Cillian Murphy’s Most Memorable Roles

For the longest time, Murphy was Hollywood’s best-kept secret – the man with the blue eyes who never filled interviews with anecdotes or opinions, who broke the internet with his simplicity and charm. On screen, he’d be a chameleon who’d shapeshift from a shell-shocked survivor to a soldier in Nolan’s cinematic universe.

He’s the guy you knew, but didn’t really know. The angular face, the eyes that could disarm. Then Oppenheimer dropped — a three-hour fever dream that finally made everyone else catch up to what some of us already knew: Cillian Murphy isn’t becoming one of the new greats. He’s been there for years.

Cillian Murphy Best Movies

So, whether you discovered him through Peaky Blinders or went down the rabbit hole after Oppenheimer, here’s a dive into Cillian Murphy’s best work.

Oppenheimer (2023)

Murphy’s long game with Christopher Nolan finally paid off. As physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Murphy inhabits a man crushed by the weight of his own brilliance — a visionary who builds destruction and then must live with it. Murphy is the core of it all: skeletal, electric, and unbearably human. His performance is precision-engineered yet deeply emotional. Nolan built the bomb, but Murphy made us feel the fallout. This is the role that broke the internet and cemented his myth.

28 Days Later (2002)

Danny Boyle’s post-apocalyptic classic begins with Murphy’s Jim waking from a coma to find London empty, ravaged by a viral outbreak. 28 Days Later turned Murphy from indie hopeful to breakout star.  Murphy’s confusion, fear, and gradual hardening give the apocalypse a face — not of heroism, but of endurance.

Red Eye (2005)

Wes Craven’s lean, 85-minute thriller takes place almost entirely on a plane, where a routine flight turns into a psychological standoff. Murphy’s Jackson Rippner is the stranger who smiles just a little too easily before revealing darker motives. This movie is pure tension, and Murphy’s the reason it works — a one-man masterclass in the psychology of threat.

Inception (2010)

Nolan’s mind-bending heist film about dream infiltration could easily drown in its own spectacle — but Murphy’s Robert Fischer gives it heart. As the heir targeted for a planted idea, Fischer’s story of loss and paternal longing cuts through the film’s layers of architecture and illusion. Murphy makes a supporting role unforgettable.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)

Ken Loach’s historical drama follows two Irish brothers who take opposite sides during the country’s War of Independence. The film is raw, political, and heartbreakingly human — a portrait of a revolution that devours its own. Murphy’s Damien is a man of ideals forced into impossible choices. He plays him with quiet conviction and deep sorrow, embodying the personal cost of loyalty. The film’s realism and moral complexity make it one of his most powerful (and underrated) works.

Dunkirk (2017)

Murphy barely speaks in Dunkirk, but his eyes do all the work. Credited only as “Shivering Soldier,” he embodies trauma so raw it’s almost physical. In a film filled with spectacle, his haunted stillness becomes its emotional centre. Nolan trusted him to communicate everything about war — fear, guilt, survival — without a single exposition-heavy line. It works.

A Quiet Place Part II (2020)

Replacing John Krasinski isn’t an easy task, but Murphy doesn’t try to mimic. His character, Emmett, is a broken man in a broken world, learning to hope again. Against the backdrop of silence and monsters, Murphy finds small, human moments of connection that make the film more than just a sequel.

Small Things Like These (2024)

Post-Oppenheimer, Murphy could’ve gone big again. Instead, he went inward. In Small Things Like These, he plays Bill Furlong — an Irish coal merchant who discovers the dark truths behind a local convent. It’s a quiet film about conscience, guilt, and the courage to look evil in the eye.