Cillian Murphy strolled to the stage at the Golden Globes with dark red lipstick smeared all over his nose, and the collar of his Saint Laurent tuxedo shirt up, with no bow tie, looking like he’d rolled over from a massive one at Saltburn.
This was not the Cillian Murphy that the internet had been poking fun of for the last six months for his clear disdain for press attention. This was awards season Cillian Murphy. A different beast altogether. It had, in all honesty, been difficult to imagine him getting up on stage and saying “thank you to the Hollywood Foreign press” and all that. It didn’t seem to be in his nature. But we should have known that the destroyer of worlds would rise to the occasion.
Picking up the award for best actor in a drama film, he showed the charisma that has gotten him through two decades in Hollywood. He had jokes (about Christopher Nolan having no chairs for actors on set), modesty (“One of the most beautiful and vulnerable things about being an actor is you can’t do it on your own”) and he thanked all the requisite power players: Universal Pictures, Oppenheimer producer Emma Thomas, his team.
He kicked things off extremely charmingly, by addressing the elephant in the room. “First question, do I have lipstick all over my nose?” And then when everyone shouted “yes!”: “I’m just gonna leave it.”
“I knew that the first time I walked on a Christopher Nolan set that it was different,” he said. “I could tell by the level of rigour, the level of focus, the level of dedication, the complete lack of seating options for any actors. I knew that I was in the hands of a visionary director.”
He went on to shout out, by name, his castmates: Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr. and Gary Oldman. “Thank you for carrying and holding me through this movie.” He called his fellow nominees “legends” even the non-Irish ones (nodding to fellow countrymen Andrew Scott and Barry Keoghan). Then, he ended with a shout-out for his family.
It was a precisely measured and perfectly delivered awards speech. Afterwards, one thing became clear: He’s ready for his Oscars moment.
