Peaky Blinders star Cillian: It's exhausting playing a gangster

The Irish actor, who plays the star role in the BBC drama which was partly filmed at the Black Country Living Museum, gave a revealing interview in which he spoke about playing the character.

He spoke about it being a 'big distance' for him to transform into a man so keen on violence, as well as how he became 'inhabited subliminally' by the role.

He said: "It's very clear that this is a damaged guy who uses violence as a form of expression.

"It is a big distance for me to get to that and he is the sort of most capable person I have ever played and that's not me.

"You are inhabiting this character all the time and it effects you in a subliminal way, almost by osmosis.

"I am not very aware of it, it is only people around me, like my wife will know when I am playing him.

"You have to concentrate a lot. He talks a lot, smokes a lot of fags and is also fighting all the time so it is exhausting." Murphy, who has also starred in the Batman Triology, was asked about the choice of modern music for the show which has become a fan favourite with artists such as Nick Cave and Arctic Monkeys.

He said: "I thought it was a terrible idea in the beginning to put contemporary music on a period show, I thought that was silly.

"But it seemed to work as the artists they chose were kind of these outlaw artists that seemed to work. Nick Cave was huge for me as he had to watch the show first before he agreed to give us his music.

"The fact he actually watched it was a big deal for me."

He even had time to quip that his role as hardman outlaw Tommy Shelby was 'very different' to that of his role as transgender Patrick Braden in Breakfast on Pluto.

During the interview Cillian also opened up about life as an actor, confessing he sometimes feels like a 'terrible waste of space'.

He said: "Sometimes you feel like a terrible waste of space when you look at people with proper jobs and then you go 'what the? what am I doing flouncing around, putting on voices and dressing up'.

"But people need to go to the pictures, and people need some sort of escape.

"Artists don't let people down like politicans let people down or bankers let people down.

"There is a huge amount of stupidity and hot air that surrounds it all which I do not subscribe to but I think that sometimes a film can change someone's life and if you can do that through art then you at least feel like you're giving something important back."