The first time I met Cillian Murphy was at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in 1997. The actor, then 21, was making his stage debut in Disco Pigs, a two-hander about teenagers from Cork, Ireland, a frenetic story about friendship and first love.
Even then, in tight-fitting silver trousers that looked like tin foil, fearless, feral, Murphy had a magnetism that ricocheted around the room. That ethereal face, that deep, laconic Irish accent, those ice-blue eyes held everybody in his thrall. He would wind down after each performance with several pints (and an odd obsession with Chumbawamba) with the company, a wild gang who were all great friends. Had you asked me then if he might one day win an Oscar, I would have nodded: absolutely, yes.
