Cillian Murphy recalls one scene from Oppenheimer that he was particularly nervous about and the creative way he ended up overcoming it.
Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy recalls how he overcame one particularly challenging scene while filming Christopher Nolan's historical drama. Released this past summer to rave reviews and a strong performance at the box office, Nolan's latest film chronicles the life and career of American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who is widely known as the father of the atomic bomb. Murphy plays the titular character at various stages of the man's life, with the actor's performance garnering significant praise.
In Unleashing Oppenheimer: Inside Christopher Nolan's Explosive Atomic-Age Thriller by Jada Yuan (via Slash Film), Murphy recalls that he was especially nervous about filming one Oppenheimer scene in which he would be speaking Dutch.
"It's a small scene, but I remember talking to Chris in preproduction and saying, 'Chris, what do you want to do about this Dutch scene?' And he said, 'What are you going to do about this Dutch scene?' It's very much that he works at the top of his game, so he expects everyone else to do their work, to do their due diligence."
The solution, it turns out, was to turn to the movie's Dutch-speaking cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, who translated part of Oppenheimer's lecture into Dutch and recorded himself saying the words aloud for Murphy. "I listened to it and repeated it for about three months every morning," Murphy recalled. "I can still say it. It's one of those things that I will never forget because I did it so many times."
Murphy is a longtime Nolan collaborator, first working with the director on Batman Begins. The actor would return in a supporting capacity for a number of Nolan's films, including both Dark Knight sequels, Inception, and Dunkirk. It wasn't until Oppenheimer, however, that Murphy got to take on a challenging starring role for Nolan, arguably the culmination of decades' worth of powerful performances.
Murphy is perhaps not a typical leading man type of actor, often playing characters with tragic backstories or an inner darkness. It was this unique quality that made him such a perfect fit for Oppenheimer, with Nolan's film delving into the deepest and darkest crevices of the man's life. The film doesn't shy away from portraying Oppenheimer's shortcomings and failures both as a man and as a physicist, in addition to the guilt he feels throughout his life due to his creation.
Not only does Murphy capture Oppenheimer's inner tragedy, but he's also able to perfectly capture his genius. For all of the man's flaws, he's also incredibly intellectually gifted, and Murphy effectively conveys this in his performance, including in the scene in which he's speaking in Dutch. It remains to be seen how Oppenheimer will fare come awards season, but Murphy is already looking like a top Best Actor contender at the Oscars.
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