It’s an unseasonably warm October day in London, and Eddie Redmayne is gazing out of the window. I’m worried he wants to jump out of it solely to get away from this conversation. “I suppose,” the actor stutters, “as any human would, you take each moment, each criticism, each interrogation, each, um.
.. err.
..” He pauses.
“Each opinion piece...
um. Everyone’s voices..
.” He starts again. “Often something you’ve done is just a part of a much bigger discussion, and you try to make sense of it with the understanding and comprehension of any human being.
” Redmayne turns back to me. He clears his throat. I haven’t asked him anything that’s especially probing.
I’ve merely enquired how he’s gone about navigating the rocky terrain of his most illustrious role, that of “Man at the Centre of Every Bit of Toxic Discourse of the Last Decade”. He was the freckly, Eton-educated face of the British film industry when he won an Oscar , sparking conversations about equal opportunities for actors who aren’t able-bodied, cisgender men of privilege. He’d poke that bear again less than a year later, portraying a trans woman .
he was leading the Fantastic Beasts franchise at the same time as its creator JK Rowling , which transformed her – over the course of three movies – from beloved children’s author to unbridled agent of chaos. So, without me hammering the point home too aggressively, how he dealt with it? Redmayne, dressed in a multicoloured jumper a.
