Eddie Redmayne

Edward John David "Eddie" Redmayne

6 January 1982

An English actor, singer, and model. Redmayne attended Eton College. He went on to study history of art at Trinity College, Cambridge, from where he graduated with 2:1 Honours in 2003. He's best known for portraying Colin Clark in "My Week with Marilyn", Marius Pontmercy in the musical film adaptation of "Les Misérables", and Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything" for which he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama and received Academy Award, BAFTA, and SAG nominations for Best Actor.

As actor

• Like Minds (2006)
• The Good Shepherd (2006)
• Savage Grace (2007)
• Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)
• The Yellow Handkerchief (2008)
• The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)
• Powder Blue (2009)
• Glorious 39 (2009)
• Black Death (2010)
• Hick (2011)
• My Week with Marilyn (2011)
• Les Misérables (2012)
• The Theory of Everything (2014)
• Jupiter Ascending (2015)
• Thomas & Friends: Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure (2015)
• The Danish Girl (2015)
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)
• Early Man (2018)

Quotations

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Listen, acting is not surgery, it's entertainment. You're doing something to hopefully move people, to make them laugh, to transport them. But actors are vulnerable, and the reason we're vulnerable is that we're always trying to recreate human behaviour.

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They're such hierarchical things, film sets, they're sort of mini societies. Often they're incredibly political places.

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As an actor there's a lot of scrutiny and, even when you've had success, it becomes about sustaining that success. A friend of mine described it as a peakless mountain. Even for De Niro there's Pacino and for Pacino there's De Niro.

* * *

I had never been to a fashion show before going to the Burberry show last month. It was an extraordinary spectacle. I was incredibly green and had no idea what an undertaking it is. I also have a new respect for models because they are so close to the front row and must be so self-conscious.

* * *

I have this horrific thing where I'm really bad with names and faces. I have an appalling memory. Someone will come up to me in the street and go, 'Eddie!', and I'll try and give myself time by going into overdrive, 'Hey, hi! Nice to see you!' and start a whole conversation because I can't distinguish between who I know and who I don't.

* * *

Everything about filmmaking is incredibly weird, and there's nothing natural about watching yourself on the big screen or hearing your voice. It's that same thing that you feel when you watch yourself on a video camera and you hate the sound of your voice - it's that times 800.

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Most actors hate watching their own films because all you can see is the glaring mistakes, your own tricks and ticks.

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I always try to describe making movies like summer camp, or some holiday where you spend all day, every day with a new group of people whom you kind of love and then never see again.

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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.

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If I do a film and have to get naked, that tends to dictate how often I go to the gym. Acting in 'Richard II' on stage was a huge physical workout, so I ended up more toned than I normally am.

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It's the weird thing Eton does - you're at school next to lords and earls and, in my case, Prince William, so you end up being used to dealing with those sorts of people.

* * *

Making a film or doing a play are completely different experiences and entirely fulfilling, but completely unique. I also think one complements the other. People often say that theater is about flexing your muscles, and is actually real acting, whereas I sort of disagree.

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What's really interesting about actors, is that we all have opinions on how people's careers look, but I think you never have any idea of your own, or what other people think of you.

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A lot of people think theatre must be much harder work than film, but anything histrionic or superfluous gets seen on camera so you have to work to distil it into a complete sense of what's true.

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If you're an English actor and turn up in America, they don't have an opinion about where you sit. They have no idea what auditions to send you to, so they send you to everything.

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I'm quite ignorant about fashion and I'm colourblind, so it's all a tad tricky. My only knowledge of that world comes through Christopher Bailey, whom I first met in 2008 when I did a campaign for Burberry that featured musicians, artists, actors and sportsmen.

* * *

Ladies and babies, and mortgages, for that matter, can all wait. Acting has done a strange thing to me, though. I often sit there, thinking, 'I love this, but I wouldn't put my daughter on the stage.'

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