Cillian Murphy: From Peaky Blinders to tragic war hero

Reinhard Heydrich was known by many names. To the Nazi hierarchy he was Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia and one of the architects of the ‘Final Solution’. To the people of Czechoslovakia he was the Butcher of Prague. Even Adolf Hitler called him “the man with the iron heart”.

Heydrich was high profile, highly influential and high value. In Britain in 1941 the Czech army-in-exile and the Special Operations Executive plotted to kill him in an operation code-named ‘Anthropoid’.

Czech fighters were parachuted into their Nazi occupied homeland and began long preparations for his assassination. They succeeded, but the death of Heydrich led to unbelievably brutal reprisals.

Movies have been made about Heydrich, leading henchman to Hitler and number three in the Third Reich, since his death in June 1942. Films such as Hitler’s Madman and Hangmen Also Die! (both 1943) were Hollywood propaganda pieces designed to capitalise on the surprise success of the plot to kill him.

The story was retold as recently as 1975 with Joseph Bottoms and Anthony Andrews cast as Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík, the daring duo behind the attack, in Operation: Daybreak.

Now two new films compete for box office glory. Jason Clarke is Heydrich in the peculiarly titled HHhH, due in 2017; Jack O’Connell and Jack Reynor play the assassins. But first there is Anthropoid, a labour of love by writer-director Sean (Metro Manila) Ellis that follows a 15-year period of obsession and research.

Such was his fascination with the story that Ellis’s first draft script ran to almost 700 pages. The bulk and detail was then pared back to focus on the two young men who would drive the story towards what he calls “the ultimate act of resistance”.

“I wanted to make it contained, a very emotional piece,” says Ellis. “I didn’t want a big, grand war epic because the actions of the people involved and the emotions are epic. I felt that if I could tell the story on a very small scale then that was the way of [presenting] the people of the Czech Resistance at the time.”

As his protagonists Ellis chose two Irishmen: Cork native Cillian Murphy, 40, and Belfast-born Jamie Dornan, 34. Ellis wanted ordinary men, not invincible superheroes. It doubtlessly helped that both actors are heartthrobs, Murphy courtesy of TV smash Peaky Blinders and Dornan via Fifty Shades of Gray.

History tells us that preparations for an attack on Heydrich were speeded up when it became known that Hitler planned to move him from Czechoslovakia to France. Thus Kubiš, 28, and Gabík, 30, hurriedly conceived and carried out their attack, targeting Heydrich in his open-topped Mercedes as it slowed for a hairpin bend on a Prague street. The plan, though flawed, succeeded. Kubiš threw a bomb that peppered Heydrich with shrapnel fragments. He died of sepsis eight days later.

Nazi retribution was swift and ruthless. As a reprisal the villages of Lidice and Ležáky were burned and their people murdered. Both Kubiš and Gabčík were cornered. Gabčík committed suicide. Kubiš, injured by a grenade, was captured but died of his injuries. Today they are considered national heroes.

“Your duty as an actor is to portray these guys honestly,” says Murphy, aware of the sensitivities involved. “And every day it was hard to get my head around the fact that these guys were going to go through with it. Effectively they didn’t think they were going to get out alive.

“What that does to your psyche – and the pressure it puts on you as an individual – is fascinating. Every day was an attempt to figure that out and to explore the relationship between the two of them, because each needed the other.”

Dornan joins Murphy in his unfamiliarity with the story. The appeal to him was three-fold: a desire to work with Ellis and Murphy, and an intense reaction to the script. “I was blown away by the script,” he admits. “It felt like it was a very important story to be told. It had a massive knock-on effect for an entire nation.

“The heroism involved, the sacrifice involved… it felt like something I could relate to. They were fighting for something they believed in. And they were normal guys with families that were being massively affected by what was happening [in Czechoslovakia].

“As an actor you have to have something that drives you every day on set. For them there can’t have been any bigger drive than the opportunity to assassinate somebody so horrific. There’s nobody in the world now who can’t see Heydrich as evil. What stronger drive do you need? It’s murder for the greater good.”

Kubiš and Gabčík were thrown together for a deadly mission. Theirs was a shared partnership. Murphy sees distant similarities in his on-screen pairing with Dornan.

“You cast a film that’s a two-hander and it’s a gamble, really,” he explains. “You never know if you’re going to get on with the actor playing opposite you. So we met for dinner and it so happens that my wife and son are obsessed with The Fall, the show that Jamie is in. So that helped.

“We agreed that the story of Jan and Jozef was instantly compelling. Their act of heroism changed the course of the war and changed the course of history. And unless you’re a Czech or a student of history you don’t know about it.

“They were average guys thrust into this crazy time. That’s very identifiable for audiences.”

Anthropoid (15) is on nationwide release.