Cillian Murphy was always a natural performer, says former English teacher
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A former secondary school teacher of Oscar-nominated Cork actor Cillian Murphy has said that he was always a “natural for performance” and had an inquiring “anti-establishment” spirit which has served him well in life.
The Golden Globe-winning actor attended Presentation Brothers College in the city where he was taught English by poet William Wall. Mr Wall subsequently left the school to focus on his poetry and became Cork’s first Poet Laureate in 2021.
The novelist and poet told on Cork's RedFM that the star was a really good student of English.
“He was just one of those kids who got poetry, got Shakespeare, and got novels. It wasn’t hard to teach him. I could also see from the fact that he was a performer — he had the band and they played in the school a couple of times.
"You could see that he was a natural for performance so it wasn’t hard to encourage him to go into the arts.”
The poet said he recently gave a talk about his work in a secondary school in Italy and at the end of the session he was asked if he had really taught Cillian Murphy.
“When I said it was (true) a group of people almost passed out at the thought they were in the presence of somebody who was in the presence of Cillian Murphy.
"In school, he balanced an anti-establishment attitude with a deep interest in culture and the arts. He was sort of a leader in his class in that regard as well. A sort of edgy, not quite an awkward customer but the customer who would come up with the awkward questions.
"His band, The Sons of Mr Green Genes, were actually fantastic. They gave my wife who was a maths teacher in the school a demo tape which she had for several years. Then one day she came back to play the demo tape and one of our sons had taped over the whole thing with summer music for himself. So that was that tape gone!”
Mr Wall said he knew that Cillian would end up in the creative world.
“He had to, you know. When he went into law in college, I was kind of surprised. Not surprised in that I knew he could be an excellent lawyer as well, I could see him being a performing barrister in the Four Courts in Dublin.
"I knew in a way that he would eventually (go into the arts). So when came out I was blown away. I knew he had found his métier.”