Post-Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy has used his Oscar cache to get the films he wants made.
In the two years since winning best actor for playing “father of the atomic bomb,” Murphy has turned to a pair of intimate, kitchen-sink dramas: Small Things Like These, which opened the Berlin festival last year, and Steve, set for its world premiere in Toronto.
Both projects are miles away, in tone and subject, from Oppenheimer. Small Things, an adaptation of Clare Keegan’s novel, sees Murphy as a coal seller in a poor Irish village who finds the moral courage to help a woman in need. In Steve, adapted from Max Porter’s novella Shy, he plays an overworked teacher at a school for at-risk teens going through what may be the worst day of his life.
Murphy produced both through his new company, Big Things Films, with Belgian filmmaker Tim Mielants — his old Peaky Blinders collaborator (Season 3) — directing. Together, the two films likely cost less than the catering bill for Christopher Nolan’s epic.
Small Things Like These was shot between wrapping Oppenheimer and the awards run, with financing coming together when Murphy’s co-star Matt Damon joined as producer. Netflix greenlit Steve right after the Oscars.
“As soon as I finished the Oppenheimer awards run, we went straight into Steve,” Murphy says. “It wasn’t strategic on my part, going one big one, one small one. These were just the stories that drew me. They were written by friends, and since we had a production company, we were able to get them made. And these are exactly the sort of stories that I want to tell, the kind of films I go to see myself.”
Jay Lycurgo as Shy, Cillian Murphy as Steve in ‘Steve’
Robert Viglasky/Neflix © 2025
Porter’s original story was told from the perspective of Shy, a troubled teenager at a reform school, the final stop before prison. For the film, Porter rewrote the narrative from Steve’s point of view: the weary teacher trying to keep Shy (Jay Lycurgo) from spinning out of control.
Murphy’s family background — his parents were teachers, his grandfather a headmaster, most of his aunts and uncles educators — gave him a natural connection to the role. “Imagine the toll it takes, running this experimental reform school with very challenging pupils. And then you have to go home and look after your own children. It’s an extremely demanding profession.”
But the character was also written to fit him. “Max knows me so well, Tim knows me so well, so the character was written very much in my vernacular. It’s a lot of my mannerisms turned up to 11. No costumes, no accent. All I had to do was show up and look extremely tired, which most teachers do.”
When Porter delivered the script, Murphy sent it straight to Netflix. “We gave [Netflix VP of U.K. Content] Anne Mensah the script on a Friday, and we had a yes on Monday,” Murphy recalls. “They’ve been brilliant — we’re going to Toronto, we’re getting a theatrical release, and if the film connects, you’ve got this vast audience who can see it. That’s meaningful for a film like this, which has independent film written all over it.”
Steve fits into a broader push under Mensah to back socially realist, risk-taking British stories.
“She did Adolescence, she wants to make bolder decisions, she wants to go to uncharted territory,” says Mielants. Murphy agrees: “The success of Adolescence demonstrates that people are ready for that stuff. As long as you make the thing entertaining, audiences will watch it.”
‘Steve’
Robert Viglasky/Netflix © 2025
The film was shot entirely in one location — the reform school — and strictly chronologically.
“The only other time I’ve done that was on a Ken Loach film, The Wind That Shakes the Barley,” says Murphy. “We spent two weeks at the school with the boys, workshopping, improvising. Tim got the idea to interview the kids on camera, in character. Max went away and wrote those pieces and we shot them. They’re in the film.”
Mielants leaned into what he calls a “punk” style: frantic handheld camerawork, a jittering soundtrack of heavy metal and drum-and-bass, and surreal visual touches. “The script was very unconventional, so I thought I shouldn’t shoot it in a conventional way. I’d come up with something strange, like spinning the camera upside down, storyboard it, bring it to Max, and if he was happy, it went in.”
To keep Murphy anchored, Mielants created “brain maps” of Steve’s emotional states — hand-scrawled diagrams pinned in Murphy’s room. “I map out his depression, the kind of images he’s got in his mind,” the director says. “If you saw my brain maps you’d think I’m mentally ill.”
Every line of the film was scripted, but performances were kept raw. “There’s a scene when the school trustees come in and tell Steve and the other teachers they are closing the school,” Murphy recalls. “We’d never met those actors before. The first time was when they walked into the room, gave us that information and bang, we’re off.”
The process was exhausting but liberating. “From the start, Steve is in this highly charged state of anxiety, about to fall off a cliff emotionally and professionally. Staying in that state for six weeks was exhausting. But because Max and Tim know me so well, it was exposing in a good way.”
After the “circus” of Oppenheimer and the awards season, Murphy admits he is now recalibrating.
“I’m probably less inclined to work all of the time now. This year I won’t have done any acting whatsoever. I’m more willing to be patient and wait for the right thing.”
But for Murphy, that “right thing” will likely come from familiar collaborators.
“I’ve always been a serial re-collaborator. With Chris, Oppenheimer was the sixth time we worked together. With Tim this is our third thing. For me, the scale and the budget is always secondary to the story. But when I make a connection with someone and it makes it into the work, that becomes trust, which becomes shorthand. And that’s where the rich work comes from.”
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