Cillian Murphy has opened out about the harrowing experience of playing J. Robert Oppenheimer in the forthcoming film about the controversial physicist.
The Irish actor, 47, will star in Christopher Nolan’s next drama on the American scientist and his part in the Manhattan Project.
The Project, which operated from 1942 to 1946, created the first nuclear bombs, which were ultimately used in the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan.
Oppenheimer, who oversaw the Project’s development, became known for his chain smoking, frequently switching between cigarettes and a pipe.
Cillian, who memorably played habitual smoker Thomas Shelby in Peaky Blinders, has now said that preparation for this current role has completely put him off ‘fake cigarettes’.
‘Cigarettes and pipes. He would alternate between the two. That’s what [killed] him in the end,’ the 28 Days Later actor said. Oppenheimer died of cancer in 1967.
‘I’ve smoked so many fake cigarettes for Peaky and this. My next character won’t be a smoker. They can’t be good for you,’ he told The Guardian.
Cillian confesses to shedding a significant amount of weight to get into character, in addition to (fake) smoking like a chimney to prepare for the job.
‘You become competitive with yourself a little bit which is not healthy. I don’t advise it,’ he said, keeping the specific details about his weight loss private.
Cillian and his Oppenheimer co-star Florence Pugh have ‘prolonged’ full naked moments together in the picture, it was also announced on Saturday.
To get the most out of him and Florence during naked sequences, they were put in a room together to see whether they had any ‘chemistry’.
Cillian, on the other hand, expressed uncertainty about the criteria employed by the film’s producers to assess if they were good screen mates.
For its UK release, the picture will be awarded a 15 certificate for’strong language and sex,’ making it Nolan’s first film to receive such a rating since Insomnia in 2002.
Oppenheimer will be released on the same day as Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, starring Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken.
Source My Celebrity Life.
