“Hugely accomplished”: the real-life icon Cillian Murphy would love to portray
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(Credits: Far Out / Craig Gibson)
Almost every actor plays at least a handful of real-life figures throughout their career, with Cillian Murphy experiencing the highest point of his professional life during his most recent detour into the world of biographical drama.
Finally being elevated to the lead role in a Christopher Nolan movie almost two decades into their recurring creative partnership, Murphy virtually swept the board during awards season after winning an Academy Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award, and Bafta for ‘Best Actor’ in Oppenheimer.
It was hardly his first time playing a real person, though, and there’s some interesting history there. Murphy played Australian counterculture icon and magazine editor Richard Neville in Hippie Hippie Shake, which began principal photography in 2007 but was never released due to controversies in the subject’s personal life.
He also played Slovakian soldier Jozef Gabčík in director Sean Ellis’ well-received but largely forgotten war story Anthropoid. However, now that he’s an Oscar-winning performer, the time might be right for Murphy to dust off a passion project he’s been talking about for nearly 20 years that could realistically push him back into awards contention all over again.
As far back as a 2005 interview with The Washington Post, Murphy admitted he’d love to play “hugely accomplished” jazz musician Chet Baker, even if he conceded that top-quality musical dramas ripped from the headlines were in short supply. “I just think it would be a really good story,” he said. “But maybe I’m wrong. Music biopics tend to be awful.”
Baker’s life certainly has all the trappings of an awards-baiting biopic. The innovative trumpeter and singer earned the nickname ‘Prince of Cool’ before living up to the billing associated with many troubled geniuses by battling drug addiction and brushes with the authorities, before embarking on a resurgence in the 1970s and 1980s more than two decades after his initial breakthrough.
He was ultimately discovered dead on the streets of Amsterdam in May 1988 at the age of 58, having reportedly fallen from the second-story window of his hotel, with traces of heroin and cocaine found in his system. Baker’s story has early success, personal troubles, and a grandstanding second act before ending in tragedy, so it’s a wonder that nobody has tried to make a film about him before.
That being said, Murphy was convinced that he doesn’t “think they’d ever make a movie about Chet Baker,” and so far, he’s been proven right. One obvious downside is that Murphy is into his late 40s and has more than likely aged out of the part as a result. Still, maybe one day, a filmmaker or actor will decide that the fascinating existence of the jazz favourite is worthy of the big screen treatment, especially when biopics continue to be all the rage.
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