Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer co-star Robert Downey Jr. is praising him for his performance as J. Robert Oppenheimer.
“I have never witnessed a greater sacrifice by a lead actor in my career,” the actor said of his co-star in the Christopher Nolan-directed film.
Downey Jr. added, “He knew it was going to be a behemoth ask when Chris called him. But I think he also had the humility that is required to survive playing a role like this. We’d be like, ‘Hey, we got a three-day weekend. Maybe we’ll go antiquing in Santa Fe. What are you going to do?’ ‘Oh, I have to learn 30,000 words of Dutch. Have a nice time.’ But that’s the nature of the ask.”
Murphy was committed to the role and also talked about his weight loss in keeping true to the subject he was personifying.
“It’s like you’re on this f*cking train that’s just bombing. It’s bang, bang, bang, bang. You sleep for a few hours, get up, bang it again,” Murphy told IndieWire of his performance. “I was running on crazy energy; I went over a threshold to where I was not worrying about food or anything. I was so in it, a state of hyper-something. But it was good because the character was like that. He never ate.”
The actor said that Oppenheimer alternated between cigarettes and pipes and modeled his behavior during filming adding, “You become competitive with yourself a little bit which is not healthy. I don’t advise it.”
