These pics of a young Cillian Murphy will send you straight to horny jail

Not a day goes by when we don’t think about Cillian Murphy. Whether we’re pondering his flirty relationship with Oppenheimer co-star Robert Downey Jr., his striking resemblance to gender theorist Judith Butler, or that time he wore a see-through shirt on the red carpet, Murphy and his cheekbones are constantly occupying our minds rent-free.

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Keanu Reeves: melting our hearts since the 80s.

Can you blame us? The man may not look as much like the real J. Robert Oppenheimer as, say, a young David Byrne, but whatever. He’s hot, and even if he’s not having a torrid love affair with his frequent collaborator Christopher Nolan, we can still dream, can’t we?

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Which brings us to the relevant Cillian Murphy news of today: back in 2006, when print magazines were still a thing and Dazed Digital was still Dazed and Confused, a bi-monthly magazine for hip young Brits, the outlet did a stunning photo shoot with Murphy, then fresh off of his dastardly turn as Scarecrow in Batman Begins.

Looking windswept and gorgeous, Murphy stunned in the photoshoot by David Slijper.

Posters just encountering these images are rightfully confused: why does this beautiful man look so much like a beautiful woman? Is gender real? What is androgyny?

These photos are giving Kristen Stewart and Shane McCutcheon a run for their money.

Another fun fact about this shoot is that the year before, Murphy portrayed a trans woman in Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto. So yes, all of us are right to correctly assess Cillian Murphy’s gender as “beautiful woman.” He is a beautiful woman, a futch goddess, a lesbian icon, and also, somehow, an ostensibly straight cis man. Nature is amazing.

We’ll be drooling over these for the rest of the day.