I just saw Red Eye and ...
What's in a name? Cillian Murphy
Question: I just saw Red Eye and there's something I don't understand: What was the exchange between the main characters, Lisa (Rachel McAdams, who was amazing) and Jack, about his last name being rude? I also thought the actor playing Jack was phenomenal; what's his claim to fame? Or was this movie his big break?
Answer: It's not that his name, Jackson Rippner, is rude. It's that it's menacing, sounding uncomfortably like "Jack the Ripper." And since Red Eye (2005) is a Wes Craven thriller, I don't think it's giving away too much to say that the suggestion isn't without meaning. Rippner is played by up-and-coming Irish actor Cillian Murphy, 29, who was studying law when he took a sudden career detour into acting. Murphy honed his skills in U.K. television and theater, and most moviegoers first noticed him in either the small role of a butcher's apprentice in love with Scarlett Johanssen in Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) or the lead in Danny Boyle's revisionist zombie picture, 28 Days Later (2002). I'd call Batman Begins, which opened several months earlier in 2005, his breakout picture; though no less a genre film than Red Eye, it's a higher-profile project that gets a certain cachet via star Christian Bale and critically lauded director Christopher Nolan.
