Why Cillian Murphy Won't Take Photos with Fans: 'Better to Say Hello and Have a Little Conversation'

"You don’t need a photo record of everywhere you’ve been in a day," the Oscar nominee said

Cillian Murphy is living in the moment.

The Academy Award-nominated Oppenheimer actor, 47, graces the cover of GQ's March issue and discusses how he prefers to talk to fans as opposed to providing photographic evidence of their encounters.

"I don’t do photos," he told a fan who approached him during his interview with the magazine, going on to tell GQ of refusing photo ops, "Once I started doing that, it changed my life."

But it's not for lack of appreciation for his fans — in fact, it's quite the opposite, as Murphy seeks to really make the moment count.

"I just think it’s better to say hello and have a little conversation," he said. "I tell that to a lot of people, you know, actor friends of mine, and they’re just like, 'I feel so bad.' But you don’t need a photo record of everywhere you’ve been in a day."

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While Murphy does have "a couple of" actor friends, the Peaky Blinders star told the outlet, "The majority of my buddies are not in the business."

"I also love not working," he continued. "And I think for me a lot of research as an actor is just f---ing living, and, you know, having a normal life doing regular things and just being able to observe, and be, in that sort of lovely flow of humanity."

Murphy has been open about not wanting to live in Hollywood, and instead resided in London in his 20s and 30s. In 2015, the Irish native moved to Dublin with his wife of nearly 20 years, Yvonne McGuinness, and their two sons: Malachy, 18, and Aran, 16. The family now lives near the sea.

Of living life outside of his career, the actor told GQ, "If you can’t do that because you’re going from film festival to movie set to promotions … I mean, that’s 'The Bubble.' "

"I’m not saying that makes you any better or less as an actor, but it’s just a world that I couldn’t exist in. I find it would be very limiting on what you can experience as a human being, you know?” Murphy added.

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Speaking about his fame over the years, the Golden Globe winner — also known for his roles in 28 Days Later (2003), Batman Begins (2005), Red Eye (2005), Inception (2010) and more — Murphy told GQ, “To me, it always seems to go in waves."

“When Peaky was at its kind of apex, you’d feel a different energy around, walking around, a little bit like I do now — but then it settles down again," Murphy said. "Then you don’t have something in the cinema for ages, and people forget about it. It seems to be like that, and you sort of ride that, and then things go back to normal.”

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