Cillian Murphy explains the reason why he always rolls cigarette on his lips in Peaky Blinders

There's a good reason why Tommy Shelby does it

Irish actor Cillian Murphy has been playing the role since 2013 and, after six seasons and a film, fans have experienced nearly 40 hours of his performance as the protagonist.

Murphy, 49, plays Thomas “Tommy” Shelby, a calculating and ruthless leader of the Shelby crime family in Birmingham.

In the series, he leads the gang from a local operation to national power following World War I.

To Murphy’s performance as Tommy, there are many unique elements, from his manners and style of speech to the way he smokes cigarettes.

However, when it comes to the latter, what many fans may have not noticed is the fact that throughout Peaky Blinders, Tommy Shelby always rolls his cigarettes on his lips.

And in the past, Cillian Murphy has explained that there is actually a good reason for it.

“There was this thing where [Tommy] kind of rolls the cigarette on his lips before he lights it and that came from the prop guys. I’d take the cigarette and every time I’d put it in, it would stick to my lips because they’re these fake cigarettes”, Murphy said, speaking to the BBC Radio Six ahead of the sixth season’s release.

“So in order to avoid that I rolled the cigarette on my lips and then it became a Tommy thing. That’s what happens when you play a character for a long time, these things just develop.”

What many fans might know however, is that they were in fact fake cigarettes that had no nicotine in them.

Speaking about the amount he had to smoke for the role, the actor told Birmingham Live: “I don’t smoke but people did smoke all day and night then.”

“I use herbal rose things, they’re like my five a day. I asked the prop guys to count how many we use during a series and it’s 3,000.”

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, released this month, marks the end of Tommy Shelby’s story.

Murphy previously spoke to LADbible about how he had spent a “quarter of his lifetime” in the role, adding that it had been a rollercoaster to spend the last decade playing a “young man into middle age, into sort of an older man”.