Cillian Murphy wants to get the hell out of here. It's all very well being told you're a GQ Man Of The Year, but he's spent the majority of 2017 intensely toiling, he tells us when we meet in July. In February, he began turning himself back into Tommy Shelby, Birmingham's beloved miscreant, for series four of Peaky Blinders. That wrapped mere days before we meet and he immediately flung off the flat cap to promote Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk. Within minutes of talking to us, he's off to Ireland and then New York for more plugging. "And then I'm gonna have a little rest," he says, visibly creaking.
He's had a whopper of a year. March saw the release of Ben Wheatley's cracking Free Fire - essentially a 90-minute gunfight in a warehouse - in which Murphy's IRA wildcard (a part that was written for him) was one of the more sympathetic characters. And then Dunkirk, such a sensory, all-engulfing piece of cinema that, despite seeing his face blown up so enormously on those Imax screens, even Murphy managed to lose himself in the experience when he watched it. "It helps because it's an ensemble and you only pop up in bits of it, so you're not constantly going, 'Why are my ears like that?'"
Murphy's character didn't have a name. "Shivering Soldier" he was called in the credits, because, as Murphy sees it at least, he's representative of the tens of thousands of soldiers who went through what he did - the sheer horror of the thing, stuck in shellshock, lives irrevocably altered. "Your mind boggles at what this character must have witnessed to get into that state," says Murphy.
When Nolan first approached him about the part, he told the director he'd already done quite a bit of research into the area - Peaky Blinders' Tommy, formerly a decorated sergeant major in the First World War, has been similarly affected by what he saw in the trenches. Series one found him in 1919, only a year out of it, expected to reintegrate into society and instead beginning to amass power as the leader of Birmingham's feared gangster family.
"He's medicating," explains Murphy. "He turns his trauma into this insatiable ambition."
Does he think that condition is still the root of who Tommy is as we go into series four? "I do. The main reasons being that it took all faith away from him and it took all respect for authority away from him. And it took away any fear of death from him. Every day for him now is a bonus, because he came so close to dying so many times in that conflict that now every day he's like, 'Why not?'"
Peaky Blinders' success can't be overstated. When it began in 2013, it was an unknown quantity, a brazen attempt by the BBC (and creator Steven Knight) to dare compete with the high-budget binge bonanzas we'd been devouring from the States. But the show has been superlative and, thanks to Netflix, its Twenties Birmingham gangsters have gone global. And in the eye of the storm is Murphy's Tommy, his no-nonsense violence and deep, degrading soul infiltrating living rooms around the world. Tommy belongs to the public now; Murphy often gets white-van men hollering at him across the street. To demonstrate, he goes full, boarish cockney: "Tommy, eeeey, all right, Tommy!"
The dying moments of series three were shocking. Having worked out a surprise deal, Tommy had the family arrested and dragged kicking and screaming into paddy wagons. Series four finds him returning home and preparing for war: "More of Tommy as the street-fighting man, back to the mean streets of Birmingham again." And with a new nemesis. We've previously seen him butt horns with Sam Neill, Tom Hardy and Paddy Considine; this time, Adrien Brody is up for some major scrappage. "You need a heavyweight in there," smiles Murphy. "It was great to see him come in and step up and do that, and we had some great, well, tête-à-têtes."
It took Murphy time to find Tommy again, he says, as it always does - with each series a year apart, he needs to steel himself. "It takes me a good six to eight weeks to limber up into him. Eating protein, going to the gym and just getting into the headspace again. Slowly getting into that mind-set. Even when you get back on set the first time, it's not easy. It's not like riding a bike again. You go, 'Oh, wow. I'm back into this.' And then within a week you're thinking like him again."
Are there times when he loses himself in Tommy, getting carried away, adrenaline surging? He nods. "The moment where it really excites me, retrospectively, is where you unconsciously make decisions in the scene about what Tommy does. It sounds like actor thespian wank spunk" - Murphy enunciates those words delightfully, spitefully - "but it's not. It's true. It is that transcendent kind of vibe that you chase after. And then you go, 'How did that happen?!'"
Another part of Tommy he has to live with is the haircut - when GQ meets Murphy, the shaved sides are still glistening. "It's a double-edged sword," he says. "It looks great for the character, but I'm stuck with it for four months. I'm just walking around as him, unwittingly." He can't escape; Tommy's got him. "He's got me, man! Even now, he won't let go. You stop going to the gym and you walk like a normal person again, but inevitably he's still got his claws in there."
Sounds like Murphy really does need this holiday. "I'm dying for this holiday, man!" he says, laughing, but serious. He needs to get rid of Tommy for a bit. We, on the other hand, can't wait to have him back.
Peaky Blinders series four is on BBC Two this autumn.
Styling by: Gro Curtis Grooming by: Karen Alder using Kiehl’s Digital Operator: Yan Sanez Assistants: James McNaught; Jack Probert; Tom Cunliffe Style assistant: Principal Yip Tailor: Emma Atkinson With thanks to Malmaison Manchester
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