After starring in the critically acclaimed Oppenheimer and Peaky Blinders, many fans are wondering who are Cillian Murphy’s kids and why does he keep his private life hidden?
Cillian Murphy married Yvonne McGuinness in 2004 after they met in 1996 at one of his rock shows. They have two boys, Malachy and Aram, who they raise in Ireland. “We wanted them to be Irish, I suppose,” Murphy pointed out to The Guardian. It’s amazing how quickly their accents have adapted. Even within a year of moving back, they are fading into this rakish west Brit kind of thing. Which I think, hopefully, will get them lots of girls when they’re 15.”
Murphy elaborated on the move to Deadline and why he’s not close to the movie industry based in Los Angeles. “We did live in London for 14 years, it was a big chunk of my life from my mid 20s to my late 30s. I really enjoyed it, it was really exciting, it’s a great city, but the move to Dublin wasn’t motivated by wanting to distance myself from the industry. I was purely motivated by wanting to come home to Ireland and raise our kids as Irish and be near our families.”
He continued, “I think the world we live in now, you’re proof of it as well, you can do your work remotely and the work will come to you. I don’t believe that you have to live in Los Angeles or New York or London to make good work; it means you have to travel a little more, but it hasn’t affected my work or professional life in any way. It just means that when I stop working, I’m not surrounded by it and that to me is healthy.”
He reflected about his time as a teenager and raising two teenage boys now. “I had bravado. But, deep down… I don’t know, they seem better adjusted than I was. More sure of themselves. I’m happy about that. For me, it was something that took a long time to figure out: that it’s all right to be you, that it’s all right to be an individual.”
Living in Ireland, the family does not have internet in their homes. “I’m a father of two teenagers, I once was young. I recognise how tricky it is for a young person today in society,” the Inception actor confided. “It is a very complex time growing up, things are changing a lot at a very accelerated rate. We’re all aware of the effect of the internet online and life online,” he told Mirror UK.
“It feels to me like lots of kids, like their life exists inside of this device. The idea that empathy would form part of a curriculum is an excellent idea. Young people are caring and compassionate and willing to be.”
If there’s no Internet where they’re at what do they do? Well watch movies, of course! In an interview with Letterboxd during the Oppenheimer press tour, the Dark Knight actor said that he watched La Haine, Apocalypse Now, The Big Lebowski, and Midnight Cowboy. Though in an interview with The Standard in 2017, he said his work doesn’t fit in with his kids. “Most of what I do is highly unsuitable for them,” he told the outlet. “They’re suitably underwhelmed by my work. I’m trying to keep them in that state because it’s such a silly industry.”
So who are Cillian Murphy’s kids? Read more to find out.
Malachy Murphy (born 2005)
Malachy Murphy is Cillian Murphy and Yvonne McGuinness’ first child. He was born in 2005, one year after they got married. Not much is known about him, but McGuinness was pregnant with Malachy when Murphy was filming The Wind That Blows The Barley. He told The Guardian, “I was living at home with my folks; my wife was pregnant with our son; and we were running around the hills of west Cork shooting up Black and Tans. Fantastic!”
When filming Peaky Blinders, Murphy talked about how his family kept him grounded when he returned home. “It’s cancelled life,” he explained to The Guardian. “You go home to your tiny apartment at the end of the day and you feed yourself for sustenance and you learn the lines for the next day and you try to get as much sleep as you possibly can. Which isn’t much. And then you get up and do it again. It takes time. My wife can see it happening. ‘OK. Tommy’s gradually leaving. I’m getting Cillian back.”
Aran Murphy (born 2007)
Aran Murphy is Cillian Murphy and Yvonne Guinness’s second child and son. Aran followed the footsteps of his father and became an actor. In 2019, Aran performed in a one-person play Hamnet based on the son of Shakespeare and the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, New York. The show garnered praised by the New York Times where they called Murphy a “blossomed” actor.
Murphy praised his son’s abilities two years later with The Guardian. “He was so chilled about it, you know? He would come off stage and ask what the score was in the Liverpool game. And, again, you’re slightly jealous of that!” Murphy said. “There’s the danger that overanalyzing everything can erode the simplicity.”
The Peaky Blinders actor also put firm boundaries on his social and work life. “That work-life balance thing is hard. I have an amazing wife and I couldn’t do this without her and her understanding. But it is a struggle.“ He continued: “I think it is for any dad whose work takes him away, which it generally does, and which consumes him, which my work does.“
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