“My Life Is Very Simple. I Read a Lot of Books. I Watch a Lot of Movies. Listen to a Lot of Music. Walk the Dog. Cook. Be with My Family.” — Cillian Murphy
Cillian Murphy has spent years telling interviewers the same thing: his off-screen life is deliberately dull. He gave this version in a May 27, 2021 interview, around the release of A Quiet Place Part II.
The 50-year-old Oscar winner, who plays Tommy Shelby and took home an Academy Award for Oppenheimer, has been with Irish visual artist Yvonne McGuinness since 1996. They married in 2004, and both sons, Malachy and Aran, are their children together. In his Oscar speech, Murphy called her “my partner in life and art.”
McGuinness is from Kilkenny and makes films, installations and performance work. She trained at Crawford College of Art in Cork and the Royal College of Art in London. Murphy has said he couldn’t manage his work-life balance without her, especially when filming takes him away from home.
Malachy, 20, keeps out of the spotlight and has no public acting career. He stayed home for exams during part of his dad’s 2024 awards run.
Aran, 19, is already acting professionally. At 11, he played the title role in the stage production Hamnet, and his screen debut was as Leo in the 2022 film Lola. He’s got a lead role in Sharon Horgan’s HBO series Youth, which premiered September 20, 2026.
At the 2024 Oscar Wilde Awards, Murphy said of Aran: “I’m very, very proud of him, he’s a great, great actor.” Aran also has an upcoming role in Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun opposite Amy Adams and Jenna Ortega.
The family moved back to Ireland in 2015 after about 14 years in London, settling in Monkstown, south of Dublin near the sea. “We wanted the kids to be Irish,” Murphy has said. He noted that their “posh English accents” changed within a year.
The dog he mentions is a black Labrador named Scout, after the narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird, and Murphy walks him regularly on the beach near the harbour. The reading runs to Irish writers like John Banville and American classics like Updike. The music tracks back to his teens, when he played in bands, and he’s gone on to curate late-night mixtape shows for BBC Radio 6 Music.
He avoids social media and has called himself boring more than once, partly as strategy. As he’s put it, being boring keeps people less interested, which suits an actor fine.
In a BAFTA acceptance speech, he addressed his wife and sons directly: “Finally, to Yvonne, Malachy and Aran, you are my best friends, and I love you so much.”