HOWZAT

From the outside it seems a charmed existence and an improbably swift ascent. From the inside it seems no less charmed — “Lucky should be my middle name,” he says — but not quite the overnight success that some might consider it. “You do wake up in the morning and think, ‘f****** hell, what the hell am I doing here?’ But I’m eight years doing it. You build up a bit of confidence when you work with certain people. You do roles and learn more, so you walk into a room armed with your CV, as well as anything else you know.

“Before, because I didn’t train (as an actor), I’d go into a room and go: ‘Listen, I don’t really know why I am here; I’m just thrilled to be here, so I’ll give it my best shot and, sure, we’ll see what happens.’ And of course they’re going ‘Who the hell is this langer? We’re certainly not going to hire him.’ Whereas now I go in and I say: ‘I can do this and this and you should hire me.’

Before, I felt like an interloper entirely. And that’s only gone recently, actually.”

Groomed in the academic hothouse of Cork’s Presentation Brothers college, Murphy’s interests were at odds with the prevailing rugby ethos.

“If you had any creative or artistic leaning, it wasn’t catered for,” he says, “although I had a brilliant English teacher, Billy Wall.

“I was a little bastard up until about the fourth year. I was getting suspended and all that stuff. Just messing, nothing serious. It was causing too much hassle, so I said, ‘This isn’t worth it’ and I put my head down, worked and did well.”

Wall, who is also a poet and novelist, encouraged Murphy to pursue acting in his final year in school at a time when his ambitions lay elsewhere, namely in rock’n’roll. That was not an entirely popular option at home, in Ballintemple, a confluence of estates around the affluent Blackrock Road, where Murphy grew up the eldest in a family of four children, two boys and two girls.

“Myself and the brother caused fierce trouble at home,” he says. “The girls were fantastic: brainy, bright and didn’t cause any trouble. I’m lucky because I have brilliant parents; they’re hugely supportive. They’re like friends to me now.”

He wanted to be a musician from a very young age, he says. “I was writing songs since I was 10 years old; I still do.” He formed a band with his brother, Paidi, but when they were offered a recording deal they were cautious. “I was 18, Paidi was 16. The deal involved selling all our songs and signing up for five years. We turned it down. The label went belly-up two years later.

“If we had signed up that time, I think I might have turned into a bit of a dick. You’re 18, people are telling you you’re fantastic and you are not a fully formed adult in any way.

“You could easily turn into a dickhead. The way it turned out, I’m much happier being my own man and being autonomous.”

Although Murphy readily gives credit to people for the advice and help they gave him — among them Wall, playwright Enda Walsh, theatre director Pat Kiernan and actor Brendan Gleeson — he characterises himself as tending not to depend on others.

“I do my own thing,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve ever depended on people. Even since I was young I don’t think I did. I mean, I have a long-term relationship, and that’s a huge support.”

Half-heartedly pursuing a law degree at UCC, he persuaded Kiernan to cast him in Walsh’s E-generation play Disco Pigs in 1996. “I harangued Pat Kiernan,” he says. A run at the Edinburgh Fringe prompted Murphy to reconsider his law studies; a transfer to the West End of London and an international tour settled the matter. “It wasn’t a difficult decision to make,” he says.

Having ascended, through working with Hynes, Danny Boyle, Kirsten Sheridan and others, to the foothills of Hollywood stardom, Murphy can now afford to pick and choose his projects. “I read everything I’m sent, even the shite stuff,” he says. “For me, choosing a script is about instinct. When it comes to acting it’s about instinct and collaborating with a director.”

Thus far his instincts and collaborators have served him well. Hollywood awaits, though he rubbishes the notion that it may change him. “But sure, how, like? You see, that’s the misconception. Surely you buy a gaff for your mum and dad, you buy a nice gaff for yourself, you have kids. I don’t see how it changes your life unless you are a 22-year-old who wants to put it all up his nose.”

Nor for him the luvvie excesses of his trade. true to the character. “Philip Seymour Hoffman is the only actor I ever approached,” he says. “I was on a plane to New York with him once. He was waiting for his baggage and I was standing around for ages like a stalker. So I went up and I said: ‘Listen man, I have to say that I am just in awe of you, and I loved all your films.’ And he blushed, and then I blushed. And I just left.”

And the novelty-hungry publishing industry waiting expectantly for Murphy to become a rip-roaring feature of the celebrity circuit? “Yeah, well, they’ll be sorely disappointed.”

Playboy of the Western World opens on Tuesday in Town Hall theatre, Galway; it tours Ireland until April

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Full details of the Playboy tour