In England, we have this saying about Marmite: people either love it or hate it. That's like a lot of the movie work I've done. People either find it repulsive or find it really interesting and get engaged in it.
— Eddie Redmayne
I'll always find the things that make a role complicated!
I draw and play the piano badly. But when I'm doing those things, I'm concentrating so hard there's no room for worry. I find that onstage, too.
I'm one of those people, when I see a film, I believe it to be true. You know, sort of the authenticity of the camera and seeing things on a screen.
When I read 'Fantastic Beasts,' the world that J. K. Rowling has created is so wonderful.
I try genuinely, when I'm playing a character, to not judge them and just to inhabit someone as how one sees them. That being said, you also want to make sure that you don't blur the edges of people too much because humans are naughty and complicated beings.
What an extraordinary thing it can be, love, how it will not defined by gender, by sexuality, by race, by religion, by anything. It's something else. It's something other.
A movie star is someone who has to open a film to gazillions of dollars. I'm just trying to pay my mortgage.
If you are playing someone living, it is a different type of judgment. However much work you do, it is not a documentary. There will be things you can't get right, and ultimately, you have to take a leap because - you weren't there.
I've never been someone that was sort of blessed with an innate talent of just being able to do things. I had to work at it and learn from mistakes.
There is a certain amount of commerce in the film industry in as much as you have value, and for a moment, your value goes up, then it all disappears again.
For a year after I left Cambridge, I had an agent, and I was working in a pub and doing waitering. But I could stay at home rent-free.
The percentage of actors employed is pretty small, and if you're lucky enough to have a good run at it, you do have a sense of responsibility.
I am fascinated by Omega's history. Particularly the First World War stuff, when they made watches for the flying corps, and the NASA side of it.
There's something scary about acting always, because basically you do all this work in a vacuum, and then suddenly there's a lot of money spent making a film, and there's suddenly a camera here, going, 'Right? What are you gonna do?'
Filming is about continuing to be alert and to think, and I find it quite exhausting.
I come home from trying to pretend to know about astronomy and physics all day and turn on 'The Real Housewives'.
It can be a miserable profession, acting, because you always want what you can't have.
There's always been a relationship between the film world and fashion.
My dad works in finance, so he kept giving me the stats: only one in a hundred actors makes it. He'd ask, 'Have you thought about producing?'
My favorite film is probably the finale - 'Deathly Hallows: Part 2'.
I wish I could describe anything I do as conscious or strategized. To be honest, in acting, you have so little control. The only control you have is if you're lucky enough to be in a position, which is not very often, in which you have choice. It's about what choices you make, and for me, it's entirely instinctive.
The question of what it is to live an 'authentic life', that's a complicated one.
That's a lovely starting point for me as an actor: the question of what will we - or can we - do with this lot of years with which we're blessed? More than my other films, 'The Danish Girl' is about the gigantic risks involved in being true to one's self.
I've worked with some actors who have such thick skins and think they are so extraordinary. I'll think, 'Have you stopped learning?' They stop listening to directors or other actors and do the same thing again and again.
As someone who gets nervous in silences, I spill words rather than really think.
Actors who perhaps are super-confident and have absolute belief in themselves I always admire, because I can't really be like that. Because you never know what's right: what you feel inside versus what is portrayed.
For 'The Theory of Everything,' I was quite low down on a list of actors for the role, and I got the opportunity as a consequence of people saying no to it. So I have been very, very lucky.
Actors are actors, and there should be a complete fluidity for anyone to play anything.
I find in film acting that however many years you have done it for, you can feel totally relaxed and at ease with the people around you, absolutely wonderful, then roll camera and a little part of you goes, 'Ugh'. It is learning how to manage that.
Going to the Oscars is always the most sensory overload and a huge amount of fun.
If gender is on a spectrum, where one finds oneself is completely unique.
I never really committed to being an actor. It never felt like it would be possible, I guess.
If your dream is to tell stories, interesting stories, play interesting people, that's the bottom line. The people that I play have to be extraordinary.
'Animal Ark', was when I was fourteen years old, and it was an ITV children's program, and I did an episode called, 'Bunnies in the Bathroom.' And I'm not sure if it was my finest hour.
What I love about acting is trying things and screwing up, then trying again, all in this protected little bubble. That's living the dream.
Our dream as actors is to tell interesting stories about interesting people.
When you start out acting, you dream of getting an agent and getting a job. For years, you audition and you get what you can. Choice isn't something that you have much of.
It feels like a simple human right to be able to be yourself, and yet, what trans people have to go through in order to get to there, it can be so complicated.
I hope, then, that every one who sees 'The Danish Girl' might be galvanized themselves to lead more authentic lives. How much lovelier would the world be then?
The thing about motor neuron disease, once a muscle stops working, it doesn't start again.
The problem with motor neurone disease is they don't know when it starts. People go into hospital having fallen but get wrapped up and sent away, unless they're seen by an incredibly astute doctor. It is only when several things begin to go wrong that it'll be diagnosed.
What is important is for me to do my best work on camera. The camera is inches away from you and sees every micromovement of every muscle of your eye. And if you're not relaxed, the camera sees it.
I feel like J. K. Rowling's world is one that is owned by everyone in some ways. People have grown up with it and have such a sense of that universe that there's something kind of wonderful seeing everyone get involved.
That's the reality of my life - I do normal things and then get to go to film festivals and wear borrowed clothes and turn up at premieres and talk about things I am passionate about. But then you click back to normality and your family and friends.
I'm by nature someone that quite likes to understand how things are working, likes some sense of structure, and I've fallen into the worst possible trade for that.
I suffer from a more complex, persistent fear. It manifests itself in nerves, and on film the camera sees even the tiniest evidence of this. So you have to learn that when the director calls 'Action,' you don't go to this place of tension, but somehow you become free.
There's been a huge history of cisgender success on the back of trans stories, which is something I'm deeply aware of. My take on it, I suppose, was that I do think actors should be able to play anything.
I've played women since I was a kid and I've always enjoyed it.
I've been a closet lover of faux-reality TV since 'The Hills'. It's bad.
