Cillian Murphy is "excited" about his first role after 'Oppenheimer'.

The 48-year-old actor enjoyed Oscar-winning success as the titular wartime hero in the 2023 drama and as he gears up to both star and produce in 'Small Things Like These' - which follows an Irish coal merchant in the 1980s who discovers secrets about his life - and is "not nervous" because the fate of a film is never sealed until after it is released.

He told Collider: " I'm not nervous, I'm excited. A film isn't finished until the audience sees it. So I'm very, very invested in what the Irish people think. And the book is so beloved here, and it's on the curriculum. My young fella is learning it in sixth year. So I think a lot of people know what they're gonna get going into it. But I also just think art is a good way of looking at these difficult times in history, in the history of any country. We've played this film in Berlin, obviously, and it did really well, and we played it in America, and there is a universality to it that people are really responding to, which is brilliant."

The former 'Peaky Blinders' star doesn't want to "tell people what to think" when it comes to art, and wants to leave audiences to decide themselves whether the film is "pure entertainment" or whether there is a moral to the story.

He said: "I'm very reluctant to ever tell people what to think. What happens with this film is that it goes to black, and then the credits roll, and people stay in their seats and they stay and they start chatting. Because the film only really starts where the screen goes black. People have many different points of view. I just want people to be provoked. It's a provocation to say, like, 'What do you think about this?' And it can be just pure entertainment, or it can be something more. I like films that have a point of view and poke at you gently to say, 'What do you think about this?'"