Murphy’s law

TO MANY, Cillian Murphy is the dark horse of Irish cinema, as likely to be seen in modestly budgeted indigenous films as in high-concept Hollywood blockbusters.

His career to date has included roles in two Batman movies — Batman Begins and The Dark Knight — as well as Red Eye and Inception. But he has also starred in the Irish productions Breakfast on Pluto, Intermission and Perrier’s Bounty, and his best role to date was surely that of Old IRA leader Damien O’Donovan in Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes The Barley.

Murphy has also maintained a career in the theatre, appearing in Druid’s productions of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock and JM Synge’s Playboy of the Western World, among others. After a break of six years, he returns to the stage this summer in the one-man show Misterman, which its author, Enda Walsh, will direct at the Galway Arts Festival. The show will be coupled with Request Programme, in which Eileen Walsh will be directed by Pat Kiernan, artistic director of the Cork theatre company Corcadorca.