'Oppenheimer' star Cillian Murphy has 2 children with his wife Yvonne McGuinness here's what you

  • Cillian Murphy has 61 acting credits to his name, including numerous movies with Christopher Nolan.
  • The actor recently appeared as the titular scientist in "Oppenheimer."
  • Murphy married his wife, Yvonne McGuinness, in 2004 and they have two sons.

Cillian Murphy's early roles were met with plenty of praise.

Cillian Murphy as Darren/Pig in "Disco Pigs" and as Jim in "28 Days Later." Renaissance Films/Fox Searchlight Pictures

Cillian Murphy was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1976, and has been in the spotlight since the early 2000s after making a splash in a handful of impactful roles.

Two of his early acclaimed performances were in "Disco Pigs," and "28 Days Later." 

The former is based on the stage play that the actor also starred in. It follows two teenagers, Darren/Pig (Cillian Murphy) and Sinéad/Runt (Elaine Cassidy), whose incredibly close friendship quickly develops into something much deeper around their 17th birthday.

While the tragic movie wasn't hugely loved by critics, audiences loved the intensity that Murphy brought to the role, and the movie has a 75% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes

Just one year later, in 2002, Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later" arrived in theaters with its blistering new take on zombies and a modern apocalypse. It has equally high audience and critics' scores on Rotten Tomatoes, and for good reason.

The film hinges on Murphy's survivor, Jim, who wakes up in an abandoned hospital after the outbreak of a deadly virus that has led to rage-induced characteristics among the remaining population.

After "28 Days Later," Murphy started getting more attention from Hollywood, which led him to work with "Oppenheimer" director Christopher Nolan.

Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby in "Peaky Blinders" and as Robert Fischer in "Inception." BBC/Warner Bros. Pictures

After "28 Days Later" shot him to stardom, Murphy very quickly landed several high-profile roles, like terrorist Jackson in Wes Craven's "Red Eye" opposite Rachel McAdams in 2005. 

In the same year, he also appeared in director Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins" as the villain of the film, Dr. Jonathan Crane, also known as Scarecrow. The twisted psychiatrist uses fear gas to induce violent hallucinations in his patients, and works with Ra's al Ghul (Liam Neeson) to try and destroy Gotham with it.

Murphy reprised the role in both "The Dark Knight" and "The Dark Knight Rises," clearly enjoying the chance to keep working with Nolan.

He also starred in the director's psychological blockbuster, "Inception," as well as his dramatic vision of a World War II evacuation in 2017's "Dunkirk."

Among British audiences, Murphy is probably best known as Birmingham gangster, Tommy Shelby, in the BBC series, "Peaky Blinders." It follows the titular gang as they rise from the streets to power and fortune, with Tommy leading the way in the aftermath of World War I.

Cillian Murphy met his wife, Irish artist Yvonne McGuinness, while working on the stage version of "Disco Pigs." They got married in 2004.

Cillian Murphy as Darren/Pig in "Disco Pigs." Renaissance Films

Murphy has always been relatively private about his personal life, and has only occasionally offered up details about his family, and his wife Yvonne McGuinness. 

McGuinness is an Irish artist whose work involves "film, performance, sculptural and textile elements, sound and writing." 

Her website also says that she has an interest in "embodied experience of place and belonging by staging live, public, interventions and performances which create surreal and dynamic moments of interaction and connection to place, time and communities."

Speaking to The Guardian in 2016 ahead of "Peaky Blinders" season three, Murphy said that he met McGuinness around the time that he was starring in the "Disco Pigs" play in the 1990s.

"That time, making 'Disco Pigs,' was kind of the most important period of my life. The people I met there remain my closest friends… They shaped me in terms of my tastes, in terms of what I wanted to do with my life. And it was around the same time I met my wife," he said.

"She came on tour with us. It was so exciting, 20 years ago or whatever it was — we were all just kids, trying to find our way — but such a special, special time."

The pair got married in 2004, and have two children together.

Murphy and McGuinness have two sons, Malachy and Aran Murphy.

Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby in "Peaky Blinders." Netflix

The pair have two children: Malachy, who was born in 2005, and Aran, who was born in 2007. 

Although the family used to live in London, they moved back to Ireland in 2014, with the star telling the Guardian in 2016 that being in the capital was fun but "after a while, you kind of go, 'Right, is this it? Is this it for the rest of my days? Or is there some other possibility?'"

Murphy added that Malachy and Aran's accents changed after moving to Dublin.

"We wanted them to be Irish, I suppose. 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," he said at the time.

Speaking to GQ in 2019, Murphy also praised McGuinness for being in his life, noting that he couldn't help raise a family and be an actor without her. 

He said: "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… I think it is for any dad whose work takes him away, which it generally does, and which consumes him, which my work does."

Correction: July 27, 2023 — An earlier version of this story included photos whose captions misidentified one of the subjects. The photos showed Cillian Murphy's "Anthropoid" costar Anna Geislerová, not Murphy's wife, Yvonne McGuinness. The photos have been replaced.

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