Cillian Murphy, centre-right, on playing the title character written for him in Steve: “This film was one for which I undertook the least amount of preparation, which was scary.”Robert Viglasky/Netflix
For more than two decades, the screen and stage work of Irish actor Cillian Murphy has gracefully explored fissures of being – those moral, emotional, or spiritual liminal spaces that threaten to undo us.
It’s fitting then that, fresh off his much-celebrated 2024 Best Actor Oscar win, Murphy has taken on the lead role in the eponymously named Steve, where he plays a head teacher at a literally and metaphorically crumbling residential school for troubled adolescent boys in mid-1990s England. The movie, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, sees Murphy reunited with Peaky Blinders director Tim Mielant.
It’s clear that, with his recent work on cinematic behemoths such as Christopher Nolan’s 2023 box-office-toppling Oppenheimer, as well as relatively smaller, independent films such as Mielants’s 2024 drama, Small Things Like These, Murphy remains invested in complex humanist narratives.
Steve had its world premiere at TIFF in September.VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images
While the actor’s reputation as one of the most compelling performers of his generation is no doubt bolstered by his work with filmmakers like Nolan (a director for whom each new film arrives less as a release than as a cultural event), his commitment to taking on emotionally layered roles in independent vehicles has enhanced the critical regard for his work.
Adapted from the novella Shy by English writer Max Porter – whose novel Grief Is the Thing with Feathers was adapted into a play directed by Irish playwright Enda Walsh, also starring Murphy – Steve tells its story through its namesake.
Struggling to maintain order in the chaotic institution while also confronting the reality of his own unravelling, Steve is a caretaker who cannot care for himself, a leader who cannot lead in the traditional sense of the word, and a man whose fragility is both his undoing and the quality that most positively impacts those around him.
The role is a continuation of Murphy’s interest in fallible characters and underscores the actor’s ability to portray fragility without an excess of sentimentality. “I think everyone is struggling – it’s just a spectrum of how much or how little,” he shares. “I’m so bored and uninterested in human perfection. For me, when a protagonist is attempting to do the right thing but is failing or struggling to get through the day, or is contradicting themselves in a way that is weak, flawed or hypocritical – to me, that’s humanity. That’s where the truth is.”
That perspective is one that has only deepened as his career has continued and, despite the demand for his work, Murphy is discerning about the roles he takes on. “I try to find the next thing that represents a challenge,” he says. “Unfortunately, most of it doesn’t. But occasionally you’ll find a project that brings that hunger back and that will sustain you until the next one.” He pauses before adding, “The gaps between them do seem to get longer, though. Which is fine.”
His pursuit of such challenges also seems to be the driving ethos behind his ongoing collaborations. “I sound like a broken record,” he says, “but I’ve made six films with Christopher Nolan, I’ve made loads of work with Enda Walsh, and three projects with both Max and Tim because, for me, the work is the richest when you’ve done the work of establishing trust. I adore working with Tim because his sensitivity with actors is his key strength. He makes you feel really protected and safe in being vulnerable and puts in an awful, awful amount of work and preparation in order to make an environment where you can just try something out, maybe fall flat on your face, and be caught before hitting the floor.”
Jay Lycurgo as Shy and Cillian Murphy as Steve. The film was adapted from the novella Shy by English writer Max Porter.Robert Viglasky/Netflix
An unlikely but fitting counterweight to the introspective poetics of Small Things Like These, Steve is propulsive and frenetic, no doubt formally influenced by the UK’s drum-and-bass culture of the 1990s. The music provides the hyperactive sonic backdrop against which the Stanton Wood school students and staff experience their personal crises and collective chaos. It’s a tonal quality that is only further intensified when Shy (portrayed gracefully by newcomer Jay Lycurgo), one of the school’s many complex, fragile, and volatile teenaged boys, spirals deeper into self-destructive behaviour.
Murphy’s Steve is but another creature caught in the wake of this environment’s perpetual restlessness, if not urgency, a characterization further buttressed by the fact that Mielant shot the film in chronological order.
“I didn’t decide in advance how I was going to react to anything; I wanted to just be buffeted by the constant onslaught of the world around this character – I wanted the things he said to come out in a jumble, and a heap, and mess because that’s who he is. He’s falling apart. And the contradiction of his leadership in relation to that is where the truth of his character lies,” Murphy says, nodding as he adds, “even in terms of the style of the movie, it starts off with a very hand-held, Dogme 95 style. So, being unprepared was key. As an actor, it’s a kind of awful, but also exhilarating, approach.”
“For me, when a protagonist is attempting to do the right thing but is ... contradicting themselves in a way that is weak, flawed or hypocritical – to me, that’s humanity,” says Murphy, shown in a scene with Tracey Ullman.Robert Viglasky/Netflix
“This film was one for which I undertook the least amount of preparation, which was scary,” he admits. “Normally I immerse myself in the world of the character – learn the accent, change my body, live with the community. But Max wrote Steve bespoke for me, so I just had to look haggard – which isn’t hard,” he chuckles.
“My mum and dad are retired teachers, as was my grandfather and many of my aunties and uncles. I also, as a child in school, had one of those inspiring teachers who set me on a path, so I felt like I had lived that aspect of the role already. My work was really just to turn up and be as open and as porous and as nimble and as responsive and reactive as I could be. And that was quite scary. For me, it was a completely alternative way of working.”
It’s a refreshingly uncomplicated answer from an actor who refuses to over-intellectualize his roles. In this vein, it’s clear that the hunger Murphy spoke of earlier is something that he feels has been satiated with this project.
Likewise, the actor’s commitments lie not in chaos for its own sake. Alongside Steve’s tumultuous stylistic and narrative strategies, Murphy insists on the compassion of Porter’s source material, sharing, “His work is not just entertaining and funny, but meaningful. It is so cliché to say, but he cares about people and the world we live in. At my age, if I’m going to put this much time and effort into making something, I want it to have some kind of value. And all of Max’s work has value.”