Not only is Oppenheimer the favourite to be named best picture at this year’s Oscars but it was a frontrunner for the more dubious accolade of most likely to promote smoking.
So disgusted was Cillian Murphy, its star, with the 3,000 cigarettes he puffed during filming that he has promised that his next character will be a non-smoker.
The film, in which Murphy plays J Robert Oppenheimer as he helps to invent the nuclear bomb, featured 137 scenes of smoking, comprising 104 with cigarettes and 33 with a pipe. The only mainstream film of 2023 to feature more tobacco was Asteroid City, directed by Wes Anderson, which featured 63 incidences of cigarettes, 58 cigars and the same number of pipes.
For cigarettes alone, the
