Cillian Murphy opens up on losing Batman role to Christian Bale in Nolan's superhero trilogy

Cillian Murphy is happy that he wasn’t cast as Batman in Christopher Nolan’s reimagination of the caped crusader in his trilogy. Nolan cast Christian Bale as Batman and the director-actor duo was praised for the three films that gave the superhero-noir a new meaning. Now that Cillian has been earning praise for his role in Nolan’s Oppenheimer, he was asked how he felt about losing the glamorous part to Christian Bale.

Speaking to GQ magazine in an interview, Cillian Murphy said that it was “for the best” that Bale was cast as Batman. “Yes, I think it was for the best because we got Christian Bale’s performance, which is a stunning interpretation of that role.” He added, “I never considered myself as the right physical specimen for Batman. To me, it was always going to be Christian Bale.”

Christopher Nolan cast Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow

The director had a similar viewpoint. He didn’t think that Cillian could pull off the Batman role but he still asked him to screen test as he wanted Cillian as the anti-hero of the film, Scarecrow. “Everybody was so excited by watching [Cillian] perform that when I then said to them, ‘Okay, Christian Bale is Batman, but what about Cillian to play Scarecrow?’ There was no dissent,” Nolan recently told Entertainment Weekly. “All the previous Batman villains had been played by huge movie stars: Jack Nicholson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Carrey, that kind of thing. That was a big leap for them and it really was purely on the basis of that test. So that’s how you got to play Scarecrow.”

Cillian has worked in several Nolan films. After Batman Begins, Cillian reprised Scarecrow in two more Batman movies and then had supporting roles in Inception and Dunkirk.

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