd March.

When asked by L'Equipe how he pictured Tommy Shelby before the first series began filming, Murphy responded:

“It’s been fourteen years since I discovered the character of Tommy Shelby, in 2012. I almost pictured him as a character from a Western. Strangers come to your town to ‘take it over.’ That’s the impression I got, except it was in England, not America. That’s what made it unique, different. Along with the fact that it was in Birmingham and not London. What’s the second largest city in France after Paris? Marseille? Well, it would have been obvious to film this series in Paris, for example, but Steve (Steven Knight, the series’ creator) wanted it somewhere else.

"It was a clever way to make it feel familiar but very original. A lot of it comes from Tommy’s experiences during the First World War, from the traumas he carried with him. He needs to recover from what he saw and endured as a soldier, which completely changed him. His way of being and seeing the world, his perspective on life, death, everything. I read a lot about that and about the war. Shell shock syndrome was a term that didn't exist back then. Then I worked on the physical aspect. There's the bearing, the gait, the voice, the physicality. He's a demanding character. He's relentless, he never sleeps, the complete opposite of me.”

So how does Murphy, a mild-mannered Irishman, become the violent, cerebral Tommy Shelby?

“I have to be stronger, more imposing," he revealed.

"It forces me to go to the gym, to train, that kind of thing. I don't have a coach; I do it myself, with the help of the film crew. It's a collaborative effort when you're preparing a character like this. The costumes have to emphasize that. I'm not a tough guy, but I have to pretend to be. The haircut is key. The cap, the way he smokes—every detail has to be considered. Every little decision leads to the bigger picture later on.”

Murphy has received praise for his Birmingham accent, one of the most notoriously difficult to pull off correctly as an actor not from that region. With a Cork accent of his own, it's a tough transition.

“It really changes everything. I speak more deeply. The voice is deeper," he explained.

"The Birmingham accent is completely different from my natural accent. I love this transformative work, playing someone completely different from who I am. It's fun, and at the same time, sometimes you play characters who are similar to yourself. Recently, I did this film, Steve (out in 2025, directed by Tim Mielants), and I didn't change anything except grow a beard. The essence of the role is having a presence. Tommy is totally different.”

The 49-year-old is known for his piercing blue eyes so it's often the case that directors will simply do close-ups of his face with no dialogue - it was one of the most famous scenes in Oppenheimer as the main character comes to terms with how he has reshaped the world with the invention of the atomic bomb.

“The most beautiful films are when you see people thinking," Murphy shared.

"But it's difficult to explain because it's largely instinct and feeling. You have to try to live the same experience as the character, for your body to truly feel the scene, for you to be fully present in it mentally. That's when the camera manages to ‘read’ it. If you project those thoughts very intensely, physically, I'm certain that people will perceive it.”

Keoghan plays his done, Duke, in The Immortal Man and in one scene the pair fight in a literal pigsty.

"It was funny because I'd read this scene, written by Steven, about a fight in the pigpen," the 28 Days Later star recalled.

"In my head, it was on the farm, something small. When I arrived, I discovered this huge place. Cool! We fought and fought, standing up, until we fell into the mud. The costume gets incredibly heavy; you're dragging twice your weight. The two characters haven't seen each other for many years, and as soon as they meet, boom, it's violent and it happens in the mud. It's about the terrible father that Tommy Shelby is and the terrible son that Duke thinks he is. The mud and the pigs are the world around them. In those scenes, you have a fight coordinator guiding you, you rehearse, but it comes back to energy. It's also about trust.”

Murphy is a football fan and has been in attendance at Liverpool matches previously. In fact, club captain Virgil van Dijk once revealed that Murphy was the most famous person in his phone contacts.

A fierce supporter of Irish athletes, too, he once called himself and Roy Keane "kindred spirits" as they both hail from Cork in Ireland.

It's no surprise, then, that when asked about an athlete he could play in a movie, he responded:

“I'm really not good at sports. He's from my hometown, Cork, so maybe Roy Keane. But he's already been played by someone who'll do it better than me. But I'm not the most athletic of actors.”

Keane has indeed recently been portrayed in a movie. Saipan tells the story of the Republic of Ireland national team and the drama surrounding Keane, manager Mick McCarthy and the decimation of their relationship at the 2002 World Cup.

In the movie, the Manchester United legend is played by Éanna Hardwicke.

When asked to explain his Irish identity, Murphy replied:

“It's very difficult, complex, like French identity, I presume, which is hard to summarise in a few words. Ireland's history is complicated. It's a small country with an immense heritage, a very rich culture, shaped by colonisation, occupation, political unrest, the Church, immigration... It's a country that has experienced many very difficult periods, but it has a very strong artistic and cultural scene, a very strong poetry and literature.

"For such a small country, it has had a great deal of influence throughout the world because of its culture. I love living here. There's an Irish saying that you can leave but always come back. This applies to many Irish actors, by the way, who go to live elsewhere, like in the United States, and then realise that they actually need to be home. I wanted to see my children grow up in Ireland. National pride is funny because you might ask yourself: why love a country just because you were born there? But you don't ask yourself that, you love it, that's just how it is. You need that level of healthy pride, even if it's sometimes unreasonable, extreme.”

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