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As far as A-list celebrities go, Cillian Murphy probably isn't a name you've heard thrown around the dinner table very often -- and for good reason. You see, Murphy is one of those sneaky actors. The ones who are absolutely brilliant on-screen. The ones who leave you saying wow, who was that man that just took my breath away? But then, they disappear back into the abyss without so much as a backward glance. Cillian Murphy doesn't want you to know who he is. He likes it that way.
The 43-year-old actor lives in Ireland with his wife, sons and their dog, Scout. They have a fairly simple life for six months out of the year, when Murphy is home with his family just doing normal dad stuff. They go on hikes. They meet friends at the local pub. Normal.
For the other six months of the year, Murphy travels wherever he needs be to film his latest project. More often than not, that project is the BBC masterpiece "Peaky Blinders," or more recently, a little film called "A Quiet Place 2."
“That work-life balance thing is hard," he told GQ in 2019. "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.”
“I make sure that I try not to go from job to job to job, because that means you live in a bubble of set, hotel, set, hotel, plane, film festivals -- which, to me, is not reality,” he said. “So I just check out from that for six months a year.”
He's a genius. And as much as he might not think he has the "work-life balance thing" down, his life sounds pretty damn balanced to me. So, how did he get to this place? We could go on and on about "Peaky Blinders" -- and we will -- but first let's look at a couple of other films you may have seen him in.