Shadowing Practice: Cillian Murphy: The 60 Minutes Interview - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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2023 was the year the world learned to pronounce Killian.
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The ancient Irish name seemed to be on everyone's lips as the film Oppenheimer became a blockbuster with 13 Oscar nominations,
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including Best Actor for Killian Murphy.
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Murphy has worked nonstop for nearly 30 years, but it was the epic drama of the atomic bomb that ignited a star.
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In this moment, with a golden globe under his pork pie hat and the Oscars three weeks away, Murphy is more famous than well-known,
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so we set out to learn more.
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We were warned the 47-year-old Irishman is reserved and wouldn't talk about himself,
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but we discovered finding Killian Murphy depends on where you look.
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The story will continue in a moment.
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Ireland's Dingle Peninsula was named for a goddess before such things were written,
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and for 6,000 years, stories have passed by ear.
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So if verse inhabits every Irish soul,
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then in a country pub, Cillian Murphy is among peers, as he would have it,
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just a man with a pint to lift and no fame to bear.
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What is the meaning of Ireland to you?
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I don't think I can answer that question satisfactorily.
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It's defined who I am as a person and my values.
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It's just home.
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Home includes his wife of 20 years, two teenage sons, and Scout, a lab named for the character in To Kill a Mockingbird.
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That figures, Murphy has always let stories lead his path.
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You find so much empathy in novels, you know, because there you are putting yourself into somebody else's point of view.
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And I've always been a big reader.
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When a movie can connect with someone and they feel seen or feel heard, or a novel can change somebody's life, or a piece of music, an album can change someone's life.
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And I've had all that happen to me.
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And that's the power of good art, I think.
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There's a straight line from the music in the pub to Oppenheimer.
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I think they're from the same source.
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I mean, I really do.
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I don't see, I see it's all in a continuum.
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You know what I mean?
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It's just a form of expression.
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Expression in the eyes of J.
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Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who created the atom bomb, but never controlled it.
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If they detonated too high in the air, the blast wouldn't be as powerful.
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With respect, Dr. Oppenheimer, we'll take it from here.
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I remember reading at the beginning about him that he was more riddled than answer.
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And I thought, oh, okay, wow.
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That's interesting.
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I'm curious about your notes.
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The riddle was in this script by writer-director Christopher Nolan, printed in red so it couldn't be photocopied.
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I did genuinely think it's one of the greatest screenplays I'd ever read.
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And you told him, I'll do it?
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I mean, I said I'd do it before I read it.
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That's quite a risk a risk why would you do
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that it's always paid off for me you know in every film
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that i've worked with him on i'm not going back there have been six chris nolan films for murphy dunkirk inception
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and three batman titles would you like to see my mask you told me
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that getting a film made and getting it seen yeah it's a miracle it is
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and then if if it's anyway good that's a miracle
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and then if it connects with audiences that's a miracle
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so it's a miracle upon miracle upon miracle to have a
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film like oppenheimer it really is his oppenheimer was not
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so much a miracle as hard work he lost 28 pounds
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to get the silhouette then he rose to the character step
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by step over six months reading listening to oppenheimer's lectures
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and covering miles on the beach performing for scout i remember
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at one point i said to chris chris there appears to be um he appears to speak dutch here
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and i think he's giving a lecture dutch here what are we going to do about
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that and chris said you mean what are you going to do about that
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what's he saying murphy says he put all he learned in the back of his mind and acted on instinct
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i think instinct is your most powerful tool that you have as an actor nothing must be
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predetermined so therefore you mustn't have a plan about how you're going to play stuff
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and i love that it's like being buffeted by the wind and being buffeted by emotion
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you don't get to commit the sin and then i was all feel sorry for you emily blunt plays Oppenheimer's tormented wife.
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You pull yourself together.
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He's very visceral to be in a scene with.
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It's like you, he transports you.
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He'll kidnap you in a scene.
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My favorite acting moment of his in Oppenheimer is the scene after the bomb has been dropped
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and he's addressing all of the people at Los Alamos.
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The world will remember this day.
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He somehow welds together the concept of being proud of what they did
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and regretting it very deeply all at the same time.
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I know.
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It's too soon to determine what the results of the bombing are.
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But I'll bet the Japanese didn't like it.
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No one moment is about one thing.
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And if you're as agile as someone like Killian and is vulnerable and is clever, you can play it all.
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But I don't know if many people can do what he does.
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Killian Murphy discovered agility in his hometown Cork.
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His mother was a teacher, his father a school inspector.
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In high school, Murphy and his brother had a band performing led to acting class
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and his first play this is more like the size of a storage room than a theater yeah
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but that's all we were used to his first theater 1996 age 20 the play was disco pigs
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which grew to bigger theaters and became a movie why did you think you could be an actor i didn't
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I was very comfortable on stage in front of an audience from when I was little.
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I never had any nerves doing that.
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I felt that natural, you know, and thrilling.
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In this theatre, what did you learn about acting?
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There's a fire escape door right there, and that's kind of an alleyway there, and so you get a lot of,
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like, drunk guys out of their mind bashing up against the fire escape door, and it used to kind of energize us.
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So I remember learning about taking whatever you have, sort of responding to whatever the energy is in the room and using it.
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That's really good training, maintaining your character with the drunk guy yelling through the fire escape door.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And I think theater is such an absurd undertaking when you think of it, you know, because at any point it could collapse and go wrong.
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It's dangerous.
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Yeah, and I love that aspect of it, yeah.
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That love led him to drop law school, and since then there have been a dozen plays and 40 movies.
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I love it when it becomes an immersive experience.
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I love getting lost in it.
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In the early days, that was, with theater, it felt kind of extraordinary that with just power of will
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and a couple of lights and a good script we were creating this world um
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so that's kind of addictive
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when it works well it worked well in 2013 in a breakout role as a leading man
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in the series peaky blinders murphy plays thomas shelby who survives
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world war one to lead a family of gangsters you're mostly in the war
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so you know the battle plans always change and get up well here They're all damaged,
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broken men, but something got knocked in him and he came back with this incredible drive and ambition and like,
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I'm not afraid of death, so now I can do whatever I want.
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In Tommy Shelby, you created a sympathetic, relatable monster.
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Kill.
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Kill.
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The only way to make people listen.
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I like to be challenged, and when I read something, I want to go, I don't really know how I can do that.
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In 10 years of Peaky Blinders, Murphy came into his own.
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I heard very early on in my career a director, it was one of the Sydneys, could be in Sydney Pollock,
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but one of them said it takes 30 years to make an actor.
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It's not just technique and experience and all that,
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it's maturing as a human being and trying to grapple with life
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and figure it out and all of stuff
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so by the time you've been doing it for 30 years you've all of that banked hopefully
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and eventually then i think you'll get to a point where you might be an okay actor
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maturing is the theme of murphy's next film based on the novel small things like these He plays Bill Furlong,
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tormented by injustice.
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His wife fears his empathy will upend their lives.
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Don't you have a question, Ezra?
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If you want to get on in this life, there are things you have to ignore.
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That's Eileen Walsh.
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No actor has known Murphy longer.
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She was his first partner in Disco Pigs 28 years ago.
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Is his work ethic rooted in fear or joy?
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Oh, that's a good question.
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I think it can only be joy, but it sometimes takes a lot of pain to get to that joy.
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the deeper we go with acting, the cost is greater for us.
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And physically, I know Oppenheimer has cost him for the weight loss he insisted,
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and it was his choice to do, but it was the right choice to create that amazing silhouette.
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But from the very beginning, our warm-ups for Disco Pigs involved us punching each other.
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quite hard and like going for it
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and then bursting out into it this huge ball of velocity
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coming into it was the beginning of an Oppenheimer was the
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whole kind of atom of us now after three decades of work,
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Cillian Murphy is cast in the most familiar Irish legend of all.
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Maybe there is gold, a 24-karat gold-plated statue, at the end of his spectrum of talent.
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You have screwed this up, though, you know.
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In what way?
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You used to be an actor.
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Yeah.
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And now you're a movie star.
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Oh, okay. Am I?
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I think you could be both.
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You know, I've never understood that term really, movie star.
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I've always just felt like I'm an actor.
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That's, I think, a term for other people, rather than for me.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you’ll practice listening and speaking skills using a conversation from Cillian Murphy’s 60 Minutes interview. You’ll learn to follow natural speech patterns, pick up casual phrases, and mimic the tone of a relaxed yet engaging discussion. Perfect for improving fluency, this lesson uses real-world dialogue—great for anyone learning English with YouTube.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Blockbuster: A very successful movie, like *Oppenheimer*. Example: “The new superhero film is a blockbuster.”
- Reserved: Quiet and not quick to share personal thoughts. Example: “My neighbor is reserved, but she’s kind.”
- Continuum: A range of related things that blend into each other. Example: “Art and music are part of a creative continuum.”
- Riddled: Full of something (often a problem or mystery). Example: “The old house is riddled with stories.”
- Detonated: Exploded. Example: “The firework detonated with a loud bang.”
Practice Tips
This video has a moderate, conversational speed—ideal for shadowing. Start by watching a 30-second clip, then pause and repeat each sentence aloud, matching Murphy’s tone and rhythm. Focus on his relaxed delivery in the pub scene; notice how he shortens words like “I don’t” to “I don’t” (natural contraction). Use a shadowing app or shadowing site to record yourself and compare. For tricky phrases like “it’s all in a continuum,” break them into chunks: “it’s all / in a / continuum.” Shadow speech daily with this clip, and you’ll soon feel more confident with casual English. Remember, shadow speak is about mimicking *how* people talk, not just *what* they say—so pay attention to pauses and emphasis too!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to kind · used to be |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has worked · have passed · has always let |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | were warned · was named · be photocopied |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.