Cillian Murphy is undoubtedly one of the greatest actors of our generation. The role he’s arguably most iconic for is Thomas Shelby from Peaky Blinders. Murphy was insanely charming as the troubled gang leader with a moral code, and it’s hard to imagine the character becoming such a cultural phenomenon if anyone else had played him.
But long before he was walking the streets of Birmingham in a flat cap, Murphy had already built one of the most impressive filmographies in modern cinema. For more than two decades, he has been one of the most compelling screen presences on the big screen, and his body of work is the kind that film students will likely be studying for years to come. In this list, we’re taking a look at the Cillian Murphy movies that stand as true masterpieces and showcase exactly why he’s considered one of the finest actors working today.
‘Inception’ (2010)
Cililan Murphy’s Robert Fischer lost in thought during the finale of ‘Inception’.Image via Warner Bros.
Ask someone what their favorite movies are, and there is a very good chance the list includes Inception. Christopher Nolan‘s 2010 sci-fi thriller became a genuine cultural phenomenon and one of those rare films that an entire generation of moviegoers claims as their own. The film follows a team of specialists who use experimental technology to enter their targets’ subconscious minds and steal or plant information directly in their dreams. Murphy plays Robert Fischer, the heir to a corporate empire whose mind becomes the team’s most ambitious target.
Nolan takes a concept that should be impossible to follow and makes it not only comprehensible but thrilling at every turn. The rules of dream architecture, the ticking clock of the sedative, the way each dream level runs on a different time dilation. Most filmmakers struggle to make audiences care about exposition scenes, but Nolan somehow turns those scenes into the most fascinating parts of the movie. It’s a cerebral masterpiece that consistently blows minds on first, fifth, and even tenth viewing.
’28 Days Later’ (2002)
Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleeson, and Naomie Harris as Jim, Frank, and Selena in 28 Days Later.Image via Searchlight Pictures
Before 28 Days Later, zombies were usually slow, undead creatures that shuffled around waiting to be avoided. They were creepy and grotesque to look at, sure, but they rarely felt like a real threat. Danny Boylecompletely changed that in 2002. The infected in 28 Days Later sprint at terrifying speeds with manic agility, and just one drop of their blood entering the body is enough to turn someone. That simple creative choice made zombies infinitely more threatening and set a whole new standard for the zombie genre going forward.
The entire film was also shot on consumer-grade Canon DV cameras on a shoestring budget, which gave the film this dirty, murky feel that polished studio horror simply couldn’t replicate. And at the centre of it all is Murphy’s Jim, a bicycle courier who wakes up in an abandoned London hospital 28 days into the outbreak. The character became such a fan favorite that audiences would repeatedly call for Murphy to return whenever a new sequel was discussed. More than two decades later, the franchise finally gave audiences what they had been asking for by bringing Murphy back in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.
‘Dunkirk’ (2017)
Cillian Murphy and Tom Glynn-Carney in DunkirkImage via Warner Bros. Pictures
Nolan is no stranger to playing with film structure, and he does something similar in Dunkirk. Set during World War II, the movie takes place across three timelines running simultaneously at different speeds. The Land storyline follows soldiers stranded on the beach over the course of a week. The Sea storyline follows a civilian boat crossing the Channel over a single day. And the Air storyline follows Spitfire pilots locked in aerial combat over the course of a single hour. And in the end, all three converge in one breathtaking sequence.
Murphy plays a shell-shocked soldier rescued from the Channel by the civilian vessel, and his performance is a masterpiece of restraint. There is almost no dialogue for his character, but you understand everything about his state of mind from the way he sits and stares and flinches. The film is a war movie that almost completely refuses to show you combat in the conventional sense. The enemy is an unseen, faceless force represented by constant aerial bombings, sniper fire, and torpedo attacks, and yet it is one of the most anxiety-inducing films ever made.
‘Oppenheimer’ (2023)
Cillian Murphy looking pensive at the end of ‘Oppenheimer’Image via Universal Pictures
Many consider Oppenheimer to be the magnum opus of Nolan’s career so far, and it is very hard to argue against that. The film stars Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who headed the Manhattan Project and oversaw the creation of the first atomic bomb. When Oppenheimer came out, it was a global cultural event in a way that rarely happens with serious, character-driven historical films. People who normally wouldn’t even go for this kind of dense, dialogue-heavy cinema lined up on opening weekend, and it went on to become the highest-grossing biopic of all time.
And the entire film is almost single-handedly carried by Murphy. His portrayal of Oppenheimer was a masterclass in internalized agony; in every scene, you could see the guilt clawing at him just from his eyes. The Academy recognized it accordingly, and Murphy took home his long-overdue Oscar for Best Actor.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
‘Steve’ (2025)
Cillian Murphy in thought against a blackboard in SteveImage via Netflix
Steve is a heavy, slow-burn character study that follows Murphy as Steve, a head teacher at a reform school who is trying to hold his students together while quietly falling apart himself. The students are difficult to deal with. The institution is underfunded. And the movie does not offer tidy resolutions or redemption arcs tied up with a bow. It just lies down with the messiness of being human and lets you feel it alongside its characters.
Murphy is especially extraordinary in it. He has always been good at playing men who keep everything locked inside, but here he takes that quality further than he ever has because there are moments in Steve that feel genuinely private, like you are watching someone at their most unguarded. If you’re a fan of artsy, heavy movies like The Banshees of Inisherin or The Holdovers, Steve should be at the top of your watchlist.
