Yes, Cillian Murphy Really Learned How to Give a Physics Lecture in Dutch for Oppenheimer

Bringing J. Robert Oppenheimer to life, Cillian Murphy took acting commitment to a higher level.

The Irish actor, 47, was praised for portraying the lead role in Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s retelling of the creation of the atomic bomb. Jade Yuan’s new book, Unleashing Oppenheimer: Inside Christopher Nolan’s Explosive Atomic Age Thriller (now available for purchase), includes details on how Murphy did it.

For example, there are no gimmicks in the film’s early scene, which shows an American physicist launching into an academic lecture, unexpectedly, in fluent Dutch.

“It’s a small scene,” Murphy said in interviews published in the Freeing Oppenheimerbut regardless of whom he “feared”.

“I remember talking to Chris in pre-production and saying, ‘Chris, what do you want to do with this Dutch scene?’ And he said, ‘What are you going to do with this Dutch scene?'”

The Pointed glasses star added that Nolan is always “working at the top of his game, so he expects everyone else to do their job, to do their due diligence.” Murphy previously collaborated with the Oscar-nominated writer-director on the 2010 film. Beginningin 2017 Dunkirk and as Batman’s villain Scarecrow in The dark knight trilogy of films.

J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty

See the stars of ‘Oppenheimer’ compared to the historical figures they play

Nolan’s resident cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, who is Dutch, ended up assisting Murphy. Although the exact lectures Oppenheimer gave at Leiden University in the Netherlands in 1928 have been lost, Yuan writes, the production team took one of his later lectures on quantum mechanics and translated part of it into Dutch.

As the actor revealed to Deadline in July, he asked van Hoytema to record himself reading the words aloud. “He recorded it, and then I slowed it down so that I learned it phonetically in three months.”

In his interviews with Yuan, he said he heard a bit of Dutch Oppenheimer is “one of those things I’ll never forget because I’ve done it so many times.”

“I can still tell that,” Murphy added, though he admitted that was the extent of his understanding of the language.

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Murphy’s Oppenheimer Costars spoke of his commitment to the role, which included research in theoretical physics and Oppenheimer’s role as director of the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory.

Robert Downey Jr., who plays Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss in the film, told PEOPLE in July that he had “never witnessed a greater sacrifice by a lead actor,” adding that learning a second language was one of Murphy’s many challenges.

“We’d say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a three-day weekend. Maybe we’ll go antique shopping in Santa Fe. What are you going to do?'” he recalled asking Murphy. “‘Oh, I have to learn 30,000 words of Dutch. Have a good time.'”

Downey Jr. added: “He knew it was going to be a big ask when Chris called him. But I think he also had the humility to survive playing a role like this.”

Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. in “Oppenheimer”.

Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures

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Emily Blunt, who plays Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty, called Murphy’s work “monumental” in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE. While the rest of the production in New Mexico felt like “summer camp,” she said, “of course he didn’t want to come to dinner with us.”

Based on a 2005 biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, Oppenheimer is the third highest-grossing film of 2023 and broke the record for the highest-grossing biopic of all time.

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Source: HIS Education