My Week with Cillian

“Cillian, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.” - Vladimir Nabokov

Around this time last year, in a department staff meeting, a coworker was expressing excitement about Oppenheimer and I distinctly remember saying aloud “Who cares about Cillian Murphy??”

When I saw Oppenheimer a couple months later, I liked it quite a bit—I was like, Christopher Nolan is BACK (I famously have a love-hate relationship to his work)! And I thought Cillian was quite good, but immediately after the film I texted my friends a new hashtag which I had just coined: #NoAwardsForCillian

It might seem like I had a vendetta against Cillian Murphy, that I was out to get him, but really, I had just never considered him as an entity in the world. It’s not like Cillian Murphy was “new to me” in 2023; I’ve been watching movies with him in them for twenty years! I knew him mainly from the Nolan movies, and I’d seen 28 Days Later and The Wind That Shakes the Barley when they came out. And I, of course, knew Cillian was something of a Tumblr boyfriend for his character on Peaky Blinders, a show I’d never seen. But he meant nothing to me.

And then, one day, out of nowhere, everything changed. About four weeks or so after the release of Oppenheimer, I saw some TikTok fancam of Cillian—I don’t even remember which one but I think it was him making cunty facial expressions and being generally Irish in press junket videos over the years. On this day, my Vertigo-like obsession with Cillian Murphy was born.

I started searching out more fancams on TikTok, Oppenheimer memes on Twitter, old premiere photos on Instagram—I couldn’t get enough. I was watching Cillian clips for hours; it was an animalistic, nihilistic time in my life when nothing else mattered to me but putting images of Cillian in front of my face. I felt like I had wasted so much time! I could have been in love with Cillian for so long, but somehow he completely escaped my notice. Isn’t it so crazy how you can be acquainted with someone for so long and then, suddenly, you see them in a new light? They should make movies about this theme…

I watched Red Eye on August 12, 2023—this is the closest I can pinpoint the beginning of the obsession. Once I could no longer get the same high from mere clips of Cillian, it was time to watch all of my feature film blind spots. I’ve now seen 20 films in which he is featured, according to Letterboxd, exactly half of which I’ve seen for the first time since August. I can’t remember going so hard after discovering a male actor since I was a teenager and saw Cary Grant and Jean-Pierre Leaud for the first time.

Some of these Cillian vehicles are wonderful. Some of them are the literal worst movie I’ve ever seen in my life. But I’ve also rewatched nine of the ten movies I’d seen before over the past nine months. And I plan to keep going. I cannot be tamed. I can’t get enough Cillian watching!

I’m going to go full Pauline Kael now i.e. get so horny on main that my publisher considers not publishing me ever again¹. Cillian has bulging cheekbones that take up half of his face, and piercing baby blue eyes set deep beneath his prominent brow; he is somehow both delicate and intense at once. He has succulent lips and his 1990s fuckboy hair dashes across his forehead when he furrows his eyebrows. He is a wiry 5’5” (I took three inches off the Google search answer to his height—because I have eyes that see) and can use his body in a manner not unlike Gumby. And his smirk could start wars. No one has ever looked like him, and if I saw someone try to, I would kill them; his alien-like quality that fascinates me endlessly.

In addition to his enduring, bizarre, one of a kind beauty, I find the depth of his talent to be quite immense. I now understand why longtime enjoyers of his craft would use Oppenheimer as an excuse to give him the Oscar. I still wouldn’t have voted for him for that exact performance, but I was so happy when he won. I think I cried lol. I am in an abnormal and humiliating place in my life.

I love watching Cillian think onscreen—there is something about the way his eyes tie together the sentences of his dialogue, you can really see him move from one thought to the next with a completely clear understanding of what he’s thinking, without moving a single facial muscle. This is, I think, his greatest gift, beyond even the subtle rage that threatens to boil over in many of his most famous roles.

He is the love of my life.

I don’t know how to end this piece, and I don’t know what else I can say, so I’ll start where I began, with Vladimir Nabokov:

I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Cillian.

1. I am the publisher.