Cillian Murphy is a fantastic actor and so pretty that it hurts. He’s currently promoting the second season of Peaky Blinders and is very serious about his work. Cillian is a serious guy in general. He weeps about nature programs but still finds time for family and work. Nice guy, not too full of himself. We need more actors like Cillian in entertainment.

Cillian has grown weary of being considered as a pretty boy. In a recent InStyle feature (via TV 3), his Peaky costar (Annabelle Wallis) admits Cillian is tired of hearing about his best physical features: “Sometimes, when we’re doing a scene, I’m like, ‘I can’t do this; I keep getting lost in the ocean of your eyes!’ He’s like, ‘Stop being ridiculous!’ I call him ‘chisel cheeks’ because he’s got the most incredible bone structure.” Poor Cillian. It must be distracting to bring your best game to work, and even your co-star can’t stop rambling about your face. Really.

Here are some excerpts from Cillian’s recent interview with the Guardian, which describes his eyes as “huge, blue marbles” and “career-defining peepers.” There is no escape from Cillian’s beauty:

His greatest vices: “Tabasco on everything” and Dragons’ Den. “I can watch Dragons’ Den for hours. Why are they in that warehouse? Why is the music so ominous? Why are they sitting there with piles of cash like mini-dictators. Such terrible people, all of them. It’s riveting.”

He’s not as tough as his Peaky character: “I’m really a wimp. It’s nice to play a guy who’s tough. I’d only played two villains and they were more psychological” (The Scarecrow in The Dark Knight Rises and Rachel McAdams’s stalker in Red Eye.) “Tommy Shelby is properly tough.”

On avoiding fame: “It’s the easiest thing in the world to do Don’t go to openings, don’t go to those parties. It’s avoidable.” Although he thinks the pressures are more “upsetting and aggressive” for women, he believes “there are still lots of people at a high level” who manage to stay grounded. “I wish it was easier for me, but it’s excruciating. Who likes talking about themselves? Logically, the less people know about you, the more convincing you are playing someone else. It’s glaringly obvious to me. I get the bus, I get the tube, I go to the shop and get the milk and do normal things. I would hate it if that became impossible. As an actor, you’re supposed to be playing real people so it seems essential to live like a normal person.”

His true ambitions: “The thing people fail to realise is that the agents work for us. The agents don’t tell us what to do. Or they don’t tell me what to do. I tell them what I’m doing. The only thing I’ve tried to stick to, and I’ve repeated it ad nauseum, is to follow the good writing. I don’t want to go to America and up sticks to wherever a shoot may be for 12 months. I’ve got young kids, you don’t really want to uproot the family for a year.” Peaky Blinders, he says, “doesn’t preclude me from doing other work I want to do.”

[From The Guardian]

Cillian understands the fame game. I love that he strives to live like a real person because he plays real people. He’s not talking down to us either. Oh, and it’s good to hear that the actors are much more in charge of their careers than their agents. I’ll remember that next time an actor keeps appearing in awful movies. Cillian has a solid career and has made excellent choices. He’s done a variety of blockbusters and indies and now enjoys some regularity in television. Good plan.

Photos courtesy of WENN