Cillian Murphy‘s wardrobe in Oppenheimer was partly inspired by David Bowie during his Thin White Duke era.
The actor – who plays “father of the atomic bomb” J. Robert Oppenheimer in the new Christopher Nolan-directed epic – explained that the music icon provided inspiration for the clothing style worn by his character in the film, which came out Friday (July 21).
“We worked very closely with our costume designer to design the clothes,” Murphy told MTV Movies. “And particularly, I wanted to get his silhouette. He was very fragile, he was very, very slim and I wanted to get that silhouette right.”
“Chris sent me a couple of shots of David Bowie, certain periods in David Bowie’s career, like Thin White Duke and around ‘Young Americans’ time,” Murphy added.
The Thin White Duke was one of Bowie’s many personas, which he adopted from 1975 to 1976. His ninth studio album ‘Young Americans’ came out in March 1975.
“He had these massive trousers and he was so emaciated but so fucking cool,” Murphy continued. “So we used that, weirdly, for some of Oppenheimer’s trousers.”
The actor has opened up in other interviews about how he attempted to capture the physicality of the American physicist by losing weight for the role.
“I love acting with my body, and Oppenheimer had a very distinct physicality and silhouette, which I wanted to get right,” Murphy told The New York Times.
“I had to lose quite a bit of weight, and we worked with the costume and tailoring; he was very slim, almost emaciated, existed on martinis and cigarettes,” Murphy said. “He had these really bright eyes and I wanted to give him this wide-eyed look, so we worked on his silhouette and expressions a lot before starting.”
Emily Blunt, who plays Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty in the film, said Murphy regularly skipped cast dinners because of the “monumental” pressure he was under. “Of course he didn’t want to [eat] with us,” she told People.
Speaking to NME recently, Murphy said that he likes playing characters that are “unknowable, ambiguous, kind of enigmatic”, adding: “To me that’s human life: the knotty, weird grey areas… A good man’s life is wholly uninteresting.”
NME described Oppenheimer in a five-star review as a “mind-blowing biopic hits like a bomb to the brain”.
Meanwhile, the ‘David Bowie Is’ archive – featuring more than 80,000 items from across Bowie’s 60-year career, including fashion – is set to be made into permanent UK venue by V&A.
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