Eddie Redmayne: “After winning an Oscar, directors stop directing you”
The English actor, winner of the Oscar for best actor in 2014, who this fall
premieres 'The Good Nurse' on Netflix, is an actor as insecure as he is brilliant
who goes beyond the usual canon in Hollywood
The Oscar winner for 'The Theory of Everything' wears
Bottega Veneta pants and shirt. NICK THOMPSON
"You will be a bastard!”, jokes Eddie Redmayne (Westminster, 40 years old) from his home in London. Turns out the conversation has suddenly turned to our respective vacations, and the 2014 Best Actor Oscar winner for The Theory of Everything has gotten fluff from this writer, even though he's resting too. “I was doing Cabaret in theater and it was a very physical production that pushed me to the limit. Six days a week. Eight weekly performances. And, thinking of my family, I take advantage of the summer to take a break and try to fill the tank. But I'm not going on a trip to Asia like you”, he justifies himself laughing.
Actually, theirs is also quite special. One does not remember ever having spoken with an interpreter of his level who admits not having projects underway. In general, every actor has a movie in the chamber. “Yeah, it's not normal, but it's the truth, I have nothing. Next year I'll probably regret not working now. But it is summer, today 40 degrees are expected in England… it is time to stop”.
It's a decision that sticks with you. Every generation needs talented stars with heartthrobs like his friend, ex-model Jamie Dornan. But also performers with enigmatic beauty and a career in the theater, as is his case. Actors who combine blockbusters and low-budget films, but great artistic pretensions. Characters destined for glory are reserved for them, such as the scientist Stephen Hawking, suffering from degenerative amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, who gave him an Oscar. “When I got into The Theory of Everything, everyone started comparing him to Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot and reminding me that he had won the Oscar. I almost get sick of so much responsibility”, he recalls of the role that, he assures, “changed my life”. Almost 10 years have passed, but he still lives in London with his wife and his two children and talks about Hollywood with the distance of someone looking at it from the outside.
This has been an intense course for him. Between November and March he played the master of ceremonies of Cabaret in London, a role with which he won the Laurence Olivier Award for best actor in a musical. “After years of pandemic he was suddenly on a tiny stage in London [the Playhouse Theatre] surrounded by an audience drinking champagne and, with phones disconnected, interacting. It's exciting for an actor to challenge the audience and see his reaction,” he says.
In April, the third part of Fantastic Beasts and where to find them, the prequel to Harry Potter, was released, in which the actor with the biggest smile of the moment plays the protagonist, Newt Scamander. This fall The Good Nurse premieres on Netflix. It is an interpretive duel with Jessica Chastain based on a true story: the case of nurse Charles Cullen, who is suspected of killing 300 patients over 16 years, although only 29 deaths could be proven. “He came from working on giant movies, which are like symphonies in which you are a small part. With this film I tried to go back to why I became an actor, which is something more similar to jazz, more improvised. I love great orchestras, but I also like being able to do a duet with a partner, something that challenges us mutually. With Jessica I felt that way.”
"But for that you need a brilliant director who gives you space," he concludes. The Good Nurse has been directed by the Danish Tobias Lindholm, a director but above all a screenwriter, known for the Borgen series and for being a collaborator with Thomas Vinterberg in films such as The Hunt or the Oscar-winning Another Round (2020). More than a story about a serial killer, it is an almost social film about the deterioration of the quality of life of the middle class of the United States. Gray and cold cities of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Underpaid nurses with exhausting physical work. There is no glamor in the characters of Chastain and Redmayne, who plays a murderer who demonstrates the banality of evil, a guy who, when asked why he acted like this, simply says: "No one stopped me." He was killing to kill, that's all. Without showing off, without telling, without fuss. His is an instinct as natural as that of someone who lights up a cigarette as soon as he gets out of bed. “Part of what intrigued me about this role was that he was hiding in plain sight. On the surface he was incredibly empathetic and, at the same time, completely lacking in empathy. When you talk to people who knew him they say he seemed like a great nurse. He was the partner you wanted to take care of your patients when you went home, because he was fast and efficient. Charlie was always there, sometimes before his turn, he understood each case and worked hours that no one wanted. He seemed like an excellent nurse. Everyone liked him. In the book in which
In the book on which the film is based [The Good Nurse, by journalist Charles Graeber] he is described as someone funny who made fun of himself and his disastrous personal life.
The film almost feels like a play. Few characters, scenarios that are claustrophobic interiors and a lot of gloom. A challenge for an interpreter who is colorblind. “That was one of the best things about the shoot. Look, to do your best work as an actor you have to be as relaxed as possible,” he says. “But nothing about the process of making movies is relaxing. You get up at dawn, you get your makeup done at six and you go to a set where there are hundreds of people and a camera. Then they tell you: 'Relax'. Well no. My stomach still turns every time I hear action. That said, great directors like, in my opinion, Tobias, create as relaxed an environment as possible, an atmosphere that allows us actors to play and make mistakes without fear of being judged. In this film, the cinematographer did something extraordinary: the first day he had to walk down a hospital corridor in the dark. With my vision problems I hardly knew where I was going. It is a technique that consists of shooting with the least amount of light possible so that the image has grain. When the light came on, all the machinery was still there, but while he was shooting he couldn't see the people sitting behind the camera. He was very liberating. I think in the future I'm going to put in my contract that I'll only work with cinematographers who work in total darkness,” he jokes.
He talks a lot about the importance of being directed, because, according to him, there are two things that happen when you win an Oscar: “One is that I stopped having to test for roles, which was like, wow. Suddenly the ability to choose becomes real, and until then you have never had it. Until then I did a test and if they gave me the role, I did it. And you're not ready for that. Nobody prepares you to have your own taste. Some actors have it and some don't."
When they gave him the Oscar, he clarifies, he was already shooting The Danish Girl (2015). That is to say, he accepted that role at the time when, according to him, he took what he was given. He got a second Oscar nomination, but the story of Danish painter Lili Elbe, the first trans woman to undergo sex reassignment surgery, has been perhaps the most controversial of the actor's career. It was questioned that a straight man like him would play a role that could have gone to a trans performer. In an interview with The Sunday Times in 2021, Redmayne stated that he regretted accepting it. “I made that movie with the best of intentions, but I think it was a mistake. The problem is that there are still many people who are not counted. There has to be a balance or these discussions will keep repeating themselves,” he explained in the British newspaper. He also took a position on the transphobic statements of J. K. Rowling, author of Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts, a saga that he has also produced. "As someone who has worked with both J.K. Rowling and members of the trans community, I wanted to make my position absolutely clear: I do not agree with Jo's comments. Trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary identities are valid,” he concluded. At the same time he condemned the “illness” with which the author is treated. Redmayne said the social media slurs Rowling endures and slurs against trans people are "equally disgusting".
The second consequence of winning an Oscar, he says, is that “suddenly they stop directing you. The day after giving you the Oscar, they tell you: 'You do what you did in The Theory of Everything'. Yes of course. I am the same actor as yesterday. And I am someone who enjoys being directed. That's my roll. One of the great pleasures of The Good Nurse was being directed by a strong hand." Apparently, the shooting experience was so intense that it led him to make a curious decision for an actor who has been in the business for more than 25 years. “When I finished filming I was so excited that my passion for acting was reborn and before rehearsals for Cabaret I signed up for a course at a theater school in Paris”. The École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, where he spent two weeks, is an institution founded in 1956 that gives primacy to gesture over words. “They have some amazing teachers who treat you like shit and take you above and beyond. That's fine, because I love what I do and I don't want to get lazy. I think it's a great privilege to be where I am and I want to keep challenging myself and putting myself in uncomfortable situations."
Eddie Redmayne grew up in a wealthy family. His great-grandfather, Sir Richard Redmayne, was an engineer who helped modernize and improve safety in coal mines. His father, now retired, was a City banker. The Redmaynes spent their summers at their villa in French Provence. Eddie, like his father before him, studied at Eton, the exclusive boarding school where he shared a rugby team with Prince William. "I was a little sad," he said on a talk show. "In all the games they went for him, to be able to tell the rest of their lives that they had tackled the heir to the throne." Today tiptoes on the subject. "I do not have much to add. In those programs they always ask you to tell something about your life that you have not told before. The truth is that I don't know where to get it anymore, ”he says, shrugging.
There were no actors in the family, but his parents didn't object. He began to participate in his school's plays and soon he was doing it in professional productions. “When I was 11 years old, I got a small role in the musical Oliver! at the London Palladium Theatre, a huge old theater in the West End. I remember one day I woke up in the middle of my math class and said, 'Bye guys, I'm going to the theater. And when I was on the subway, to start that wonderful experience of four months, I thought: 'This is very good'. That was probably the moment I decided to be an actor.” The first half of his career, he says, he ran on stage. “In the US they start in commercials or children's television. I only knew the theater. For years, my agent sent me to television and film tests and I didn't get anything, because instead of speaking to the camera, I projected my voice to the back of the stalls. No one had taught me. When I started in film, although my work often horrified me, it became a new way of life. In the theater they think that only their thing is real acting and I don't agree. When I started filming I discovered that the camera sees everything. When I returned to the theater after having made films, I felt that I had made a lot of progress”.
He was 20 years old when he started appearing in small roles in television series. His peculiar physique (tall, lanky, with an angular face and indeterminate age), made him unforgettable. His first important role in cinema came in 2011, with My week with Marilyn. He had been trying to break into Hollywood since 2005. Then he was part of a batch of actors from the islands who shared a flat every year for a few months in Los Angeles while they looked for his opportunity. Perhaps his names will ring a bell: Andrew Garfield, Robert Pattinson, Charlie Cox and Jamie Dornan. “Now we laugh a lot with that. It has become the story that everyone wants to hear. So when we see each other, we're like, 'Guys, this is great because it's good talk show material. Since there is not much to tell, we are thinking of making up stories about how crazy that was. But the truth is, we were just a bunch of out-of-work British and Irish actors who were supposedly going to Los Angeles in January to look. The reality is that in London it was winter and it rained, so you went because the weather was good and, by the way, you were trying to get a role in a series. The extraordinary thing was that our small group was so lucky that we all tasted success. Now I have the advice and support of my friends. That of: 'Yes, I've been through the same. I'll tell you what I did. And you trust his word, because we were together when we were nobody.
He, he assures, needs advice. He claims to be so insecure that when they gave him the Oscar what he felt was relief because he hadn't let anyone down. “Look, most actors will tell you how hard it is to get the part. And that when you have it, that's it, the doubts are over. It's the moment. And it's true, you go into ecstasy. But, in my case, it lasts about three and a half seconds before the fear returns. That's why it was very good for me to work with Jessica Chastain, because she has tremendous self-confidence and she helped me. She did not accept my self-flagellations. She told me: 'Don't go there'. And I thank you very much."
The Good Nurse wouldn't have worked if the two of them didn't mix so well. They had never worked together, but they had met on shows like the one with comedian James Corden, where they seemed like lifelong friends. “I didn't know her very well. It's one of those Hollywood things: you meet on shows like Corden's, on red carpets or have mutual friends. I guess it's a kind of social friendship, a common space. But I've always admired his work."
She doesn't want to ask if her role in The Good Nurse is award fodder. “Don't talk about it, please. For me, what my work is about is aiming for perfection, recognizing that I will never achieve it. The older you get the more you learn that the goal is to aim for it, not achieve it. And what I really loved about this movie was the trust in Tobias. After seeing some shots of the first day I saw that it was a Tobias Lindholm film. I really trusted his liking and he trusted the actor he was working with. It was so freeing not to try to micromanage the outside, but just to put my heart and soul into it. So let's forget about the awards and go on vacation, we've earned it."
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