Robert Downey Jr. praises Cillian Murphy’s “sacrifice” while filming Oppenheimer
"I have never witnessed a greater sacrifice by a lead actor in my career," said Robert Downey Jr.
Aux News Cillian Murphy
Between Jared Leto sending used condoms and dead rats to his co-stars, Austin Butler’s perpetual Elvis accent, and Jeremy Strong’s entire existence, the concept of Method Acting has experienced something of a 500-foot reputational drop the past few years. Couple that with a script about the father of the atomic bomb, and the whole prospect moves from cringy to genuinely terrifying.
Luckily for his co-stars—and the world—Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer method didn’t involve actually becoming death, the destroyer of worlds; it mostly just centered around eating a tiny amount of food and learning a huge amount of Dutch.
In two separate People interviews, Murphy’s co-stars praised him for his dedication to the titular role. “I have never witnessed a greater sacrifice by a lead actor in my career,” said Robert Downey Jr., who starred alongside Murphy as Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss. The nature of this sacrifice? Ornamental plates and cute little chairs—at least, partly.
“We’d be like, ‘Hey, we got a three-day weekend. Maybe we’ll go antiquing in Santa Fe. What are you going to do?’” Downey continued, before answering for Murphy: “‘Oh, I have to learn 30,000 words of Dutch. Have a nice time.’ But that’s the nature of the ask.”
“He knew it was going to be a behemoth ask when Chris called him. But I think he also had the humility that is required to survive playing a role like this,” he concluded.
Matt Damon and Emily Blunt—who recently told Extra that Murphy “could only eat, like, an almond every day” because he needed to look “so emaciated”—also heaped on the praise for the leading man’s “monumental undertaking” that took him away from the “summer camp”-esque atmosphere the rest of the cast experienced.
“We were all in the same hotel in the middle of the New Mexican desert. We only had each other. Me and Matt were roommates and we were like, ‘Let’s go to have dinner,’” Blunt continued, before explaining that “of course [Murphy] didn’t want to come and have dinner with us.”
“He couldn’t. His brain was just too full,” Damon added.
Still, while the dramaturgical whims of the roster mentioned at the top of this article may invite concern, it sounds like Murphy has no plans to drop everything and apply for his doctorate in physics. When asked about his dramatic body transformation for the film in an interview with IndieWire, Murphy answered simply: “I don’t advise it.”