He played his first role at 12. Became famous at 20. Won an Oscar at 32. He never failed. Never quarreled with parents. Happy in marriage. He is a fashion icon and «the most stylish Brit of the year». Classmate of Prince William. Eddie Redmayne played a transgender in The Danish Girl and a genius in Stephen Hawking’s Universe. What is he, this darling of fate?
A serious person, speaks confidently, asserts categorically, he invariably has his own opinion, and it is quite competent. But he has so many freckles that it seems that they are about to break down and crumble on the floor of a secret interview room in the building of the former Mussolini-era casino, which houses the press center of the Venice Film Festival. I imagine the freckles rolling off the tip of his nose… and smiling in a completely inappropriate way. He breaks off. But suddenly he himself smiles:
“You are just like my wife. She laughs when I seriously answer her questions. But she asks such questions that the answer is possible only in the form of a lecture!”
Yes, Eddie Redmayne lectured me about the importance of equal rights for transgender people — he is passionate about this issue and therefore considers her role in The Danish Girl about the first known transgender Lily Elba to be not so much cinematic as human rights. He seriously says that life is constantly testing the humanity of society and each of us — the need to take into account first the rights of women, then representatives of other races, then — sexual minorities, now — people who have changed their sex.
He says how the director Lana Wachowski, who not so long ago «lived in the body of a man», helped him in the work on the role. He bitterly talks about the fate of American Vicki Thompson, who committed suicide after she was sentenced to a term in a men’s prison in accordance with passport formalities … Redmayne is a man of his generation and his environment — he is keenly interested in the dramas of the world, since his own fate and his surroundings seem to him too prosperous, insipidly peaceful.
He says so: “What are you asking about me? There is only one boredom — he was born, played, got married … Everything interesting is just around!
And you know, at that time I reconciled. And the time for our festival interview is up. So I promise him to request another meeting with his agent. And then talk to him. He doubts that I will succeed — because there is nothing special about him … But when we meet almost a year later in London, in a cafe in Bermondsey (here he has an apartment, he grew up nearby, in Chelsea, and the native Chelsea can’t imagine), I don’t have to try very hard. He is now in the mood to speak. And just about yourself. Because it turned out that there is “an additional meaning” in his life. More precisely, it will appear here.
Eddie Redmayne: I never looked forward to meeting a woman with such impatience as I did with her! I’m already in love with her! You know, I’m afraid of becoming a crazy father. Who will terrorize his daughter with his care. But everything speaks in favor of this version. With her birth, everything, absolutely everything will change! (Iris Mary, daughter of Redmayne and his wife Hannah, was born in June, shortly after we met. — Approx. Aut.)
Psychologies: What will actually change? Your life has already basically taken shape — you have a career. There is an Oscar for Stephen Hawking’s Universe. There is a Golden Globe, there is a British Academy Film Award. There are theatrical prizes — «Tony» and the prize named after Laurence Olivier. There is already a name. What can she change? Decorate, add can. But change?
E.R.: I think she will change me. She will become the center. For her, I will bear — well, at least for a while — parental responsibility. All my current responsibilities are professional and social. And then there will be responsibility communicated by nature itself … I have a need for such responsibility. And I’ll be less scared.
To you? Fearfully?
E.R.: Yeah. I’m afraid. I get nervous before and during filming. I’m shaking. Until recently, I could cry if I was harshly criticized in a review. It’s not that I’m such a perfectionist. And it’s not that I deify success so much. But I’m afraid, really. I’m afraid not to do it so well that I myself think: this is certainly good. Because in the cinema you only have a few hours to do it «well». And then you can’t fix anything.
That’s what I’m most afraid of. Perhaps it’s because I don’t have a professional acting education and the natural defenses that come with it. I am an art critic and actually came to the profession from an amateur theater.
But you can’t tell that you’re afraid of something. On the contrary, you look and act like a confident person. You were not afraid to go on stage, having only a children’s theater and a university theater behind you. And immediately in the main role, and female …
E.R.: There is no courage here! Has it never happened to you — the feeling that everything is developing according to a certain scenario — from the plot to the denouement? Do you think I’m not aware that I was lucky and lucky? I am quite aware that this is so. At first I played in the children’s theater — it was just a hobby, and then in Cambridge in the student theater. But we had an amazing leader, actor and director Simon Dormandy.
And when Mark Rylance at Shakespeare’s Globe decided to celebrate the 400th anniversary of «Twelfth Night» with a production with male actors in all roles… You remember that Shakespeare has a girl pretending to be a man? So, then Simon recommended me for the role of Viola. I was a boy playing a girl playing a boy. And, apparently, the fact that I was so young made my heroine touching.
I was twenty … 2002. I myself must have been quite touching. Yes, and scared. I was frightened by this luck — I study at Cambridge, I have absolutely no intention of becoming an actor, I just play in the student theater, and here — the head of the Shakespeare troupe himself, the god of the British theater Rylance takes me to one of the main roles … Some incredible luck! After all, in my life, as you understand, I didn’t have to particularly strain — I am from a wealthy family, life has always provided me with many opportunities.
“I didn’t have to strain especially in my life — I am from a wealthy family, life has always provided me with many opportunities”
At that time, I thought that I had already made the main bold act in my life — I decided to become a specialist in painting. By painting. I’m colorblind! And my teacher in the first year strongly recommended antiquity to me, which is understandable: there are only forms, but there are practically no colors. But I was fascinated by the art of ideas. Not techniques — colors, manners — but ideas.
And was in love with the work of Yves Klein. This is an art that voluntarily limits itself in order to speak more clearly, sharply. I liked the voluntariness of self-restraint … In a word, it was already bold — to enter the history of art with color blindness. I did not expect further courage in myself. And I don’t have it at all.
But you are not afraid to play the transgender Lily Elbe, a man who has realized a woman in himself, and Stephen Hawking, a man without a male body and body … Isn’t it bold for a modern actor who, as a rule, is forced to nurture glossy masculinity in himself? And you are also a model, participated in Burberry campaigns …
E.R.: Dividing people on any basis is completely unproductive, in my opinion. Nurture something artificial in yourself for the sake of social success … This is even the most stupid of goals.
It’s good for you to say…
E.R.: I know what I’m talking about! It is necessary to strive for what you call happiness alone with yourself. For me it is to live life to the fullest, to feel a lot and talk about people who changed the world for the better. Someone — the very fact of their existence. Someone — a heroic impulse. I really have nothing more to say about this.
“The main courageous act in my life — I decided to become a specialist in painting. And I’m colorblind.»
I don’t think it’s shameful to show weakness. I do not believe that belonging to one or the other gender imposes obligations. I believe that everything in the world is a matter of our choice. I don’t care what people think who strive to turn reality into a subway timetable — where everything is on the clock and everything moves exclusively on its own rails. I don’t run on rails.
How are you moving?
E.R.: Well, as you can see, I do not refuse a broom. It’s easier to cross borders.
I know that you graduated from Eton, a boarding school for boys. Aristocratic institution, super prestigious. But it is known that these schools are discipline, pressure of academic performance and education of a team feeling, dormitories and oatmeal …
E.R.: You have a somewhat literary image of a closed British school. I would say Dickensian. And my Eton was joyful. You get there at the age of 13, leave at 18. You spend there the time when your personality and values are being formed in you. And next to you are the same 13-year-olds. It doesn’t matter what studies with you, say, Prince William — he is just my classmate.
It is important that here you are all equal and all together. And you are experiencing one. The main thing at Eton is friendship. Those friendships that are tied up in closed schools are for life. Because these friendships shape us. All my closest friends are from Eton. Not from the university, not from the theater — from the school. Nowhere, never and with no one will I experience this feeling of common destiny. And this is a very happy feeling.
Your parents, who cared so much about your education — Eton, then Trinity College, Cambridge — were not surprised when they realized that you would become an actor?
E.R.: You know, my first childhood memory is this: I am sitting in a stroller, the rain is pouring like a bucket, there is a plastic visor above me, and from under it I see my mother, whose umbrella was unscrewed by the wind. Wet to the skin. And I’m warm and cozy, despite the rain. I have a feeling of complete security connected with my parents. And until now I feel under their protection — even no longer needing it, but, on the contrary, hoping to be a support to them.
“Housing in London is crazy expensive! So now I … pay for a couple of apartments where young actors live.
And when acting was on the horizon, dad (a financier, a man from the City, always dealt with numbers) kept wondering: why choose such a competitive field of activity? And conscientiously presented me with statistics — what percentage of actors are employed in the profession. Insignificant, of course. And my mother always helped me — she advised me to go to the children’s theater. Although she herself treats art with respect for the viewer, at a distance …
But, in general, all this is rather strange — I have three brothers and a sister. Everyone in the City, reached heights, made a career, someone even a CEO … I’m really a black sheep. After university, I wanted to work as an actor, but it didn’t work out very well — I worked in pubs, as a bartender, as a waiter — in general, I drank my father’s statistics in practice. And dad never once said, “I told you so!” Although I lived with my parents — I returned to them from Cambridge, I could not rent an apartment. It was also lucky that my parents were in London. Housing in London is crazy expensive! So now I’m… well, paying for a couple of apartments where young actors live.
But your wife is not your colleague either…
E.R.: Hannah is my main achievement to date. Yes, she was an antique dealer, but she left her job to be with me — to go to the shooting together, not to be separated. Hanna is not just a wife. We met when we were twenty. Me in the usual sense for me is not without it.
Or maybe you avoid connections in the cinema environment because you don’t feel like you belong to it entirely? You are not like a fish in water?
E.R.: Yes, I am such a fish that water does not suit! Or rather, I do not want to be limited only to the aquatic environment. I have everything to live in it, yes. But my life is not only there.