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Did Cillian Murphy Really Have Only One Almond A Day For Oppenheimer Role? Actor Addresses Rumors
Cillian Murphy spoke about the challenges of playing the theoretical physicist in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, and also addressed the rumor about him eating only one almond a day.
Cillian Murphy, a frontrunner for the upcoming Academy Award for Best Actor, discussed the challenges of portraying J Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan's critically acclaimed film. Oppenheimer, who has 13 nominations, is the favorite to win Best Picture and Best Director awards.
In an interview with GQ, Murphy reflected on his two-decade working relationship with Nolan and the filmmaker's unique process, which often involves location shooting and small-scale productions. He noted that Nolan often has only one camera on his sets and no video village. Oppenheimer is a highly anticipated Oscar nominee. He also addressed the rumor of eating only one almond a day.
Cillian Murphy addresses rumors of eating a single almond a day
Cillian Murphy's co-star Emily Blunt, who played his wife Kitty, revealed Murphy’s preparation for the role. Last year, Blunt told ExtraTV that to transform into J Robert Oppenheimer’s character, Murphy was required to make drastic changes to his diet and physique. “He had such a monumental undertaking. And he could only eat, like, an almond every day. He was so emaciated,” she said.
ALSO READ: Emily Blunt Praises Oppenheimer Costar Cillian Murphy, Explains Why People Are 'Spellbound' By Him
Blunt and Matt Damon also told Entertainment Tonight about their time making the film. They revealed that Murphy skipped most of their cast dinners because of his extremely limited diet for the film.
Damon said, “We invited Cillian to dinner every night and he never went,” and Blunt added that Murphy mostly had “one almond most nights or a little slice of apple.” Adding to this, Damon said, “He was losing so much weight for the part that he just didn’t eat dinner ever.”
However, recently during an interview with GQ, dismissing the rumor that he consumed only almonds for dinner during the filming of Oppenheimer, Murphy said, “This is apocryphal. I think Emily (Blunt) was being very sympathetic to me when she said Cillian only ate one almond a day. It was more than that. I didn’t really have room in my brain to be socialising with the rest of the cast and crew at the time, because there was so much work to do, and I was reducing calories and all that stuff. I didn’t go out for dinner, but I had more than one almond a day.”
Murphy also answered if his opinion about Oppenheimer, the man responsible for the creation of the world’s first atomic bombs, altered after filming. He said, “I felt that he was intensely human, and I felt that despite his one-in-a-million, generational genius, he was still as flawed and as contradictory and as fallible as the rest of us are. I treated his brilliance less like a gift and more as a burden, in order to play the humanity of him.”
Cillian Murphy once revealed how playing Oppenheimer affected him
Last year, during an interview with GQ, Cillian Murphy was asked that how much playing Oppenheimer affected him as he didn't go for cast dinners because his brain was too full. "It was a big part, and there were big, big questions that were grappling with, these huge ethical, moral questions. And Chris had written the script in the first person," he said.
Murphy continued that he knew that a lot of the weight was on his shoulders and felt that there was a responsibility about playing the part. "That's just the way I work. I get very consumed by the work, and I don't really have time for hanging out. And in this movie, I was [regularly] skipping dinner, you know, so I wasn't great craic to hang out with. But that's just the way it was. It's just the nature of the work," he added.
Murphy was also asked about his skipping meals and what was the weirdest food day that he had while he was losing all that weight. He said, "I just want to be very careful on this. This was for work, and we structured it pretty well. Inevitably, you do start getting competitive with yourself and all that, but it was for a purpose."
He also stated that Oppenheimer was a very, very slight guy and he was very self-conscious about that. Speaking further, he said, "It gave him this very unique, particular kind of iconic silhouette. And when you're that weight, it affects the way clothes hang on you, it affects the way you walk, it obviously changes the shape of your face and all that. So that was very useful for the character. But I really don't want to make a big deal about ‘oh, Cillian lost all this weight’."
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