CILLIAN MURPHY — TOMMY SHELBY FROM PEAKY BLINDERS

CILLIAN MURPHY — TOMMY SHELBY FROM PEAKY BLINDERS

Cillian Murphy is an Irish actor and musician. He is famously known for his character as Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders.

Birth

1. He was born on 25 May 1976
2. Murphy was born in Douglas, Country Cork, Ireland.
3. He was raised in Ballintemple, Cork.
4. His father Brendan worked for the Irish Department of Education, and his mother was a French teacher.
5. Murphy started playing music and writing songs at the age of 10.
6. He has a younger brother, Páidi Murphy, and two younger sisters, Sile Murphy and Orla Murphy.

Education

1. His English teacher, the poet, and novelist William Wall encouraged him to pursue acting; however, to Murphy, performing meant becoming a rock star.
2. He began studying law at University College Cork (UCC) in 1996, but he failed his first-year exams because, as he put it, he had “no ambitions to do it”.

Marriage

1. In mid-2004, Murphy married his long-time girlfriend and Irish visual artist Yvonne McGuinness, whom he had met in 1996 at one of his rock band’s shows.
2. The couple lives in Dublin and has two sons, Malachy and Aran.
3. He prefers not to speak about his personal life and did not appear on any live TV chat shows until 2010.
4. He does not have a stylist or a personal publicist, travels without an entourage, and often attends premieres alone.

Career

1. He starred in many other theatre productions, including Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing in 1998, The Country Boy (1999), and Juno and the Paycock (also 1999).
2. He began appearing in independent films such as On the Edge (2001), and in short films, including Filleann an Feall (2000) and Watchmen (2001).
3. He also reprised his role for the film adaption of Disco Pigs (2001) and appeared in the BBC television mini-series adaptation of The Way We Live Now.[
4. He was cast in the lead role in Danny Boyle’s horror film 28 Days Later (2002). He portrayed pandemic survivor Jim, who is “perplexed to find himself alone in the desolate, post-apocalyptic world” after waking from a coma in a London hospital.
5. In 2003, he played the role of Konstantine in a stage production of Chekhov’s The Seagull at the Edinburgh International Festival.
6. Murphy was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for Breakfast on Pluto and won the fourth Irish Film and Television Academy Best Actor Award. Premiere magazine cited his performance as Kitten in their “The 24 Finest Performances of 2005” feature.
7. Since 2013, Murphy has played the lead role in the BBC television series Peaky Blinders, a series about a criminal gang in post-First World War Birmingham. Peaky Blinders was critically praised and rating success.
8. He has won the Irish Film & Television Award and National Television Award for best performance in Peaky Blinders.