Don your flat cap and keep your eyes peeled — Tommy Shelby is back in town. Cillian Murphy reprises his role as the infamous gangster in Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight’s sequel film, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, which is now streaming on Netflix (learn more below). But Murphy has been entertaining and subtly terrifying audiences for almost three decades: His career started long before he first rode a horse down Birmingham’s cobblestone streets.
After a series of short films in the late ’90s and co-leading the movie adaptation of writer Enda Walsh’s Disco Pigs, Murphy starred as Jim in the 2002 cult horror flick 28 Days Later, directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland (a role he revisited in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple). He then starred in the first of his collaborations with filmmaker Christopher Nolan, playing the Scarecrow in Batman Begins, a role he reprised in the movie’s sequels. After that came Boyle and Garland’s sci-fi thriller Sunshine and his second Nolan film, Inception.
In 2013, the world met Tommy Shelby, whom Murphy embodied for six seasons while also acting in movies like Aloft, In the Heart of the Sea, Free Fire, A Quiet Place Part II, and his third Nolan outing, Dunkirk. Murphy’s most recent creative partnership with Nolan was in 2023, when his eponymous role in Oppenheimer won him the Oscar for Best Actor. Keep reading to learn about Murphy’s movies and series on Netflix.
Birmingham, England, 1919. Tommy Shelby (Murphy) has returned home from World War I a changed man. And he has a plan to make his family crime gang, the Peaky Blinders — named for the razor blades hidden in their characteristic flat caps — the most fearsome in town. Fixing horse races and challenging local heavy Billy Kimber (Charlie Creed-Miles) is one thing. But when the group steals weapons from the local arms factory, they catch the attention of Winston Churchill, who sends Chester Campbell (Sam Neill) to investigate. It’s the Shelby family versus the world in this six-season period crime drama created by Knight and co-starring Paul Anderson (Legend), Sophie Rundle (The Midnight Sky), Helen McCrory (Skyfall), Finn Cole (Animal Kingdom), and many more.
Six years after the events of Peaky Blinders Season 6, Tommy Shelby returns from self-imposed exile. Everyone in Birmingham has the same question: Whatever happened to the famous Gypsy gangster? While Tommy claims he’s no longer that man, his family and friends might need him to be. World War II has ravaged the country, and Tommy and the Shelby clan have to face their most terrible reckoning yet. “The country is at war, and so, of course, are our Peaky Blinders,” the film’s writer, Knight, told Netflix. “It will be an explosive chapter in the Peaky Blinders story. No holds barred. Full-on Peaky Blinders at war.”
The Immortal Man also stars Rebecca Ferguson (A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE), Tim Roth (Here), Barry Keoghan (The Green Knight), Stephen Graham (Adolescence), Sophie Rundle (Bodyguard), Packy Lee (Blue Lights), Jay Lycurgo (Steve), Ned Dennehy (Glitch), and Ian Peck (His Dark Materials).
Based on Max Porter’s bestselling novel Shy, this drama stars Murphy as the titular head teacher of a last-chance reform school for boys in the mid ’90s. While the world has left his troubled students behind, Steve refuses to do so — even as he grapples with his own mental health and the school’s impending collapse. At the same time, the film, written by Porter and directed by Tim Mielants (WILL), follows one of the students, the enigmatic Shy (Jay Lycurgo), as he’s caught between his difficult past and the world’s expectations for his future. Tracey Ullman (Small Time Crooks), Simbi Ajikawo (Top Boy), and Emily Watson (Little Women) also star.
This action comedy, directed by Ben Wheatley (Rebecca), features an ensemble cast of characters who go head-to-head after a black market arms deal starts off bad and gets so much worse. Murphy plays Chris, an IRA member who’s involved in the crossfire when the two factions start a no-holds-barred shootout in a deserted warehouse filled with seemingly endless ammo. When everyone is a killer with a gun and a grudge, will anyone make it out alive? Executive produced by Martin Scorsese, Free Fire co-stars Sharlto Copley (Elysium), Armie Hammer (Rebecca), Brie Larson (Unicorn Store), Jack Reynor (The Perfect Couple), Babou Ceesay (The Best of Enemies), Enzo Cilenti (Jekyll and Hyde), Sam Riley (Brighton Rock), Michael Smiley (Gunpowder Milkshake), and Noah Taylor (Predestination).
