Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer Haircut Took Five Hours, Thanks To A Picky Christopher Nolan

Instead, the quick cut before they hit the road apparently turned into an arduous process. As hair department lead Jaime Leigh McIntosh put it in the book, “This is going to make it sound like l’m an incredibly terrible hairstylist when I tell you that Friday morning turned into a five-hour haircut.” According to Murphy, there was a clear reason the cut went on so long: “I got called into Universal at 9 a.m. to do the haircut and I assumed it would be an hour, and we finished the haircut at 2 p.m.,” he recalled, adding, “I swear, Chris supervised the cutting of every individual hair follicle on my head.”

Lest we start any rumors that Murphy and Nolan had a haircut-related falling-out, it’s worth noting that the actor saw the filmmaker’s level of involvement as a sign of his creative genius. “There’s no decision made that Chris isn’t all over,” he shared in an interview for “Unleashing Oppenheimer. “Sock color, watch, hair — everything. It’s amazing. That’s why he is the genius that he is. But that was the longest haircut of my life.” Producer Emma Thomas, who apparently witnessed the whole thing, calls the haircut “legendary,” saying it came down to “a game of millimeters.”