Cillian Murphy Could Have Lost His 28 Days Later Role To A Peaky Blinders Co-star

Searchlight Pictures

Cillian Murphy doesn't always play sad characters, but he sure is great at portraying them when he does. With his piercing, soulful blue eyes, the actor has a talent for depicting inner turmoil, whether he's wrestling with the atomic horrors he's unleashed as J. Robert Oppenheimer in the blockbuster Best Picture Oscar-winning "Oppenheimer" or silently ruminating on the long-buried secrets of his childhood as Bill Furlong in the low-budget Irish drama "Small Things Like These." 

You can probably trace that back to his breakout turn in 2002's "28 Days Later" as Jim. When Murphy's unsuspecting bicycle courier awakens from a coma in the film only to discover London transformed into a ghost town while he was out cold (sans those red-eyed, snarling folks infected with the zombie-like rage virus, naturally), you wholly believe Jim's as bewildered and terrified as any reasonable person would be in his shoes.

It's strange to think, then, that the part almost didn't go to the man behind Tommy Shelby from "Peaky Blinders." (Speaking of tormented characters.) When interviewed by Cinemablend to promote "28 Years Later," his 2025 sequel to "28 Days Later," director Danny Boyle confirmed that Murphy could have lost his "28 Days" role to his eventual "Peaky Blinders" co-star Tom Hardy. As the filmmaker explained, both Hardy and Orlando Bloom (who co-starred together in director Ridley Scott's 2001 war flick "Black Hawk Down" around that time) auditioned to play Jim at a point where, much like Murphy, neither was a huge name yet.

"We didn't have very much money, we thought 'We'll never be able to afford a bigger actor.' And we wanted newbies who just didn't know which way it would break with them," Boyle recalled. And while he made the right choice, one does wonder how things might've gone differently.

BBC/Netflix

The world was a very different place when Danny Boyle was making "28 Days Later." The 9/11 terrorist attacks hadn't happened, which is why Boyle reckons he was able to film the famous scene where Jim explores a vacated London the way he did. Meanwhile, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, and Orlando Bloom were all a bunch of young'uns nervously hoping for their big break. Bloom got just that when, around the time that "Black Hawk Down" hit theaters, he made his debut as Legolas in director Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy. Hardy, unfortunately, had to wait a bit longer when his appearance as the villainous Shinzon in 2002's "Star Trek: Nemesis" didn't work out as intended.

Boyle, for his part, apparently realized Murphy was the man he was looking for right away on "28 Days Later," though he suspected the actor's competitors had a bright future ahead of them, too. "I remember seeing [them], and we saw Cillian, and I remember thinking, 'Whoa, he'll have an amazing career,'" he told Cinemablend. "I remember thinking that. I was right. I remember thinking that about Orlando Bloom, I thought, 'He'll do all right.'"

One assumes Bloom's career wouldn't have gone too differently had he starred in "28 Days Later," since he'd already gotten swept up in Jackson's Middle-earth adventures by then. Of the pair, though, Hardy probably would've been the better alternative for Jim. As we've seen in movies like "The Revenant," he's up there with Murphy when it comes to portraying haunted and traumatized individuals. Then again, between Hardy and Murphy, Boyle might not regret passing on the "Peaky Blinders" veteran who was more likely to challenge him to a wrestling match.