Cillian Murphy’s ‘unhealthy’ Oppenheimer weight loss into ‘emaciated’ physicist

This Friday, Christopher Nolan’s 3-hour biopic of J Robert Oppenheimer finally hits cinemas.

The acclaimed director, who will probably finally win a Best Director Oscar for the epic, cast his longtime collaborator and almost Batman Cillian Murphy as the Father of the Atom Bomb with piercing blue eyes.

In real life, Oppenheimer was an incredibly thin, chain-smoking boozer who pretty much didn’t eat very much and died at just 62.

The Irish Peaky Blinders star was gifted half a year to prepare for the part, that will probably also finally win him a Best Actor Oscar.

Yet to embody the Manhattan Project physicist, the 47-year-old had to take some extreme measures for such a physical transformation.

Speaking with The New York Times, Cillian 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.”

The Oppenheimer star told The Guardian: “You become competitive with yourself a little bit which is not healthy. I don’t advise it.”

He wouldn’t reveal exactly how much weight he lost but found the rapid 57 shoot so exhilarating he stopped worrying about eating and barely slept.

Cillian added: “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.”

His co-star Emily Blunt who played the physicist’s wife Kitty Oppenheimer told Extra: “He had such a monumental undertaking. And he could only eat, like, an almond every day. He was so emaciated.”

Oppenheimer hits cinemas on July 21, 2023.