IT'S FRIDAY! 2015 PREVIEW: How going topless helped Eddie win his wife's heart who he met while still at school at Eton
![Eddie Redmayne, right, met his wife Hannah, left, while still at school in Eton, Berkshire](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/01/01/245D285C00000578-0-image-m-63_1420156707407.jpg)
Eddie Redmayne, right, met his wife Hannah, left, while still at school in Eton, Berkshire
Eddie Redmayne was terrified that his first meeting with Professor Stephen Hawking, whose life he was to portray on film, would not be easy. How could it be when — as he puts it — ‘a mere actor does not have much in common with the world’s most distinguished physicist’.
They both had a Cambridge education, but Eddie’s three years’ studying history of art after Eton hardly compares with Hawking’s 50-year association with the university.
So it was with some trepidation he accepted Hawking’s invitation to visit, five days before filming began for The Theory Of Everything, which depicts the scientist’s life at every stage from his student days. It was not, he admits, his most cool and collected hour.
‘I’d known little about Stephen before I got the role, but I spent six months reading everything I could about him and watching every video I could find. I read his book, A Brief History Of Time, and some of his weightier theories, although I had to have a physics teacher explain them to me. Coincidentally, he was one of Stephen’s former students. By the end, Stephen had become an idol to me because he is quite an extraordinary man.’
Hawking, 72, is paralysed with motor neurone disease, which has afflicted him most of his adult life. He underwent a tracheotomy in 1985 and has to communicate through a keyboard with a computerised voice.
Eddie says: ‘There is a pause when he replies to anything you say because he has to type out his response. For the first 35 minutes, when we met, I was so nervous I didn’t give him a chance, because I couldn’t stop talking and was spilling out to him all the information about himself that I’d researched.
‘I only stopped because I realised he was probably sitting there thinking “Yes, I already know that because I’m me.”
‘That was when I put my foot in it. I said: “Stephen, you were born on January 8, which was Galileo’s birthday [in fact it was the day he died], and it so happens mine is January 6, so we are all Capricorns.
‘Then he spoke through the computer: “I’m an astronomer, not an astrologer!”
‘Even now, I go into a cold sweat thinking that Stephen Hawking thought that the guy who was playing him in his biopic thought he was a horoscope writer!’
Luckily, he adds, the renowned professor saw the funny side, and the two ended up good friends. ‘I told him, “Stephen, I’m very nervous for you to see the film, but let me know what you think.”
‘Then, in that iconic computer voice, he said: “I will let you know what I think, good or otherwise.”’
To Redmayne’s relief, Hawking told him he enjoyed the film after he watched a preview.
![Eddie Redmayne played the renowned physicist Professor Stephen Hawking, pictured, in a new movie](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/01/02/19DFAA0000000578-0-image-a-64_1420156810665.jpg)
Eddie Redmayne played the renowned physicist Professor Stephen Hawking, pictured, in a new movie
As the final credits rolled, Hawking’s nurse wiped tears from his cheek. Eddie says: ‘It’s sad in places, and it even made him cry — yet he lived the story.’
The film is based on his ex-wife Jane’s book about their 25-year marriage, and continuing friendship, Travelling To Infinity: My Life With Stephen. She is played in the film by Felicity Jones. The story starts in 1963, with 21-year-old Hawking — in his trademark thick-rimmed glasses — cycling around Cambridge, where he had just begun his PhD.
Eddie says: ‘I was surprised to learn that when Stephen was a young man, he was fashionably dressed, and an icon of cool. There are some photographs of him and Jane in a punt in Cambridge when they were younger, and they looked amazing. He used to wear a blue velvet jacket, which we copied for the film, which with those glasses looked fabulous.
‘His dress sense never left him — I wore 77 different outfits throughout the film.’
Redmayne took every detail seriously, down to his fingernails.
‘I learned that when he was 21, Stephen decided to grow his nails as an act of defiance. So I grew mine, too, and kept them over-long throughout filming, although there is only one shot in the finished film where you see them.’
The son of a London banker, he became interested in acting at Eton, where he was in the same year as Prince William. ‘We played rugby and did French lessons together. It felt totally normal having him there. Well, maybe not normal, but then, Eton is not normal — you go around wearing tailcoats which is definitely unusual, and yet because everyone else around you is wearing them too, you don’t feel out of place.
![Eddie Redmayne attended Eton, pictured, in the same year as Prince William, who was like any other student](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/01/02/1EDB764500000578-0-image-a-65_1420156967513.jpg)
Eddie Redmayne attended Eton, pictured, in the same year as Prince William, who was like any other student
‘So that was how it felt having Will around — he was just like every other student there. Although I do remember that we’d go to chapel in the morning for assembly and there would be police dogs in the organ loft, sniffing for bombs, and sometimes I’d think, “Yeah, that’s a bit weird”, but apart from that none of us really thought about it.’
It was while at Eton that he met his wife, financial PR Hannah Bagshawe. ‘It was an embarrassing evening,’ he says. ‘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.’
The friendship turned to love when he was making Les Miserables. ‘I’d finished rehearsals 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.
‘So I have Eton to thank for that, but when I went to Cambridge, I was a lazy student. History of art wasn’t taxing, I’d have five lectures and one essay a week, that was it. It was funny because in Cambridge, my lecture room was next door to the engineering department, and I’d swan in at 10am, slightly hung over, and sit at the back copying other people’s notes.
‘Meanwhile, there were all the engineers next door firing off to their classes looking serious and dedicated. I think there is a massive difference between the commitment of engineers and of art historians — or at least, the sort of art historian I was!
‘Stephen had obviously studied incredibly hard at Cambridge, and when we met, I felt guilty enough to apologise to him for not choosing a scientific subject!’
Eddie’s biggest problem was the physical challenge of portraying a man whose body is crippled by motor neurone disease.
‘Although it makes the muscles stop working, it also has a spasticity, so it’s not like I could hold a pose and relax. Everything he did as the condition developed was affected — eating, drinking, moving, picking up a pen. I worked with a choreographer, Alexandra Reynolds, for four hours a day for many months to get my body ready.’
![Eddie Redmayne, pictured, regularly met with patients at a neurology clinic, so he could understand Professor Hawking's degenerative disease, which he described as 'pretty painful'](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/01/02/2455426600000578-0-image-a-66_1420157039803.jpg)
Eddie Redmayne, pictured, regularly met with patients at a neurology clinic, so he could understand Professor Hawking's degenerative disease, which he described as 'pretty painful'
Eddie regularly visited patients in a London neurology clinic to get a better understanding of Hawking’s condition. ‘We also worked with an amazing make-up designer, Jan Sewell, who explained that because Stephen moves one side of his face a lot more than the other, that side would be more lined and it also became more muscular. It was pretty painful, twisting my body in the wheelchair the way Stephen does, but I had an osteopath to help me through it.
‘But however uncomfortable it was, at the end of the day I was able to stand up, get out of the wheelchair and relax in a hot bath, which most people who are suffering from this don’t, and that was something I never forgot.
‘In spite of the personal difficulties he has to face, the overriding thing when I met Stephen was this extraordinary, razor-sharp wit and formidable humour. There is a kind of mischief, a Lord of Misrule quality that I tried to bring into my performance after spending time with him. We even adapted the script after that first meeting to make him funnier.’
The humour is an important part of the film. After Hawking learns that the computerised voice he must use to communicate only comes equipped with an American accent, he tests the system by delivering some of his favourite movie lines from American leading men.
Later in the film, when asked about the pitfalls of fame by a fan, he jokes that he simply tells people who recognise him that the real Stephen Hawking is much better looking in person.
In spite of Professor Hawking’s towering intellect, Redmayne says everyone he met paid tribute to an unstuffy, down-to-earth man.
‘There is a wonderful story from one of the nurses. She had just qualified, and her first job interview was with Stephen. She was only 18 or 19 years old and was terrified. She spent all night researching his condition so she went prepped to the interview.
‘Stephen had only one question for her. “Can you poach an egg?” he asked. She said yes. “You’ve got the job”, he told her. That was so typical of the most inspiring and extraordinary man I am ever likely to meet.’
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