Rami Malek’s Quiet Character Is the Secret Weapon of ‘Oppenheimer’
Since winning the Best Actor Oscar in 2019, Rami Malek’s career has taken a turn for the… less Oscar-winning. Perhaps it’s because he received that honor for the much-maligned Bohemian Rhapsody, a film whose accolades astounded and annoyed critics aplenty. But subsequent roles in films like Bond entry No Time to Die and last year’s box-office flop Amsterdam were either similarly criticized or, in the case of the latter, far from substantial to start with.
When he silently popped up an hour or so into Oppenheimer, then, it seemed like the latest meager appearance from a once-buzzy actor. (By 2019, he’d already won an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar.) That Malek ends up starring in one of the film’s most searing, powerful moments came as a gigantic surprise. And it was a welcome one—J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) had his own unqualified win, all thanks to Malek’s Dr. Hill.
As Hill, Malek plays one of the scientists working on the Manhattan project, albeit not with Oppenheimer directly. Instead, he works with Dr. Enrico Fermi (Danny Deferrari) at a lab in Chicago. While Fermi’s team create the nuclear reactor, both Fermi and Hill remain steadfast about the atomic bomb not being used directly on cities.