60 Minutes - 06/15/2025: Unintended Consequences, Wood to Whiskey, Finding Cillian Murphy

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, 20 states immediately banned or severely restricted abortion while six protected access to it. Since this piece first aired last November, voters in six additional states have amended their constitutions to safeguard abortion rights. But for many women and doctors living in places with strict abortion bans, fear and confusion over these new laws is growing. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi travels to one of those states, Texas, and speaks with doctors who say the restrictive abortion laws are creating unintended consequences, hurting women with desired pregnancies and the people who care for them. With a history spanning 2,000 years and still playing a vital role in global commerce, the oak barrel, as correspondent Bill Whitaker discovers, is much more than just a container. Barrels are a vital ingredient, especially in the production of Bourbon whiskey – giving it all of its distinctive color and much of its taste. Whitaker takes us inside the largest maker of wooden barrels to glimpse the magic and mystique of this essential tradition. Just weeks before Cillian Murphy won the 2024 Oscar for Best Actor in the film “Oppenheimer,” correspondent Scott Pelley sat down with him for a candid interview. Murphy talked about how he transforms for roles, acts on instinct and how his Irish identity has defined him. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

No Frills delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC Optimum points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca. Now streaming. Everyone who comes into this clinic is a mystery.

We don't know what we're looking for. Their bodies are the scene of the crime. Their symptoms and history are clues. We saved her life. We're doctors and we're detectives. I kind of love it if I'm being honest. Solve the puzzle, save the patient. Watson. All episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus. Tonight, you will hear from doctors who say the new abortion laws in Texas are creating

unintended consequences for medical professionals and the women they care for. Five years ago I could counsel a patient on all the various treatment options and now it is a dangerous situation for me. Dangerous because? Because I could face life in prison just for having a conversation with my patient about evidence-based care. Tonight, we explore the fascinating life of the whiskey barrel, an ancient product that still plays a vital role in global commerce. Millions of new oak barrels are built in America every year, fired up and then filled with what will become bourbon through years of aging,

as the wood delivers magic to the whiskey. Five thousand miles from Hollywood, Oppenheimer star Killian Murphy prefers a beach to a red carpet. But his Oscar win brings a blinding light to an artist who'd rather disappear. Emily Blunt told me, half joking, your interview with Killian will be a disaster. Is this going to be a disaster? I don't, I hope not.

We'll find out. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Bill Whitaker.

I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonzi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelli. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Now streaming. Everyone who comes into this clinic is a mystery.

We don't know what we're looking for. Their bodies are the scene of the crime. Their symptoms and history are clues. You saved her life. We're doctors and we're detectives. I kind of love it if I'm being honest. Solve the puzzle, save the patient. Watson. All episodes now streaming on Paramount+.

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, 20 states banned or severely restricted abortion. Six states voted to protect access to it. And since we first reported this story last November, voters in six additional states have passed measures to amend their state constitutions to protect abortion. To understand the impact of the changing legal landscape and its complexities, we went to the first state to change its abortion laws, Texas. Tonight, you will hear from doctors who say in Texas, the laws designed

to stop abortions are creating unintended consequences, hurting women with desired pregnancies and the people who care for them. My mom is a doctor and she is probably the coolest person I've ever met. And I grew up, you know, with her coming home in her white coat. And I honestly just wanted to be my mom. In 2021, Danny Matheson was following in her mother's footsteps on her way to becoming an OB-GYN. She was 25 years old in her final year of medical school in Texas, married to her high school sweetheart, and ready to start a family. We planned it out perfectly. I was going to get pregnant at this time, and it was going to be great.

You had it planned? I had it planned down to like the week. Mathison was thrilled when she learned she was pregnant. Early scans and testing showed a healthy baby girl, but a routine fetal anatomy scan at 20 weeks did not go according to plan. What did they tell you was wrong? Her brain was not formed correctly. She only had one kidney.

Her spine was so bent that it put pressure on her heart. It was honestly a blur. I either said, is it bad or is it lethal? Her answer was, it's lethal. Meaning my daughter that I planned out to with T and we'd already started to get little outfits and bath toys was going to die. What did you do?

Screamed, cried, got a second opinion, got a third opinion. And it wasn't a question as to what we were going to do. It was a question of how we were going to do it without getting arrested. That's because just two weeks earlier, a new Texas law went into effect known as SB 8, Senate Bill 8. And this bill says we'll protect that life

when that heart beast detected. The law banned abortion at six weeks with no provisions for victims of rape, incest, or severe fetal abnormalities like Danny's case. The motion is adopted. The law also included a novel enforcement method deputizing citizens to sue people for aiding or abetting an abortion and rewarding successful lawsuits with a $10,000 bounty. The bill

included an exception for medical emergencies but didn't define what those were. Matheson says her doctor seemed scared and confused. It wasn't clear what counted as aiding and abetting somebody getting an abortion. So they couldn't even counsel me and say, like, yes, we recommend you have an abortion or at least look into it, even if you go to another state. So Matheson and her husband turned to her mother, the physician, for help. Several calls later, her mom secured an appointment for her to end her pregnancy at a clinic in neighboring New Mexico, a non-banned state.

She put her license on the line for that because I'm her baby and that's what I needed. She booked our plane ticket, she booked our hotel and gave us an envelope of cash. And you were afraid to use a credit card or have your name attached to anything? Yeah, we paid for the abortion in cash so that there wasn't a paper trail of our Texas credit cards paying for an abortion. A year after SB8 went into effect and Roe was overturned, Texas enacted another, more restrictive law banning all abortion from conception except when the mother's life was in immediate danger. In 2023, Danny Matheson joined 19 women with similar stories in a lawsuit against the Texas

government for denial of care. It is the first lawsuit in which individual women have sued a state. The lawsuit did not seek to overturn the bans, rather to clarify which exceptions were allowed under the law. The Texas Supreme Court ultimately rejected their case. But after the women filed their lawsuit, Texas legislators quietly passed a new law to include two exceptions to the ban. One for ectopic pregnancies, when a pregnancy occurs outside the uterus, the other when a woman's water breaks prematurely.

But according to the Cleveland Clinic, those instances only make up 5% of all pregnancies. The inconsistencies, the misunderstanding, the confusion, this is why women will lose their lives because of these rules. the inconsistencies, the misunderstanding, the confusion. This is why women will lose their lives because of these rules. Dr. Emily Briggs practices family medicine in Central Texas. Hey there. Good morning. Her office is papered with the photos of some of the babies she's delivered over the last 15 years.

She's overseen hundreds of complicated pregnancies. Five years ago, I could counsel a patient on all the various treatment options available in these medically complex situations. And now it is a dangerous situation for me to have that comprehensive conversation with my patients. Dangerous because? Because I personally, as a family physician,

could face losing my license. I could face life in prison. I could face huge fines just for having a conversation with my patient about evidence-based care. So far, that hasn't happened. No physician has been prosecuted for violating the ban, which is a felony in Texas. How does the office look today? But Dr. Briggs says the threat of prosecution has created such fear that today it's not unusual

for hospitals to require physicians to consult with staff attorneys when treating complicated pregnancies, even miscarriages. This is not the medical care that those of us in medicine signed up for. This is not what our plan was or is when talking to a patient about their care. It should be between me and the patient. There's so much guilt when you lose a pregnancy.

So add to that the slap in the face of having the risk department of the hospital come in and be involved in that conversation between you and your physician. And it's because of the legal ramifications from our legislature. When there is a sense of urgency, like we need to deal with this right now, how do you proceed in this moment? With great caution. In these situations, time is of the essence. She could lose her uterus.

She could lose her life because of these situations. And when we have our hands tied and can't act appropriately at the medically appropriate time, we can have worsened outcomes. Texas has only released maternal death data through 2021. But according to CDC numbers, after Texas restricted abortion, maternal deaths rose 61% from 2019, compared to 8% nationwide. Dr. Emily Briggs says physicians can no longer offer comprehensive

maternity care to women in Texas. Have you heard from colleagues who say, I don't want to practice medicine in Texas anymore? Yes, definitely. Obstetricians, family physicians, yes. In 2023, the number of OB-GYN resident applicants in Texas dropped 16 percent. What does that say to you? That says to me that future obstetricians are acknowledging the complexity of the rules in Texas. So, not only do they not want to train here, but that also means that they won't want to

practice here. So, we have a patient ready. Adrienne Smith, who was a resident in Texas, transferred to the University of New Mexico Hospital last year. She told us one of her last cases in Texas still haunts her. A young woman who became extremely ill after she tried to end her own pregnancy with an unknown medication she bought in Mexico. Smith spoke to a supervising physician about the case. I remember being like I wish that there was something more I could do for her. And he looked at me and said, the attorney general is looking to make an example out

of somebody and you don't want to be that case. And that was when I realized that there are people that are looking to criminalize me for that and send me to jail. Dr. Eve Espy is the chair of the OB-GYN department at the University of New Mexico. What is it that a resident can learn here in New Mexico that they can't learn in Texas? I mean so many things. They lack an opportunity to to learn trauma-informed care, diagnosing pregnancy complications in the first trimester and in the second trimester. They miss learning miscarriage care, ectopic pregnancy care, pregnancy of unknown location.

I mean, the list goes on and on. I mean, those seem like pretty important things to know how to do. Really important things. Those things are part of the training required to become a certified OB-GYN anywhere in the U.S. But here's the problem. In Texas, some training is no longer offered because of the new laws. That means OB-GYN residents now have to leave the state for two- to four-week rotations to get the required training.

Is that long enough to really learn the lessons of all these various things you've just described? No, it's not enough time. I mean, our residents have a dedicated rotation in the first year, in the fourth year, but they are working alongside of us throughout their four years of residency. And Dr. Espy says her hospital isn't just absorbing more residents. Data shows more than 34,000 Texas women traveled out of state for care in 2023. We've seen an enormous increase in our out-of-state patient volume. Just in calendar year 2023 compared to 2019, we saw an over 300 percent increase. 300%? Over a 300% increase.

And we, you know, on any given day in 2023, 70%, 71% of our patients were from Texas. Today, women making that journey face even more risks. Eight Texas counties have imposed travel bans, which threaten legal action against anyone helping to transport women out of state for abortion services. This past fall, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit trying to gain access

to the medical records of women leaving the state for that care. We reached out to Paxton's office multiple times over several months to ask about the issue and got no response. So many of the patients who come to us that we diagnose with a miscarriage, they're like, I'm done with Texas. I want my care here. I can't trust my own doctor to take care of me for a miscarriage or a pregnancy complication. What's the culture here? Danny Matheson was one of them.

After the loss of her baby in Texas, she and her husband moved to Hawaii to begin her OB-GYN residency and start a family. I did not want to be pregnant in Texas. Absolutely not. I think I know too much about what can go wrong in a pregnancy to feel comfortable being pregnant in Texas. In January 2024, the Mathesons welcomed Emerson, a healthy baby girl. Dr. Emily Briggs is urging Texas lawmakers to work with doctors.

We are not looking at this from a partisan standpoint. We're not saying we're enemies. What we need to look at this as is we can all come together to make this safer for women in Texas just by making some changes to these rules. If nothing changes, then what? We lose physicians in Texas. We lose healthy mothers. We lose families in general. It's already scary to decide to become pregnant. Throw on top of that, that if something medically complex happened, you could lose your life and not have the care that you deserve.

Why would anybody stay for that? Since we first reported this story in 2024, there's been a small victory for doctors like Emily Briggs. In May, the Texas Legislature passed a bill specifying that a mother's death does not need to be imminent for a doctor to be able to perform an abortion. Clarity that is welcomed, but for many, Texan women and doctors still doesn't go far enough. Hey, it's Morgan Absher. And I'm Kailyn Moore. And we're the hosts of the Crime House original podcast, Clues. Every Wednesday, we sneak past the crime scene tape and open a new case file for some of

the most gripping true crime cases. While Kailyn pieces together the timelines and breaks down the hard facts of these cases, I'll be diving into the theories and pulling out the threads that may or may not add up. From serial killers to shocking murders, clues dives into all the forensic details and brilliant sleuthing that went into the world's most infamous cases. These clues shine a light on stories

that have been waiting, sometimes for decades, to finally be heard. So join us as we open a case and uncover the breakthroughs, the heartbreak and the relentless pursuit of answers behind these unforgettable investigations. Follow and listen to Clues, an Odyssey podcast and partnership with Crime House available now on the free Odyssey app

and wherever you get your podcasts. If someone asked you to name a product that was first made 2000 years ago, still looks and works as it always has, and still plays a vital role in global commerce. Would you be stumped? It turns out the answer is the simple wooden barrel. Almost always made of oak, barrels have a long and fascinating history.

First built and used by the Celts and Romans, they have held nearly every commodity over the centuries. Metal and plastic and cardboard long ago eclipsed barrels for the shipment of most items, but as we first reported earlier this year, when it comes to wine and whiskey, especially bourbon whiskey, the oak barrel still reigns, not just as a container, but for the magic that the wood gives to the whiskey. We were speaking with someone and they called a whiskey barrel a breathing time machine. I love that. Brad Boswell is the CEO of Independent Stave, the largest maker of wooden barrels in the

world. Brad's great grandfather founded the company in 1912 in Missouri. It now has operations worldwide. We met him in Kentucky. Most of our barrels would have a useful life of 50 plus years. 50 plus years? 50 plus years, yeah. Like I'll go to different places and look at barrels

at distilleries or wineries around the world. And I can see barrels that my grandfather made, you know, in the 1960s. I still see them. A barrel begins as a log from a white oak tree fed into what's known as a stave mill, where it's cut into ever smaller pieces, staves, which are then arranged in huge Jenga-style stacks and seasoned outdoors for three to six months before heading to a nearby cooperage where the barrels are built.

There's no nails that will go here, no glue. Brad Boswell's newest cupridge produces thousands of barrels every day. How many of these go into a typical barrel? Typically between 28 and 32 stage per barrel. After a barrel is raised mostly by hand, it travels through a host of other steps and checks to make it ready to begin its life, including being toasted and then charred on the inside. Most of the barrels we make there are bespoke. We know exactly who this barrel is going to.

Which is teller? How about that? The demand for such a huge volume of barrels can be attributed mainly to one thing, bourbon. President Franklin Roosevelt, in the 30s, became more specific about what bourbon whiskey should be. And at that time he said, you know, bourbon should be in new charred oak barrels. So if it's not in one of these barrels, it's not bourbon.

That's correct. Bourbon has to be aged in a new charred oak container. That rule, plus booming consumer demand for bourbon starting in the early 2000s, has been very good for the barrel business. Three point two million new barrels were filled with whiskey last year in Kentucky alone. And more than 14 million full barrels are aging in the state in massive warehouses known as rick houses. How many barrels are in this rick house? 23,500 on six floors. Dan Calloway is the master blender for Bardstown Bourbon,

a young but fast-growing Kentucky distillery. To make a great whiskey, you have to start with a great distillate, a clear spirit, but then the magic comes from the barrel. The fact that it's new charred oak, it's just incredible. So the barrel is crucial to your product? Absolutely. Depending who you talk to. Some would say 50% of the flavor, maybe up to 70, 80% of the character is maybe up to 70, 80 percent of the characters

derived from that barrel. The rest of the flavor comes from what's known as the mash bill, grains like corn and wheat and rye that are mixed with water and fermented with yeast. Despite Bourbon having recently been threatened or hit with tariffs by other countries in retaliation for President Trump's tariffs, Bardstown's huge distillery is still producing enough new whiskey to fill more than 5,000 barrels a week. You take the clear liquid, which is basically what people call moonshine, goes through this process and comes out as this beautiful brown tasty liquid here.

How does that happen? Yeah, so I always compare it to a seesaw, okay? So when it comes off the still, moonshine like you said, it's a seesaw that's out of balance. But every year that goes by of the barrel aging, the seesaw comes into balance. And what the barrel is bringing is caramel, vanilla, baking spice, all this rich, beautiful color.

How can solid oak produce all those flavors and spices? Back where the barrels are built, Brad Boswell gave us a vivid lesson with a barrel that had just been toasted, a process that brings sugars in the wood to the surface. Smell that, smell that. I mean... That does smell delicious. It's incredible.

It really does. It's amazing. There's a reason why people still use oak barrels 2,000 years later. So when I'm sipping the bourbon, I'm sipping this barrel. That's right. Absolutely. So when I'm sipping the bourbon, I'm sipping this barrel. That's right. Absolutely. After toasting, we and the barrels move to the visually stunning char oven. So we'll see this barrel coming through right here.

Oh, look at that. Yeah, so actually the inside of the barrel is on fire. So you just light the barrel on fire? Yep, we light the barrel on fire. And that teases out more and more the flavors. And we call that an alligator char. Because the inside of the barrel actually looks like kind of an alligator's back.

And you can see... We could see that blistering. Inside, a newly charred barrel pulled off the line. I mean, people expect this to smell like a campfire. It smells more like a confectionary product. It does. I can smell the caramel and the vanilla. Yeah.

What that barrel can give to the whiskey is evident in these glasses. So this is the same exact distillate that came off the still at the exact same time, went into a barrel four years later, and this we just kept in a glass bottle. It's also apparent in the taste. First, the white lightning. Wow, that gives a punch. Yes, it does. It does.

And then the barrel-aged bourbon. Oh, big difference. Huge difference. Smooth. Oh, it's smooth. Some of that smooth comes from temperature swings in the rick houses, according to Bardstown Bourbon's Dan Calloway. We want those swings. comes from temperature swings in the rick houses, according to Bardstown Bourbon's Dan Callaway.

We want those swings. When it gets really hot, things expand, lets the liquid in. When it gets cold, it contracts. And it's that natural progression of in out that ages the bourbon so beautifully as the liquid interacts with the wood. As those barrels are aging whiskey

for four, five, or six years, some savvy investors have figured out there's money to be made. Whiskey is an interesting asset in the sense that as it ages, it becomes more valuable. Chris Heller is co-founder of California-based Cordillera Investment Partners. So explain to me how this works.

You go up to a distiller and say, I want to buy those barrels filled with what will eventually become bourbon. So that is exactly right. Heller and his partners buy thousands of newly filled barrels from distillers, pay to store them as the whiskey ages, then sell them to craft bourbon brands. What are your starting costs? Somewhere in the $600 to $1,000 range

is sort of the price of a new, what's called a new-filled barrel of whiskey. At the end, what do you sell it for? It can be anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000 by the end. That's a pretty good return on your investment. We really find it an interesting and compelling investment area. Nice way to say it, huh? Whoever makes it, owns it, or ages it,

when bourbon is emptied from a barrel after five or six years, that barrel's life is just beginning, and it's likely to travel the world. It's really interesting that when the bourbon barrel is freshly dumped, there's still around two gallons of actually bourbon trapped in that wood. That is just seeped into the wood. So then a lot of the secondary users actually look forward to putting their product into the barrel again for four, six, 10, a lot of scotches, 12 years, 18 years.

And it can pick up that American bourbon taste. Absolutely, then it pulls out that sweet bourbon. That sweet taste in the wood makes used bourbon barrels very hot commodities. We really view our role in the industry as moving as many barrels from the original source to the next stopping point as fast as possible. Jess and Ben Lowsky own Midwest Barrels.

Their Kentucky warehouse is stacked to the rafters with empty barrels. So we're the next stop for the second use of that barrel. So in Kentucky here, we bring in barrels from all the major distilleries and then send them back out. These barrels will be shipped out and then refilled with something else. Correct. Yeah. So the idea is to get these barrels in here and out of here as quickly as possible.

So we'll turn over this entire warehouse every two to three weeks. Probably 70 to 80% of our business is overseas. It started as a hobby. While Ben was finishing his PhD in Nebraska, he began buying barrels and selling them to local craft breweries. You said that a few barrels were a big order in the beginning.

Yeah. What's a big order in the beginning. Yeah. What's a big order today? 10,000. 10,000. Yeah, yeah. India and China and Scotland and Ireland are by far four biggest markets. The Kentucky Distillers Association says that the state exported more than $300 million worth of used barrels last year, just to Scotland, where they'll be used

to age Scotch whiskey for up to 40 years. Could you just tick off for me the different spirits that these barrels will hold? They start with bourbon, Tennessee whiskey, Scotch whiskey, tequila, rum, Pisco Maine Peru, Cachaca Maine Brazil will use these barrels. Beer.

Beer uses them. These barrels for sure end up in China. A lot of these barrels end up in Japan. It's everywhere. Beautiful. Now, master blenders like Bardstown's Dan Calloway... This will be cast strength, direct from the barrel. ...are bringing barrels back to Kentucky to do special finishes for their whiskeys.

So this is the first of its kind. It is an American whiskey finished in Indian whiskey barrels, okay? Indian whiskey is traditionally aged in a bourbon barrel. So the physical barrel has left Kentucky, gone to Bangalore, filled with a barley, and then sent back here. Callaway finished this whiskey in those barrels for 17 months.

My God, that's good. Yeah. Dan Calloway's newest creation, called Cathedral, may be his most miraculous yet. We sourced wood in the Loire Valley, the Berset Forest, and this plot, this lot in the forest was selected to repair Notre Dame after the fires. So most of the wood went there.

We were fortunate to obtain six barrels made from that wood. And we picked our best stocks of Kentucky bourbon up to 19 years old, filled the barrels. They aged for 14 months. You know how wild that is? Yeah. That the beams that restored Notre Dame come from the same forest as your casks.

The same lot. Now that's a story to tell. Absolutely. And a whiskey to taste. Ah, it's nice. When Bardstown put that cathedral bourbon on sale earlier this year, bottles sold out in near record time. Remember, they only made six barrels full.

Now on the secondary market, cathedral is listed for as much as $1,500 a bottle. 2023 was the year the world learned to pronounce Killian. The ancient Irish name seemed to be on everyone's lips as the film Oppenheimer became a blockbuster, winning seven Oscars, including Best Actor for Killian Murphy. Murphy has worked non-stop for nearly 30 years, but it was the epic drama of the atomic bomb that ignited a star. As we first told you last year, Murphy seems to be more famous than well-known.

So we set out to learn more. We were warned that the 49-year-old Irishman is reserved and wouldn't talk about himself, but we discovered finding Killian Murphy depends on where you look. Ireland's Dingle Peninsula was named for a goddess before such things were written, and for 6,000 years, stories have passed by ear. So if verse inhabits every Irish soul, then in a country pub, Killian Murphy is among peers, as he would have it,

just a man with a pint to lift and no fame to bear. What is the meaning of Ireland to you? I don't think I can answer that question satisfactorily. It's defined who I am as a person and my values. It's just home. Home includes his wife of 21 years, two teenage sons, and Scout, a lab named for the character in To Kill a Mockingbird. That figures Murphy has always let stories lead his path. You find so much empathy in novels, you know, because there you are putting yourself into somebody else's point of view.

And I've always been a big reader. When a movie can connect with someone and they feel seen or feel heard, or a novel can change somebody's life, or a piece of music, an album, can change someone's life, or a piece of music, an album can change someone's life. And I've had all that happen to me. And that's the power of good art, I think. There's a straight line from the music in the pub to Oppenheimer.

I think they're from the same source. I mean, I really do. I don't see, I see it's all in a continuum. You know what I mean? It's just a form of expression. Expression in the eyes of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who created the atom bomb, but never controlled it. If they detonated too high in the air, the blast wouldn't be as powerful. With respect, Dr. Oppenheimer, we'll take it from here.

I remember reading at the beginning about him, that he was more riddled than answer. And I thought, oh, okay, wow, that's interesting. I'm curious about your notes. The Riddle was in this script by writer-director Christopher Nolan, printed in red so it couldn't be photocopied. I did genuinely think it's one of the greatest screenplays I'd ever read. And you told him, I'll do it.

I mean, I said I'd do it before I read it. I always say that. That's quite a risk. Why would you do that? It's always paid off for me, you know, in every film that I've worked with him on. I'm not going back. I'm not going back.

There have been six Chris Nolan films for Murphy, Dunkirk, Inception, and three Batman titles. Would you like to see my mask? You told me that getting a film made and getting it seen is a miracle. It is. And then if it's any way good, that's a miracle. And then if it connects with audiences, that's a miracle. It is. And then if it's anyway good, that's a miracle. And then if it connects with audiences, that's a miracle. So it's a miracle upon miracle upon miracle to have a film like Oppenheimer.

It really is. His Oppenheimer was not so much a miracle as hard work. He lost 28 pounds to get the silhouette. Then he rose to the character step by step over six months, reading, listening to Oppenheimer's lectures, and covering miles on the beach, performing for Scout. I remember at one point I said to Chris, Chris there appears to be, he appears to speak Dutch here and I think he's giving a lecture in Dutch here.

What are we going to do about that? And Chris said, you mean, what are you going to do about that? Either Bulsing tusen en al verdeldscher in een atoom, Frankfurten verschillende energie in de verbindingesopername, in de relative translasse... Wait, what's he saying? Murphy says he put all he learned in the back of his mind and acted on instinct.

I think instinct is your most powerful tool that you have as an actor. Nothing must be predetermined, so therefore you mustn't have a plan about how you're going to play stuff. And I love that. It's like being buffeted by the wind and being buffeted by emotion.

You don't get to commit the sin, and then I was all, I feel sorry for you. Emily Blunt plays Oppenheimer's tormented wife. You pull yourself together. He's very visceral to be in a scene with. It's like you, he transports you. He'll kidnap you in a scene. My favorite acting moment of his in Oppenheimer is the scene after the bomb has been dropped

and he's addressing all of the people at Los Alamos. The world will remember this day. He somehow welds together the concept of being proud of what they did and regretting it very deeply all at the same time. I know. It's too soon to determine what the results of the bombing are, but I'll bet the Japanese didn't like it. No one moment is about one thing. And if you're as agile as someone like Killian and is vulnerable and is clever, you can play

it all. But I don't know if many people can do what he does. Killian Murphy discovered agility in his hometown Cork. His mother was a teacher, his father a school inspector. In high school Murphy and his brother had a band. Performing led to acting class and his first play. This is more like the size of a storage room than a theater. Yeah but that's all we were used to. His first theater, 1996, age 20, the play was Disco Pigs, which grew to bigger theaters and became a movie.

Why did you think you could be an actor? I didn't. I was very comfortable on stage in front of an audience from when I was little. I never had any nerves doing that. It felt that natural, you know, and thrilling. In this theater, what did you learn about acting? There's a fire escape door right there and that's a kind of an alleyway there and so you get a lot

of like drunk guys out of their mind bashing up against the fire escape door. And it used to kind of energize us. So I remember learning about, like, taking whatever you have, sort of responding to whatever the energy is in the room and using it. That's really good training. Yeah. Maintaining your character with the drunk guy yelling through the fire escape door.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think theater is such an absurd undertaking when you think of it, you know, because at any point it could collapse and go wrong. It's dangerous. Yeah, and I love that aspect of it, yeah. That love led him to drop law school, and since then there have been a dozen plays

and 40 movies. I love it when it becomes an immersive experience. I love getting lost in it. In the early days that was with theatre, it felt kind of extraordinary. With just the power of will and a couple of lights and a good script, we were creating this world. So that's kind of addictive when it works well. It worked well in 2013 in a breakout role as a leading man. In the series Peaky Blinders, Murphy plays Thomas Shelby,

who survives World War I to lead a family of gangsters. You're mostly in the war, so you know that battle plans always change and get f***ed up. Well, here it is. They're all damaged, broken men, but something got knocked in him and he came back with this incredible drive and ambition and like, I'm not afraid of

death, so now I can do whatever I want. I'm not afraid of death, so now I can do whatever I want. In Tommy Shelby, you created a sympathetic, relatable monster. Kill and kill. The only way to make people listen. I like to be challenged, and when I read something, I want to go, I don't really know how I can do that. In 10 years of Peaky Blinders, Murphy came into his own. I heard very early on in my career, a director,

it was one of the Sidneys, it could have been Sidney, it could have been Sidney Pollock, but one of them said, it takes 30 years to make an actor. It's not just technique and experience and all that, it's maturing as a human being and trying to grapple with life and figure it out and all of that stuff. So by the time you've been doing it for 30 years,

you've all of that banked, hopefully. And eventually then, I think you'll get to a point where you might be an okay actor. Maturing is the theme of Murphy's recent film based on the novel Small Things Like These. He plays Bill Furlong, tormented by injustice. His wife fears his empathy will upend their lives. Don't you ever question this, Will? If you want to get on in this life, there are things you have to ignore. That's Eileen Walsh.

No actor has known Murphy longer. She was his first partner in Disco Pigs 29 years ago. Is his work ethic rooted in fear or joy? Oh, that's a good question. I think it can only be joy, but it sometimes takes a lot of pain to get to that joy. The deeper we go with acting, the cost is greater for us. And physically, I know Oppenheimer has cast him for the weight loss he insisted, and it was his choice to do, and it was the right choice to create that amazing silhouette. But from the very beginning, our warm-ups for disco pigs involved us punching each other

quite hard and like going for it and then bursting out into it. This huge ball of velocity coming into it was the beginning of an Oppenheimer, was the whole kind of atom of us. Now, after three decades of work, Killian Murphy is cast in the most familiar Irish legend of all, with a 24-carat gold-plated statue at the end of his long spectrum of talent. You have screwed this up though, you know. In what way? You used to be an actor. Yeah.

And now you're a movie star. Okay. Am I? I think you could be both. You know, I've never understood that term really, movie star. I've always just felt like I'm an actor. That's, I think, a term for other people rather than for me.

I'm Sharon Alfonso. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. Now streaming. Everyone who comes into this clinic is a mystery. edition of 60 Minutes. I kind of love it if I'm being honest. Solve the puzzle, save the patient. WATSA, all episodes now streaming on Paramount+.