Cillian Murphy’s old teacher reveals what he was like at school

nme.com:

Cillian Murphy‘s old teacher has opened up about what the actor was like at school.The star won the Oscar for Best Actor last week for his work in Oppenheimer, having gotten his first shot at acting in his home city of Cork, Ireland.Pat Kiernan taught drama at the school that Murphy attended, and said that while he didn’t initially recognise his acting talent, he was taken by how seriously Murphy took his band Sons of Mister Green Geneshe.

He also used to see the star around town, with Murphy later taking an interest in his theatre company Corcadorca.“He’d say, ‘Man, it’s great what you’re doing, I’d love to be involved,’” he recalled to The Times.Recalling the now-Oscar-winner being inspired by a production of A Clockwork Orange that they put on, Kiernan revealed: “It was a really exciting piece of theatre and Cillian has told me [in later years] that it blew his mind and made him want to be an actor.”He ended up casting Murphy in 1996 play Disco Pigs after he’d finished school, though was initially hesitant, admitting: “I said to [playwright] Enda [Walsh], ‘There’s a young guy who seems really keen and I think he might be good in the part.’ But I said, ‘He’s a bit of a pig,’ meaning he’s kind of goofy-looking.

Clearly I didn’t recognise the beauty of the man.”He added: “Cillian is really smart. Even at that age he was really clever and capable of inhabiting a character.

What’s more, it was clear early on just how hard-working he was.“Even back then, he was practical in his approach to work. He believed it needed to be researched, thought about, and he needed time to construct what he was doing.