Redmayne is the only member of his family to follow a career in acting, and also modeled during his teen years. He was educated at Eton College before going on to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied History of Art. Encouraged by his parents, Redmayne took drama lessons from a young age. His first stage appearance was in the Sam Mendes production of Oliver!, in London's West End. He played a workhouse boy. Acting continued through school and university, including performing with the National Youth Music Theatre.
Redmayne's first professional stage performance came in 2002 at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre where he played Viola in Twelfth Night. In 2004, he won the prestigious Evening Standard Outstanding Newcomer Award for his working in Edward Albee's play 'The Goat'. Further stage successes followed and in 2009 he starred in John Logan's 'Red' at the Donmar Warehouse in London. He won huge critical acclaim for his role, winning an Oliver Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. The play transferred to Broadway in 2010, and Redmayne went on to win a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play.
Alongside his stage career, Redmayne has worked steadily in television and film. Notable projects include Robert De Niro's El buen pastor (2006), Elizabeth: La edad de oro(2007), Tess, la de los D'Urberville (2008), Los pilares de la Tierra (2010) and Mi semana con Marilyn (2011). In 2012, he co-starred in the musical Los miserables (2012), as Marius Pontmercy.
In 2014, Redmayne played scientist Stephen Hawking in the biographical drama film La teoría del todo (2014), opposite Felicity Jones, as Stephen's wife Jane Hawking. For his performance, Redmayne won multiple awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actor. As such, he became the first man born in the 1980s to win an acting Oscar.
In 2014, Redmayne married publicist Hannah Bagshawe. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
Parents are Richard and Patricia Redmayne.
He was named Outstanding Newcomer at the London Evening Standard Awards 2004 and the London Critic's Circle Theatre Awards 2005 for his performance in Edward Albee's "The Goat or Who is Sylvia", with Jonathan Pryce at the Almeida Theatre, Islington.
Has appeared in three biopics about the Tudor Family, including two biopics about Elizabeth I. In 2005, he played Southampton in Elizabeth I (2005), and in 2007, he played Anthony Babington in Elizabeth: La edad de oro (2007). Both of the characters were traitors. In 2008, he appeared in Las hermanas Bolena (2008) as Sir William Stafford, the second husband of Mary Boleyn, sister of Anne Boleyn, the mother of Elizabeth I; one of the leading characters is Henry VIII, father of Elizabeth I.
Presented an award at the 2006 Orange BAFTA Awards ceremony.
Won the Tony Award in 2010 as Actor (Featured Role - Play) for his performance in "Red".
Won the Laurence Olivier Best Supporting Actor Award in March 2010 for his role in "Red" (Donmar Warehouse, London).
His father is a managing director at a bank, and his mother worked at a relocation-office.
Has two half-siblings: Charles, an Internet-entrepreneur, and Eugenie. His older brother is James and is a bank-director. His younger brother is called Thomas (Tom).
He won the Critics' Circle's Award for Best Shakespearean Performance (named "The John and Wendy Trewin Award for best Shakespearean performance") for his Richard II (December 2011 - February 2012 in Donmar Warehouse, London).
Is very close friends with Jeremy Irvine.
His ancestry includes English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish. His paternal grandparents were John Marriner Redmayne and Audrey Mercedes D'Alton, and Eddie's paternal great-grandfather, Sir Richard Augustine Studdert Redmayne, was a prominent mining and civil engineer. Eddie's maternal grandparents are Thomas R. Burke and Mary Rattray.
Eddie Redmayne is good friends with Benedict Cumberbatch. Both actors have portrayed Professor Stephen Hawking in different productions. Cumberbatch in Hawking (2004) and Redmayne in La teoría del todo (2014).
Attended Eton College, where he had classes with Prince William.
Was named by his El buen pastor (2006) co-star and director Robert De Niro when De Niro was asked by Total Film magazine about younger actors he liked.
His fragrance of choice is Tom Ford's Black Orchid.
He and Julianne Moore played mother and son in Savage Grace (2007). In 2015, both won the Best Actor and Best Actress Oscar, respectively.
He starred in Elizabeth: La edad de oro (2007) with Cate Blanchett. In 2015, Blanchett presented him the Oscar for Best Actor for La teoría del todo (2014), having won the Best Actress Oscar one year before for Blue Jasmine (2013).
He was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to drama. He is an actor in London, England.
He won an Oscar for playing Stephen Hawking in La teoría del todo (2014), making him one of 17 actors to win the Award for playing a real person who was still alive at the evening of the Award ceremony (as of 2015). The other sixteen actors and their respective performances are: Spencer Tracy for playing Father Edward Flanagan in Forja de hombres (1938), Gary Cooper for playing Alvin C. York in El sargento York (1941), Patty Duke for playing Helen Keller in El milagro de Ana Sullivan (1962), Jason Robardsfor playing Ben Bradlee in Todos los hombres del presidente (1976), Robert De Niro for playing Jake La Motta in Toro salvaje (1980), Sissy Spacek for playing Loretta Lynn in Quiero ser libre (1980), Jeremy Irons for playing Claus Von Bullow in El misterio Von Bulow (1990), Susan Sarandon for playing Sister Helen Prejean in Pena de muerte(1995), Geoffrey Rush for playing David Helfgott in Shine (1996), Julia Roberts for playing Erin Brockovich in Erin Brockovich (2000), Jim Broadbent for playing John Bayley in Iris(2001), Helen Mirren for playing Queen Elizabeth II in La reina (2006), Sandra Bullock for playing Leigh Anne Tuohy in Un sueño posible (2009), Melissa Leo for playing Alice Eklund-Ward in The Fighter (2010), Christian Bale for playing Dickie Eklund in The Fighter(2010) and Meryl Streep for playing Margaret Thatcher in La dama de hierro (2011).
[on the process of learning lines] That's what's been keeping me up at night. What I love about this, though, is that Daniel Day-Lewis and Ryan Gosling have to learn lines, too. Do you know what I mean? However, genius Ryan Gosling is on the ukulele, however brilliant other people are, it's reassuring to know that even Ben Kingsley has to walk around his room learning lines. It's the great leveller.
[on his favorite color] The color that Yves Klein does. Wet paint has a luminosity that dies when it dries and it loses the gloss. So Yves created this color scientifically that retains that luminosity. He was a big showman, so he got it copyrighted. The color is called IKB-International Klein Blue. And it sounds all bullshit-y and ridiculous, but when you stand in front of those canvases, the color is sublime and dumbfounding. So that specific color is my favorite color in the world. Are you going to follow this up with a colorblind question? (No, wasn't planning on it, but if you want to discuss it. [interviewer vs. salisbury]) No, I talk passionately about that color and then people go "But you're colorblind." And I go, "I know. I don't know what I see but I see it and I like it.".
I had auditioned to play in Elizabeth I with Helen Mirren. This thing involved me horse riding, which I was asked in audition, whether I could do. And it is a common truth, that as an actor, if you're asked if you can horse ride, you say yes. But then cut to a month later, on the set in Lithuania, and there I am, on a horse, having not even set on a horse since I was four, blazing into things - I nearly killed myself and app. 43 Lithuanian extras. But at the audition of Las hermanas Bolena (2008), they were like "So Eddie, how is your horse riding?" And I said, "Well, there is a little story I should probably tell you." And they sent me off on a two-month training camp, and I literally learned to horse ride!
When I started acting professionally, it was always theater. I'm so ignorant about films, but m getting slightly better - after having been chastised by many co-actors. While we were shooting Las hermanas Bolena (2008), Scarlett Johansson compiled a whole list of the films I should watch.
[on how Los miserables (2012) was produced] Normally, if you were making an old-school movie musical, as a group of actors, we'd go into a studio, we'd record an album and then two months later, we'd arrive on set, and they would play the playback and we would mime alongside it. The problem with that is that you have to make all your acting choices three months before you've even met the actor you're working with. By recording it live, Tom [Hooper] is allowing us the spontaneity of normal film acting.
[If he has groupies following him] No, Benedict Cumberbatch is a mate of mine, and we did a charity show at the Old Vic together. There was this group of women outside the theatre who name themselves "the Cumberbitches" and follow him round the world. I have nothing like that. I really wouldn't know what to do with the situation.
[on achieving celebrity status] [On a plane recently] I fell asleep, and when I woke up the man next to me asked, "Excuse me, are you somebody important?" I must have looked confused. He explained: "I'm asking because the stewardesses came over and were watching you sleep.".
The director, Tom Hooper said "One last thing: Eddie, have you ever been on a horse?" I said "Yes." Cut to Lithuania, two weeks later, a huge Elizabethan street, Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons are standing at this balcony, and there's Tom, cameras, rain machines, 50 Lithuanian extras, spurs attached to my feet, and I'm thinking, "At what point do I tell them that I have never, ever ridden a horse?" It was then that I realized a big part of the cliché of actors lying in auditions is that you should probably try to do the thing you said you can do before filming starts. Anyway, I nearly killed people as the horse galloped off at a hundred miles an hour after I gave it the slightest nudge. Tom came out with his megaphone and shouted, "You're a fucking liar, Redmayne!".
You only have those specific few hours to do a scene, and then you drive home and wait for six months to find out how it went. You can't go back and put in a new idea.
I'm just one gigantic ball of rancid fear and self-consciousness. I'm entirely fueled by fear, so the fact that I knew it could be a catastrophic disaster made me unable to sleep, and made me work quite hard.
Stephen Hawking is just effortlessly cool. He has this kind of shambolic confidence to him. I describe it as a "Lord of Misrule" quality - he's got a great sense of mischief.
You do that thing of trying to chase down the job, sounding incredibly confident because you never think you'll get it. And then you get offered the job, and you have a moment of euphoria, and then you basically want to be sick for the first year.
It's really been bad on this press tour. I come home from trying to pretend to know about astronomy and physics all day and turn on The Real Housewives. I've been a closet lover of faux-reality television since The Hills (2006).
[on how he met his wife] It was an embarrassing evening. Hannah was at a girls' school near Eton and they invited some of our guys over to do a fashion show for charity. I had to walk across the stage topless - I was this pasty, freckly guy and when I came on the girls in the audience didn't take much notice of me, but I was followed by the best-looking boy in the school and all the girls erupted in cheers, which was emotionally scarring! I saw Hannah across the room at a party afterwards and she was very beautiful and very funny and she loves the arts and theatre just as I do, so we became friends. I'd finished rehearsals (for "Les Miserables") and was about to start shooting in a few days and so I said to myself, "I'm going to go to Florence for a quick break and write or do something like that." Before I went, Hannah and I were on a sort of date - we'd been good friends for 12 years - and we had a wonderful evening and I suddenly said, "You don't want to come to Florence with me next week, do you?" She said, "That's absurd, you don't mean it." I said, "Yes I do!" So our first proper date was in Florence. That was three years ago and we couldn't be happier.
The complicated thing with acting is that however brilliantly successful or good you are you are not in control. Unless you start producing your own material or writing, even then it's a complicated world.
[2014] Buzz is worrying because it's an ephemeral thing. If you read the good stuff you also have to read the bad stuff. I try genuinely to just put my fingers in my ears and put one foot in front of the other. If you get caught up in listening to what too many people have to say that's where madness lies.
[on working with Julianne Moore in Savage Grace (2007)] I love that film. There are various people in my life that have fought for me and Julianne was one of them. In the Savage Grace audition she said, "You even look like my son." She fought pretty hard for that.
[accepting the Best Actor Oscar for La teoría del todo (2014)] Please know this, I am fully aware that I am a lucky, lucky man.
(on Eton College) The facilities are exceptional, and if you have an interest in anything - art, design, drama, sport, music - that school will support you.
I had an incredibly privileged upbringing. When I was working in a pub and going to endless unsuccessful auditions, I could live at home rent-free in London. That was the really great privilege.
(first meeting with Stephen Hawking) I was terrified, because I'd made choices, in terms of his physical decline and his character, that I couldn't now go back on. So I was thinking "Oh God, what if I meet him and it changes everything, is this going to undermine all the work I've done?". Then his carers, who are lovely, took me in to meet him, and the first thing I do is over-apologize for the fact that someone who'd studied art history is playing this great scientific mind. And then, for some reason, I hear myself informing him he was born on January 8th, because I've been talking about science and religion in our film and he makes this point in his book "My Brief History" about how he was born 300 years to the day after Galileo, and then I tell him I was born on January 6th, I don't know why I say it, but I do, "so we're both Capricorns", and then the second it comes out of my mouth I'm like "Fuck. What did I just say to Stephen Hawking?" And there is this punishing four or five minutes as he blinks away. Finally, the voice says, with killer timing: "I am an astronomer, not an astrologer." And it's just, the idea that he might think the guy playing him in a biopic thinks he's Mystic Meg. I don't think I ever will get over it.
I'm someone who likes clarity, some sense of structure, and yet I've ended up in this peripatetic and crazy existence, in which you're at the beck and call of everyone else. I think that's why family is so important to me. In the rest of my life, I'm trying to create something as rooted as possible.
[his first meeting with James Marsh] It was about four in the afternoon. James said, "What are you having?" I was trying to judge whether to have a proper drink or not. I asked for a beer. He came back with a coffee. I drank about five beers. He drank a lot of coffee. By the time we left, I was drunk and he was wired.
The year after I started (in Eton), a drama teacher arrived called Simon Dormandy, and he treated us like professional actors. He had high expectations-you played women, you played old men, you were pushed outside your comfort zone. Everything you see about Eton from the outside is very structured: it's hierarchy and order, all uniforms and collars. But Simon encouraged freedom and playfulness and allowed you the room to make mistakes. Most importantly, for me, he taught us how to speak verse. I did Henry VI and Richard III there, and I suppose that's where it all began. In 2002, when I was still at Cambridge and Mark Rylance was putting on the 400th anniversary of Twelfth Night at Middle Temple Hall, the casting director from the Globe asked Simon if he knew any young actors who might play Viola. I auditioned and got the part.
It's impossible. If the first thing that is mentioned, before you've even done a day's work, is a comparison with the person who, as far as I'm concerned, is the greatest living screen actor [Day-Lewis] - then whatever you do, you've fallen short.
I didn't train to be an actor, I blagged my way into it, and I always feel I'm waiting to be found out. So whenever you get a job, there's a moment of euphoria and then the realisation, "Oh my God, you've got to do this." And you feel there should be some scaffolding. I've worked with people who have their preferred way of rehearsing guaranteed by clause in their contract. But it's not like I have a process, it's a very formless thing, and there's no one telling you, "This is what you're going to do and this is how you're going to do it.".
[on his favorite movie from 2014] Dos días, una noche (2014) - I think Marion Cotillard is breathtaking. In everything.
Redmayne's first professional stage performance came in 2002 at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre where he played Viola in Twelfth Night. In 2004, he won the prestigious Evening Standard Outstanding Newcomer Award for his working in Edward Albee's play 'The Goat'. Further stage successes followed and in 2009 he starred in John Logan's 'Red' at the Donmar Warehouse in London. He won huge critical acclaim for his role, winning an Oliver Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. The play transferred to Broadway in 2010, and Redmayne went on to win a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play.
Alongside his stage career, Redmayne has worked steadily in television and film. Notable projects include Robert De Niro's El buen pastor (2006), Elizabeth: La edad de oro(2007), Tess, la de los D'Urberville (2008), Los pilares de la Tierra (2010) and Mi semana con Marilyn (2011). In 2012, he co-starred in the musical Los miserables (2012), as Marius Pontmercy.
In 2014, Redmayne played scientist Stephen Hawking in the biographical drama film La teoría del todo (2014), opposite Felicity Jones, as Stephen's wife Jane Hawking. For his performance, Redmayne won multiple awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actor. As such, he became the first man born in the 1980s to win an acting Oscar.
In 2014, Redmayne married publicist Hannah Bagshawe. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
Spouse
Hannah Bagshawe (15 December 2014 - present)
Trivia
Is an Old EtonianParents are Richard and Patricia Redmayne.
He was named Outstanding Newcomer at the London Evening Standard Awards 2004 and the London Critic's Circle Theatre Awards 2005 for his performance in Edward Albee's "The Goat or Who is Sylvia", with Jonathan Pryce at the Almeida Theatre, Islington.
Has appeared in three biopics about the Tudor Family, including two biopics about Elizabeth I. In 2005, he played Southampton in Elizabeth I (2005), and in 2007, he played Anthony Babington in Elizabeth: La edad de oro (2007). Both of the characters were traitors. In 2008, he appeared in Las hermanas Bolena (2008) as Sir William Stafford, the second husband of Mary Boleyn, sister of Anne Boleyn, the mother of Elizabeth I; one of the leading characters is Henry VIII, father of Elizabeth I.
Presented an award at the 2006 Orange BAFTA Awards ceremony.
Won the Tony Award in 2010 as Actor (Featured Role - Play) for his performance in "Red".
Won the Laurence Olivier Best Supporting Actor Award in March 2010 for his role in "Red" (Donmar Warehouse, London).
His father is a managing director at a bank, and his mother worked at a relocation-office.
Has two half-siblings: Charles, an Internet-entrepreneur, and Eugenie. His older brother is James and is a bank-director. His younger brother is called Thomas (Tom).
He won the Critics' Circle's Award for Best Shakespearean Performance (named "The John and Wendy Trewin Award for best Shakespearean performance") for his Richard II (December 2011 - February 2012 in Donmar Warehouse, London).
Is very close friends with Jeremy Irvine.
His ancestry includes English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish. His paternal grandparents were John Marriner Redmayne and Audrey Mercedes D'Alton, and Eddie's paternal great-grandfather, Sir Richard Augustine Studdert Redmayne, was a prominent mining and civil engineer. Eddie's maternal grandparents are Thomas R. Burke and Mary Rattray.
Eddie Redmayne is good friends with Benedict Cumberbatch. Both actors have portrayed Professor Stephen Hawking in different productions. Cumberbatch in Hawking (2004) and Redmayne in La teoría del todo (2014).
Attended Eton College, where he had classes with Prince William.
Was named by his El buen pastor (2006) co-star and director Robert De Niro when De Niro was asked by Total Film magazine about younger actors he liked.
His fragrance of choice is Tom Ford's Black Orchid.
He and Julianne Moore played mother and son in Savage Grace (2007). In 2015, both won the Best Actor and Best Actress Oscar, respectively.
He starred in Elizabeth: La edad de oro (2007) with Cate Blanchett. In 2015, Blanchett presented him the Oscar for Best Actor for La teoría del todo (2014), having won the Best Actress Oscar one year before for Blue Jasmine (2013).
He was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to drama. He is an actor in London, England.
He won an Oscar for playing Stephen Hawking in La teoría del todo (2014), making him one of 17 actors to win the Award for playing a real person who was still alive at the evening of the Award ceremony (as of 2015). The other sixteen actors and their respective performances are: Spencer Tracy for playing Father Edward Flanagan in Forja de hombres (1938), Gary Cooper for playing Alvin C. York in El sargento York (1941), Patty Duke for playing Helen Keller in El milagro de Ana Sullivan (1962), Jason Robardsfor playing Ben Bradlee in Todos los hombres del presidente (1976), Robert De Niro for playing Jake La Motta in Toro salvaje (1980), Sissy Spacek for playing Loretta Lynn in Quiero ser libre (1980), Jeremy Irons for playing Claus Von Bullow in El misterio Von Bulow (1990), Susan Sarandon for playing Sister Helen Prejean in Pena de muerte(1995), Geoffrey Rush for playing David Helfgott in Shine (1996), Julia Roberts for playing Erin Brockovich in Erin Brockovich (2000), Jim Broadbent for playing John Bayley in Iris(2001), Helen Mirren for playing Queen Elizabeth II in La reina (2006), Sandra Bullock for playing Leigh Anne Tuohy in Un sueño posible (2009), Melissa Leo for playing Alice Eklund-Ward in The Fighter (2010), Christian Bale for playing Dickie Eklund in The Fighter(2010) and Meryl Streep for playing Margaret Thatcher in La dama de hierro (2011).
Personal Quotes
[on being an actor] I think all actors have a similar deal. You want some people who understand. Although it looks great - and is great - there are also shoddy moments when you feel really rotten, and when it's going well, you're not allowed to complain. Your actor friends will understand the nuances of a painful director, or the loneliness of being... okay, in a beautiful hotel room somewhere exotic. But you're by yourself for six months, and you're thinking, "Oh God, I wish I could share it with someone." I'm trying to buy a house and set some sense of roots because otherwise you're constantly chasing one job after another, and you look back and you've had all these very extraordinary experiences with extraordinary people, but there's not a line of continuity to it. [Interview with Fran Babb, November 2011][on the process of learning lines] That's what's been keeping me up at night. What I love about this, though, is that Daniel Day-Lewis and Ryan Gosling have to learn lines, too. Do you know what I mean? However, genius Ryan Gosling is on the ukulele, however brilliant other people are, it's reassuring to know that even Ben Kingsley has to walk around his room learning lines. It's the great leveller.
[on his favorite color] The color that Yves Klein does. Wet paint has a luminosity that dies when it dries and it loses the gloss. So Yves created this color scientifically that retains that luminosity. He was a big showman, so he got it copyrighted. The color is called IKB-International Klein Blue. And it sounds all bullshit-y and ridiculous, but when you stand in front of those canvases, the color is sublime and dumbfounding. So that specific color is my favorite color in the world. Are you going to follow this up with a colorblind question? (No, wasn't planning on it, but if you want to discuss it. [interviewer vs. salisbury]) No, I talk passionately about that color and then people go "But you're colorblind." And I go, "I know. I don't know what I see but I see it and I like it.".
I had auditioned to play in Elizabeth I with Helen Mirren. This thing involved me horse riding, which I was asked in audition, whether I could do. And it is a common truth, that as an actor, if you're asked if you can horse ride, you say yes. But then cut to a month later, on the set in Lithuania, and there I am, on a horse, having not even set on a horse since I was four, blazing into things - I nearly killed myself and app. 43 Lithuanian extras. But at the audition of Las hermanas Bolena (2008), they were like "So Eddie, how is your horse riding?" And I said, "Well, there is a little story I should probably tell you." And they sent me off on a two-month training camp, and I literally learned to horse ride!
When I started acting professionally, it was always theater. I'm so ignorant about films, but m getting slightly better - after having been chastised by many co-actors. While we were shooting Las hermanas Bolena (2008), Scarlett Johansson compiled a whole list of the films I should watch.
[on how Los miserables (2012) was produced] Normally, if you were making an old-school movie musical, as a group of actors, we'd go into a studio, we'd record an album and then two months later, we'd arrive on set, and they would play the playback and we would mime alongside it. The problem with that is that you have to make all your acting choices three months before you've even met the actor you're working with. By recording it live, Tom [Hooper] is allowing us the spontaneity of normal film acting.
[If he has groupies following him] No, Benedict Cumberbatch is a mate of mine, and we did a charity show at the Old Vic together. There was this group of women outside the theatre who name themselves "the Cumberbitches" and follow him round the world. I have nothing like that. I really wouldn't know what to do with the situation.
[on achieving celebrity status] [On a plane recently] I fell asleep, and when I woke up the man next to me asked, "Excuse me, are you somebody important?" I must have looked confused. He explained: "I'm asking because the stewardesses came over and were watching you sleep.".
The director, Tom Hooper said "One last thing: Eddie, have you ever been on a horse?" I said "Yes." Cut to Lithuania, two weeks later, a huge Elizabethan street, Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons are standing at this balcony, and there's Tom, cameras, rain machines, 50 Lithuanian extras, spurs attached to my feet, and I'm thinking, "At what point do I tell them that I have never, ever ridden a horse?" It was then that I realized a big part of the cliché of actors lying in auditions is that you should probably try to do the thing you said you can do before filming starts. Anyway, I nearly killed people as the horse galloped off at a hundred miles an hour after I gave it the slightest nudge. Tom came out with his megaphone and shouted, "You're a fucking liar, Redmayne!".
You only have those specific few hours to do a scene, and then you drive home and wait for six months to find out how it went. You can't go back and put in a new idea.
I'm just one gigantic ball of rancid fear and self-consciousness. I'm entirely fueled by fear, so the fact that I knew it could be a catastrophic disaster made me unable to sleep, and made me work quite hard.
Stephen Hawking is just effortlessly cool. He has this kind of shambolic confidence to him. I describe it as a "Lord of Misrule" quality - he's got a great sense of mischief.
You do that thing of trying to chase down the job, sounding incredibly confident because you never think you'll get it. And then you get offered the job, and you have a moment of euphoria, and then you basically want to be sick for the first year.
It's really been bad on this press tour. I come home from trying to pretend to know about astronomy and physics all day and turn on The Real Housewives. I've been a closet lover of faux-reality television since The Hills (2006).
[on how he met his wife] It was an embarrassing evening. Hannah was at a girls' school near Eton and they invited some of our guys over to do a fashion show for charity. I had to walk across the stage topless - I was this pasty, freckly guy and when I came on the girls in the audience didn't take much notice of me, but I was followed by the best-looking boy in the school and all the girls erupted in cheers, which was emotionally scarring! I saw Hannah across the room at a party afterwards and she was very beautiful and very funny and she loves the arts and theatre just as I do, so we became friends. I'd finished rehearsals (for "Les Miserables") and was about to start shooting in a few days and so I said to myself, "I'm going to go to Florence for a quick break and write or do something like that." Before I went, Hannah and I were on a sort of date - we'd been good friends for 12 years - and we had a wonderful evening and I suddenly said, "You don't want to come to Florence with me next week, do you?" She said, "That's absurd, you don't mean it." I said, "Yes I do!" So our first proper date was in Florence. That was three years ago and we couldn't be happier.
The complicated thing with acting is that however brilliantly successful or good you are you are not in control. Unless you start producing your own material or writing, even then it's a complicated world.
[2014] Buzz is worrying because it's an ephemeral thing. If you read the good stuff you also have to read the bad stuff. I try genuinely to just put my fingers in my ears and put one foot in front of the other. If you get caught up in listening to what too many people have to say that's where madness lies.
[on working with Julianne Moore in Savage Grace (2007)] I love that film. There are various people in my life that have fought for me and Julianne was one of them. In the Savage Grace audition she said, "You even look like my son." She fought pretty hard for that.
[accepting the Best Actor Oscar for La teoría del todo (2014)] Please know this, I am fully aware that I am a lucky, lucky man.
(on Eton College) The facilities are exceptional, and if you have an interest in anything - art, design, drama, sport, music - that school will support you.
I had an incredibly privileged upbringing. When I was working in a pub and going to endless unsuccessful auditions, I could live at home rent-free in London. That was the really great privilege.
(first meeting with Stephen Hawking) I was terrified, because I'd made choices, in terms of his physical decline and his character, that I couldn't now go back on. So I was thinking "Oh God, what if I meet him and it changes everything, is this going to undermine all the work I've done?". Then his carers, who are lovely, took me in to meet him, and the first thing I do is over-apologize for the fact that someone who'd studied art history is playing this great scientific mind. And then, for some reason, I hear myself informing him he was born on January 8th, because I've been talking about science and religion in our film and he makes this point in his book "My Brief History" about how he was born 300 years to the day after Galileo, and then I tell him I was born on January 6th, I don't know why I say it, but I do, "so we're both Capricorns", and then the second it comes out of my mouth I'm like "Fuck. What did I just say to Stephen Hawking?" And there is this punishing four or five minutes as he blinks away. Finally, the voice says, with killer timing: "I am an astronomer, not an astrologer." And it's just, the idea that he might think the guy playing him in a biopic thinks he's Mystic Meg. I don't think I ever will get over it.
I'm someone who likes clarity, some sense of structure, and yet I've ended up in this peripatetic and crazy existence, in which you're at the beck and call of everyone else. I think that's why family is so important to me. In the rest of my life, I'm trying to create something as rooted as possible.
[his first meeting with James Marsh] It was about four in the afternoon. James said, "What are you having?" I was trying to judge whether to have a proper drink or not. I asked for a beer. He came back with a coffee. I drank about five beers. He drank a lot of coffee. By the time we left, I was drunk and he was wired.
The year after I started (in Eton), a drama teacher arrived called Simon Dormandy, and he treated us like professional actors. He had high expectations-you played women, you played old men, you were pushed outside your comfort zone. Everything you see about Eton from the outside is very structured: it's hierarchy and order, all uniforms and collars. But Simon encouraged freedom and playfulness and allowed you the room to make mistakes. Most importantly, for me, he taught us how to speak verse. I did Henry VI and Richard III there, and I suppose that's where it all began. In 2002, when I was still at Cambridge and Mark Rylance was putting on the 400th anniversary of Twelfth Night at Middle Temple Hall, the casting director from the Globe asked Simon if he knew any young actors who might play Viola. I auditioned and got the part.
It's impossible. If the first thing that is mentioned, before you've even done a day's work, is a comparison with the person who, as far as I'm concerned, is the greatest living screen actor [Day-Lewis] - then whatever you do, you've fallen short.
I didn't train to be an actor, I blagged my way into it, and I always feel I'm waiting to be found out. So whenever you get a job, there's a moment of euphoria and then the realisation, "Oh my God, you've got to do this." And you feel there should be some scaffolding. I've worked with people who have their preferred way of rehearsing guaranteed by clause in their contract. But it's not like I have a process, it's a very formless thing, and there's no one telling you, "This is what you're going to do and this is how you're going to do it.".
[on his favorite movie from 2014] Dos días, una noche (2014) - I think Marion Cotillard is breathtaking. In everything.
birthdays_OFFmag
