When Eddie Redmayne found out that he was nominated for an Academy Award, he was awoken early in the morning by a loud rapping on the door.
"I... stumbled out of bed, hit my knee, got to the door, realized I wasn't appropriately dressed to open the door. Stumbeled back in the dark, got a towel, opened the door, and there was my manager standing with a phone with this team of people who've been supporting me for 12, 14 years, and there was screaming out of the phone and I assumed... I hoped that was good news. And that was a wonderful moment."
Redmayne was nominated for Best Actor for his portrayal of world renowned physicist Stephen Hawking in the new film "The Theory of Everything." It spans several decades - focusing on both Hawking's quest for his doctorate at Cambridge University and on his gradual decline and struggles with the neurogenerative disease, ALS, with which Hawking was diagnosed.
For his depiction of Hawking, Redmayne has already won both a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild award.
He recently sat down with Alex Cohen to talk about the awards, meeting Stephen Hawking in person, struggling to understand some of the science he talks about in the movie, and working hard on techniques in an effort to accurately portray Hawking.
"When you meet Stephen, the amazing thing is that he can move very few muscles, but all of the energies that able bodied people have of gesture or even tone of voice, all of those things, it's like all of those energies get channeled into those few muscles that he can move... And although he can move very little he has one of the most expressive and charismatic of faces. But it's all delivered in the minutia. And so for me... I would sit in front of the mirror and try to learn to isolate those muscles."
Check out the audio for more of the conversation.