Cillian Murphy stars in A Quiet Place Part II

Whether he acts like a celebrity or not, Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy is going to hear some noise with the release of the sequel horror A Quiet Place Part II.

Editor's Note: The article was published in the Irish Voice newspaper, IrishCentral's sister publication, before the film's star and director John Krasinski announced that the original premiere date of March 20 has been postponed in light of coronavirus:

#AQuietPlacePart2...Take2 pic.twitter.com/YrCXLLpxjh
— John Krasinski (@johnkrasinski) March 12, 2020

The below was published on March 11 in the Irish Voice newspaper:

Cork-born actor Cillian Murphy says he received some sound advice that’s served him well throughout his stellar career: “Someone said to me very early on, ‘They’ll only treat you like a celebrity if you behave like one.’ That stuck with me.”

Well, his celebrity quotient is about to soar even higher when A Quiet Place Part II, the sequel to the wildly successful horror film of 2018, opens on March 20. Murphy was added as a co-star for the second act, some of the reviews have started to trickle out. Simply put, they’re stellar.

“A Quiet Place Part II is a worthy, world-expanding follow-up that builds on the original and finds its own thrills, chills, and emotions in the process,” says IndieWire. “Audiences should still be banned from eating crunchy snacks during any and all screenings.”

Fandango is equally impressed. “The film is just as tense and terrifying as the first one. There are some sequences in this film that are a masterclass in suspense,” the site opines.

Murphy, star of the acclaimed BBC/Netflix crime drama Peaky Blinders, gave the aforementioned quote about celebrity to The Sydney Morning Herald. He spoke to the Down Under paper about his role as Emmett, “a gun-toting survivor of the alien onslaught.” Murphy, 43, nearly sent a fanboy letter to John Krasinski, the writer/director/co-star of the first A Quiet Place, but then thought better of it.

“I just chickened out; I thought it was cheesy,” he laughs. “Then a year later he [Krasinski] emailed me about the part, so there was some kind of weird circular thing happening.”

Murphy and his family – his artist wife Yvonne McGuinness, and their two sons, Malachy, 14, and Aran, 12 – have been living in Monkstown, Co. Dublin since 2015. They returned to Ireland after a long spell in London.

“We just wanted our kids to have more space, to be aware of their Irishness and be near their grandparents,” he said. “It’s a very common Irish narrative – to go away for a long time and then come home.”

Flying under the radar and living a quiet, “incredibly dull” life when he’s not working suits Murphy just fine. But he seems set to do his share of promo for A Quiet Place Part II, and says it’s possible that his two sons could accompany him to the London premiere because they loved the first film.

“My argument back then was ‘I’ll be s***,’” he says of his past reluctance to sit for interviews. “I’d do a terrible interview that would backfire on us because people wouldn’t go and see the film.”

Cillian should have no fear that will happen this time.