Cillian Murphy
I'd probably have been wealthier if I had stayed with law, but pretty miserable doing it.Collection: Law
I'm interested in pressure, I'm interested in duress. All the great works of art, or film or literature, in my opinion, have elements of those in them.Collection: Art
I don't consider myself a shy person necessarily, but there's something about getting under the skin of a character and allowing you an abandon or a sense of courage that you would never have in your own life.Collection: Character
And once you're unafraid with death, I think your capacity for violence is immediately increased. Once you're unafraid of death, you are a very, very dangerous adversaryCollection: Thinking
I try not to think retrospectively. It's important, as an artist, to look forward, always. I do try to take work that involves some challenge. If you approach a piece of work and you're going, "Yeah, yeah, I can do that," then that's kind of a red flag.Collection: Artist
Sociopath is a word that has sort of become shorthand for psychopath and there's a distinct difference, it's interesting if you look it up. Sociopath if you look at the medical definition, the profile of a sociopath is that they are supremely intelligent people that are also pathological liars, they have no moral structure and there is one more, they have no compassion or empathy for other people.Collection: Liars
I take my hat off to the ladies. The amount of grooming-plucking and shaving and all the other things men never have to do. I went down and spent time with transvestites in London in the clubs and all that. Got an insight to that world, and it's a mad world, but they are very warm and very open people. It was a great experience.Collection: Men
You need to be as clean of a slate as you can be, as an actor. You have to try to be open to every experience.Collection: Trying
For me it's always been about the stories, not what medium. The medium is secondary to the stories.Collection: Stories
I’ve never done a film for the moneyCollection: Done
I think for me with theater, I need to take a break and then fall in love with it again. And then go do it again.Collection: Falling In Love
Every Irish person of my generation and earlier, we were raised Catholic and we'd have to learn it in school, we'd to learn the catechism by rote.Collection: School
I suppose I've always been attracted to this sort of outsider in general - in literature, in music, politics, whatever - and to the person that is able to be relentlessly themselves. I don't think that I have that quality, that strength of mind.Collection: Thinking
I think there's such a thing as a performance gene. If it's in your DNA it needs to come out. For me, it originally came out through music, then segued into acting and came out through there. I always needed to get up and perform.Collection: Thinking
I'm kind of loath to pick one project over another or whatever. You go into every film sort of thinking it'll be your best work, and that's necessary. I think in this business, you really have to be forward-looking the whole time. I think nostalgia is sort of the death knell for any artist.Collection: Artist
I hope that I have gained some wisdom, but I don't know. I have kids, and that certainly puts things into perspective. I think I'm a more patient person. I hope I'm a more patient person. I'm a little more relaxed about the peripheral side of this business, which I used to find very confusing and alarming.Collection: Kids
You're an actor who's Irish, not an Irish actor. And you shouldn't be limited by your extraction.Collection: Actors
All I've tried to do as an actor is follow the good writing. That's been my main drive. It's not always possible, so when you do come upon it, like when I came upon this, you realize pretty quickly this is something you need to be involved with.Collection: Writing
The boring people are the worst. I think it's obvious, I think people have always had phobias about flying for years even before 9/11 and everything like that. It just taps into that and it taps into who you are going to sit next to on the plane.Collection: Thinking
I was obsessed with Batman as a kid. I did the film in part just to be near the Batmobile. But I also think [director] Christopher Nolan made a very fine, intelligent film.Collection: Kids
I'm pretty adamant to do an American accent because you get it immediately.Collection: Accents
It seemed to work on camera. And there's very few films - because you make a lot of films and you meet people and you work very intensely and intimately and then you're gone - but there's a few where you actually make friends, and this [The Fall] was one.Collection: Fall
I'm Irish and very proud of being Irish, but as an actor, your extraction should be secondary, really. You should be able to embody whatever character it is, wherever the character comes from. That's always been important, for me. I'm an actor who's Irish, not an Irish actor.Collection: Character
I think any actor that says 'I never watch my films' is a liar because you have to watch it at least once and also you're going to watch it when you're doing your ADR.Collection: Liars
I think you fall out of love with theater while you're doing your eighth show of your eighteenth week and your body is saying, "Please make this end."Collection: Falling In Love
I really feel actors should try and do as much diverse work as possible to try and keep it interesting.Collection: Interesting
You do your due diligence, you read as much as you can, and then, ultimately, I find that you discard that and you concentrate on the characters [of 'Antropoid'] and you can draw on [the research] if you wish, but I think ultimately it's about bringing as much truth and honesty to the portrayal as possible.Collection: Honesty
It's a very organic kind of way that people are discovering it, by word of mouth, which I always think is the best way for things to grow. In terms of the affect it's been having on me, I don't even notice that. It's lovely to be able to talk about a piece of work that you're very proud of, that I think's a complex piece of work and not superficial and has depth to it.Collection: Thinking
I think if you play characters, it's very important not to ever tag them with any sort of disorder, or diagnose them, or whatever. You have to normalize the behavior to get inside the character.Collection: Character
There's this thing that's come about that wasn't there when I started acting which is they do this thing called a chemistry test. They put a camera in front of two people, it's usually a boy and a girl, and they go, [whispering]. It's impossible. You can't manufacture it or film it, it just has to happen.Collection: Girl
The medium is secondary to the stories.Collection: Stories
I never make a distinction between doing a film in Hollywood or doing a film independently. It's just the story. It's always the story for me. The constants are that it should challenge me and I shouldn't repeat myself. And the story should always be a story worth telling.Collection: Challenges
I've always felt kind of safe on stage, protected. I've talked to other performers about this and they feel the same things, particularly in the live arena. I never get nervous going on stage to do a play. Doing film or television I'll have more butterflies.Collection: Butterfly
Two weeks ago we couldn't pronounce your name, but you were in the lead in a film that made millions, so we're sending you all these scripts.Collection: Names
I think every director has a different methodology.Collection: Thinking
There's always a level where you think you can improve and do better. Certainly at the beginning... I did four years of straight theater without ever having a part in a movie, and I remember being far more nervous on a film set than I was on the stage. It took a while for that to become less so.Collection: Thinking
Actors' careers are random with a capital "R."Collection: Careers
There's a lot of comedy in Intermission but it's got this depth. It's not comedy for comedy's sake - it's informed by something else. I like stuff like thatCollection: Depth
I guess because theater's so ephemeral and it's gone. You make this nightly contract with the audience and you redraw that contract for the next night, whereas film and television, it's forever. I suppose it's always about adopting personas, never about being yourself. I think they call it a "shy man's revenge."Collection: Being Yourself
That's what acting is about, Funny wigs and voices, that's what we do.Collection: Voice
I have a list as long as my arm but I find those lists sort of self-defeating because you start to name and then after [the interviewer] leaves the room you go 'Ah, I forgot this person or that person.' So I just don't do it anymore. Hopefully if you make work that people like, they'll get in contact with you.Collection: Self
You take the job very seriously and between action and cut, that's where your focus should be. And then there's a lot of levity in between and a lot of good fun.Collection: Jobs
I feel very lucky to be making good work still. The confidence of youth, or that sort of competitiveness you get when you're 22 or 23, the impatience - that's probably been tempered. Hopefully I'm slightly better company.Collection: Lucky
With some films you can sort of slide in, get a haircut and you're in.Collection: Slides
But television affords you, what you just described, to - over the course of 18 hours, now that we're doing a third season - tell the story of this man. You're not under any obligation, really, to do massive expositional stuff at the beginning. You're at liberty to say, "Come with us on this journey," and, gradually, you become aware of what his motivations are, what drives him, what his weaknesses are, what his strengths are. That's what I think's sucking people into these worlds, because it is kind of like a novel, you just go really, really deep.Collection: Motivation
We were able to shoot in a lot of the locations where the mission actually happened and these guys existed, so that was kind of very affecting. We had a Czech crew and a lot of Czech actors. There's a great deal of authenticity to the project [Anthropoid], and Sean [Ellis] was very anxious that that was the case from the beginning.Collection: Guy
I like the little bit of distance that London affords me and I like living in a world capital. I like having the culture at my fingertips.Collection: Distance
And, for any performer, to be able to go deep into character is fantastic. In film you only get to do that if you're the leading character. But in television you get 18 hours to really test the audience and take them to the edge of how far they will go with this character. I can step over this line and I love that.Collection: Character
I don't think they'd ever make a movie about Chuck Baker but I'd love to play Chuck BakerCollection: Thinking