The stars of the upcoming blockbuster Oppenheimer have revealed the ‘gruelling’ lengths to which Cillian Murphy went to become the ‘father of the atom bomb’ – saying the actor ate ‘an almond a day’ to transform himself into the ’emaciated’ physicist.
The Peaky Blinders star, 47, is starring as J Robert Oppenheimer in the biopic directed by Christopher Nolan, due for release on Friday, which follows the scientist as he designs the atomic bomb during the Second World War as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project.
Cillian has previously detailed the extreme lengths he went to in a bid to portray the physicist on screen, losing weight to mirror his ‘almost emaciated’ frame.
His co-star Emily Blunt spoke about Cillian’s drastic transformation, telling how he only survived off an ‘almond a day’ in his gruelling diet.
In an interview with Extra, Emily – who plays his on-screen wife Kitty – described the ‘monumental undertaking’ in slimming down for the role.
She said: ‘He had such a monumental undertaking. And he could only eat, like, an almond every day. He was so emaciated.’
Cillian warned that his transformation wasn’t ‘healthy’.
Speaking to the New York Times, the star told how he took more than five months before filming to prepare himself both physically and emotionally for the role.
He confessed that he ‘loved’ the physicality of preparing for the role, telling how he wanted to lose weight to give Oppenheimer a ‘wide-eyed look’ to covey the fact that he ‘never ate’.
He said: ‘I love acting with my body, and Oppenheimer had a very distinct physicality and silhouette, which I wanted to get right.
‘I had to lose quite a bit of weight, and we worked with the costume and tailoring; he was very slim, almost emaciated, existed on martinis and cigarettes.
‘He had these really bright eyes and I wanted to give him this wide-eyed look, so we worked on his silhouette and expressions a lot before starting.’
Cillian also said he was testing himself on how little he could eat, confessing that he ‘doesn’t advise’ the extreme diet.
He told The Guardian: ‘You become competitive with yourself a little bit which is not healthy. I don’t advise it.’
The actor said he doesn’t want to reveal exactly how much weight he lost for the role, but told how the hectic nature of filming made him stop worrying about eating.
He slept for a few hours during filming, he said, adding: ‘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… hyper something, but it was good because the character was like that. He never ate.’
Cillian also told how director Nolan gave the stars around six months to prepare before filming.
He told the Associated Press: ‘We had a long time to prep, Chris always puts a lot of time into prep, which I love, so we had about six months before we were actually shooting.
‘You dive into it, you immerse yourself into it.’
Emily Blunt takes on the role of physicist Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty, while Florence Pugh plays Jean Tatlock, a psychiatrist, Communist Party member, and close friend of J Robert Oppenheimer.
The film is adapted from the 2006 book American Prometheus: The Triumph And Tragedy Of J Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin.
The book, which won the Pulitzer Prize, details Oppenheimer’s personal life and his time leading the Manhattan Project in the early and mid-1940s.
The film has already been hailed as a contender to win multiple awards.
Journalists have taken to Twitter to share their glowing reviews of the movie, with one critic describing how the film ‘split my brain open’ and ‘left me sobbing through the end credits’.
The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin wrote: ‘Am torn between being all coy and mysterious about Oppenheimer and just coming out and saying it’s a total knockout.’
