I’ve always had a thing for Irish guys: Colin Farrell; pre-Match Point Jonathan Rhys Meyers; my first so-called boyfriend, another Colin, who once gifted me a Flogging Molly mixtape I nodded and smiled through. My most enduring Celtic crush? Cillian Murphy—in my 12-year-old eyes, the most fascinating thing about the beefcake spectacle that was Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005).

Far from the scariest baddie to appear across the director’s three takes on “the Bat,” Murphy, as the crooked shrink Dr. Jonathan Crane, nevertheless captivates with an air of quiet menace—his delivery, soft and slithery; his expression, a lake placid hiding some terrible secret. When he first appears onscreen in Nolan’s film, he’s testifying in support of a murdering mobster, his crystal blues cradled by metal glasses, glittering like the heart of some precious, artificial life source. As he saunters away from the courtroom and is approached by Katie Holmes’s prosecuting attorney, there’s an insolence to the manner in which he drily responds to her accusations of foul play. Fat chance that adolescent-me was entirely conscious of what made him so titillating to behold; his razor-blade cheekbones and boyish pout were enough. You can imagine my disappointment when he later throws on the mask, a patchwork of stitched-together pieces of mangled burlap that turn him into his alter ego, the deranged psychology professor Scarecrow, but that conceal the goods.

A slender gent, Murphy is not physically intimidating amongst Gotham’s overpopulation of meatheads. Nolan discovered the actor when he auditioned for the role of Batman, which was never going to happen, per Cillian, because he’s not got the weight. In his first scene as Jim, the lead of Danny Boyle’s zombie thriller 28 Days Later (2002), we see his eyeball in extreme close-up, flickering madly. He’s splayed butt naked on a hospital bed, his body pallid and primordial—a perfect rendering of a post-apocalyptic First Man. That role, Murphy’s breakout, introduced us with full-frontal up-front, which is unexpected for an actor so infamously private about his personal life and so contemptuous about needing to promote his work. I guess he bared it all at the start.

Murphy’s real strong suit, however, is mindfuckery. As Scarecrow he deploys a poison gas that triggers intense paranoia, allowing him to manipulate his victims into cowering submission. “I respect the mind’s power over the body,” he says, which reminds me of his fine turn in Wes Craven’s Red Eye (2005)—my favorite of his many performances. As Jackson Ripner, he’s a smooth talking stranger who manages to break down the defenses of a cagey hotel manager named Lisa (Rachel McAdams), subtly flirting his way into her comfort zone prior to boarding a flight to Miami. When Rachel arrives to her designated seat, there he is, the handsome stranger, but what starts out as a meet-cute assumes its true colors when they’re up in the air. Jackson is a hitman of sorts, tasked with coaxing the morally sturdy Lisa into putting the Director of Homeland Security, a frequent guest at her hotel, into a different room—one within range of a missile. Should she refuse to make the call, Jackson will signal one of his cronies to take out her daddy dearest. Easy enough, I think, nix the politician. Circa 2005, in the wake of America’s anti-terrorist frenzy, I’m sure anyone in charge of securing the homeland is responsible for far worse than what any team of rogue assassins might be capable of.