Cork actor Cillian Murphy, who has won acclaim for his dark, brooding roles and his piercing blue eyes, has been named Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama at the Golden Globes in the US for his role in Oppenheimer.
Born in Cork in 1976, his breakthrough role came in 2002 with the Danny Boyle film 28 Days Later, playing a bicycle courier who awakens from a coma to discover the accidental release of a highly contagious, aggression-inducing virus has caused the breakdown of society.
Murphy followed 28 Days Later with the classic Irish black comedy Intermission.
Later, he showed his darker side as a domestic terrorist in the 2005 US thriller Red Eye opposite Rachel McAdams.
Murphy also starred in Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto, Ken Loach's War of Independence/Civil War drama The Wind That Shakes the Barley and the science fiction thriller Sunshine, which reunited him with Boyle.
He first collaborated with director Christopher Nolan in 2005, as Scarecrow in Batman Begins, a role he reprised in The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises.
He also appeared in Nolan's films Inception and Dunkirk, but it is his work with Nolan on Oppenheimer, playing father of the atomic bomb, J Robert Oppenheimer, that has brought him the most critical acclaim.
The film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer, written by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin.
The film chronicles his studies, his career, his direction of the Manhattan Project during World War II and his eventual fall from grace after his 1954 security hearing.
Murphy was immediately touted as a potential Oscar winner for his performance as the conflicted theoretical physicist and he has said of the man he played: "We're all living in Oppenheimer's world now. We're all living in the nuclear age that he created."
Collecting his gong at the Golden Globes ceremony, he said: "I knew the first time I walked on a Chris Nolan set it was different.
"I could tell by the level of vigour, focus, the level of dedication and the complete lack of seating options for actors."
He paid tribute to their collaboration of "20 years and six feckin' pictures", before thanking his co-stars for "carrying me and holding me through this movie".
He also paid tribute to his fellow nominees, which included Saltburn's Barry Keoghan and All of Us Strangers' Andrew Scott, saying: "If you're Irish or not, you're all legends, stunning work - I salute you."
On the small screen, Murphy won legions of fans for his performance as gangster Tommy Shelby in the BBC drama Peaky Blinders, which debuted in 2013.
He plays the leader of a Birmingham crime family in the aftermath of World War I.
Murphy is married to the artist Yvonne McGuinness and the couple share two children.
Irish attention now turns to the nominations for the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards (10 January), the British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA) Awards (18 January) and the Academy Awards (23 January) - with Murphy guaranteed to be on the shortlists for all three.
Source: Press Association
