Cillian Murphy
Patrick “Kitten” Braden, Breakfast on Pluto
Age: 29
Birthplace: Douglas, Ireland
Essential filmography: 28 Days Later (2003), Batman Begins (2005), Red Eye (2005)

“Oh, serious, serious, serious!” Not since Scarlett O’Hara fiddle-dee-dee’d has a heroine scoffed at the world’s cares with such stylish abandon as Patrick “Kitten” Braden, the androgynous optimist at the heart of Neil Jordan’s tragicomic fairy tale Breakfast on Pluto. In a performance miles away from his villainous turns in Batman Begins and Red Eye, Cillian Murphy plays the gentle transvestite confronted by 1970s IRA terrorism. “All she wants is just to be hugged and cuddled and feel secure and look pretty,” Murphy says. “There’s no ulterior motive with Kitten, and that was quite refreshing.”

When Jordan first wrote the script, based on Patrick McCabe’s Booker Prize–nominated novel of the same name, he doubted that he would find an actor capable of playing Kitten, the cross-dressing son of the village priest and a beautiful blond housekeeper who resembles Mitzi Gaynor. “I tested a lot of the best young Irish actors around,” Jordan recalls. “Some of the people made it too winsome, too victimlike somehow, too flamboyant in a way, and he just seemed to get beneath the skin of the character, Cillian did.”

Murphy’s preparations went much deeper than the plucking, waxing, and occasional strolls in high heels that became a regular part of his beauty routine. The committed thespian went clubbing in London with transvestites, became a careful observer of women’s gestures, and watched South Pacific and all of the old Mitzi Gaynor films that Kitten adores. “I hate musicals, I really do, but I understand,” says Murphy. “It’s losing oneself in that heightened, surreal, bubbly world as a way of getting away from what’s actually happening. I think of all the characters I’ve played, this is the one I have deepest affection for. I think about her, you know? I wonder how she’s getting on.” —Cristy Lytal