Emily Blunt reveals Cillian Murphy survived on almonds while filming Oppenheimer
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Cillian Murphy, who is playing scientist J Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan's highly anticipated Oppenheimer, went through a radical physical transformation to look his part. Murphy himself does not advise anyone to undergo the same process of losing weight but his co-star Emily Blunt, who plays his wife in the film, revealed his shocking diet during the filming of the Oppenheimer in an interview recently.
Blunt spoke to Extra and revealed that Murphy had to follow a very restrictive diet for the role. "He had such a monumental undertaking. And he could only eat, like, an almond every day," she said. "He was so emaciated.”
Murphy addressed his dramatic weight loss for the role during a recent interview with IndieWire and said, “I don’t advise it.”
Murphy even steered clear of giving the specifics about how much weight he lost, saying, “I don’t want it to be, ‘Cillian lost x weight for the part.’”
Matt Damon, who plays Manhattan Project director Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves in the film, told Extra, "The sheer volume of work that he had, and the level of detail that Christopher (Nolan) demands, there was always something for him to be thinking about."
"There was something coming down the pike that he needed to..."quipped Damon,"Be ahead of,” Blunt finished for him.
Murphy did admit that during filming, he was functioning on 'crazy energy'. "I went over a threshold to where I was not worrying about food or anything. I was so in it, a state of hyper-something. But it was good because the character was like that. He never ate.”
The weight loss was part of an effort to look as physically similar to the real Oppenheimer as possible, a man who, Murphy says, lived off “cigarettes and pipes, he would alternate between the two.”
Oppenheimer releases in theatres on July 21.
