How Cillian Murphy’s Face Became the Internet’s Favorite Meme

For more than half a decade, Cillian Murphy and his disappointed interview face have been a beloved paradox for the perpetually online. The Oppenheimer star’s tired blue eyes and plastered-on expression have long reflected the bone-deep exhaustion many smooth-brained netizens feel every day while enduring the slings and arrows of the real world. And yet, when NME asked the Irish actor in 2017 if he was aware that his visible ennui had become a meme, he could only ask, ever so earnestly, “What’s a meme?” At that point, it was game over—after all, there’s nothing the internet loves more than someone who doesn’t seem to give a shit about the internet.

Since that interview (and also thanks to the rise of Peaky Blinders as a beloved streaming show), it’s been open season on the Murphy memes. But it wasn’t until I saw a TikTok star wearing his face on a maxi skirt that I realized we’d reached full cultural saturation. In 2023, Cillian Murphy and endless Oppenheimer memes officially blew up the internet.

As that 2017 NME conversation indicates, Murphy’s internet notoriety is not new. Still, he seemed borderline inescapable this year—especially as Barbenheimer took over the box office this summer. Suddenly, his face was everywhere. Look over here, and you’ll find AI-edited images of Oppy making a creepy smile. Take a gander over there, and you might stumble on one of those interrogation scene memes, in which some X user compares the Oppenheimer interrogation scene to trying to get homework help from an irritated father. Look a little to the left, and there’s a fancam of Murphy dissociating while a TikToker likens his character’s innovation to restarting the family WiFi. Shift your gaze to the right, and there’s his terrifyingly warped face, as seen from the front row in an IMAX screening. Whatever your preferred style of internet absurdity might be, this year, there was a Murphy for all tastes.

Read more at The Daily Beast.