ASK Eddie Redmayne how he feels things are going right now, and you’d forgive the man a certain amount of self-satisfaction.
He has something of a magic touch when it comes to picking films.
From his breakthrough performance in 2011’s My Week With Marilyn to his Oscar-winning portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything in 2014, the 34-year-old Londoner has quickly risen to become one of cinema’s most bankable stars.
And yet any smugness is strangely absent.
“Do I have a plan?” he laughs incredulously. “I love the idea that actors have any choice whatsoever. We’re lucky to get any employment. I remember Alfred Molina [with whom he acted in the 2009 play Red at London’s Donmar Warehouse] once saying the notion of a career is something you look back on – and you’re like: ‘How did all that happen?’”
Eddie is set to have an awful lot to look back on.
My Week With Marilyn– based on the true story of Marilyn Monroe’s affair with a runner while working on The Prince And The Showgirl in 1956 – was followed by the lead in the TV adaptation of Sebastian Faulks’ WW1 bestseller Birdsong, then the role of Marius Pontmercy in the 2012 film of Les Misérables.
It was The Theory of Everything, though, that would cement his reputation as one of the most critically acclaimed new British stars.
His portrayal of the young Stephen Hawking was understated, inspiring, heartbreaking and drew universal praise.
It also won him an Academy Award, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor.
However, according to the man himself, it nearly didn’t happen at all.
“There were six or seven other actors who were offered the part,” he says. “I was lucky that they turned it down. I fought for it and got it and it just happens that that worked.
“Then suddenly you’re on a list and you’re slightly higher on that list and it gives you a bit more choice. It’s wonderful to have access to scripts you wouldn’t have otherwise.”
Which brings us to Eddie’s latest film.
Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them is not only a spin-off from the staggeringly lucrative Harry Potter film series, but is set in the same world of magic and muggles and, unlike the other Potter screenplays, was written by JK Rowling herself.
In the best wizarding tradition, Eddie’s role in the film began with a tale told by firelight.
“I met [director] David Yates about a year before work on Fantastic Beasts started and it was all quite clandestine. I didn’t know anything about [the film]. It was in a club in Soho. We sat by a fire and he just started telling me these stories. Basically, he was like: ‘JK Rowling is writing this script.
At some point I would like you to read it and there’s a list of actors we’re meeting.’
Eventually I sat down to read it and the script completely superseded all of our expectations.”
In the film, Eddie plays Newt Scamander, a Hogwarts alumnus who arrives in 1920s New York with a magical briefcase crammed with all manner of curious magical creatures.
After they escape and wreak havoc across the city, there follows a desperate chase to retrieve them before the New Salem Philanthropic Society (a sort of fanatical anti-magic league whose aim is the destruction of all wizards and witches) catches up with both the creatures and Scamander himself.
“The great thing about being cast without an audition is you’re cast without an audition!” Eddie says. “But then if you’re neurotic, you have this problem when you turn up on set and you open your mouth on day one of filming and you watch the director go: ‘Whoa, whoa, really?’ and then you feel that insecurity and it can cripple you…”
He kicked that insecurity into touch by approaching his role with all the rigour and meticulous research that he put into playing the part of Stephen Hawking.
“I said to David: ‘Look, I don’t have a great imagination, I’ve struggled in the past with big CGI things. Will you allow me to be a part of the process from the word go?’
“Each of the creatures has an animator, and they’re not just like designers, they’re kind of actors themselves. So I could then discuss it with them, how I’d been to this wildlife park, for example, and how I was looking at the way some animal did something. They thought it was great, so I was really included. And similarly with JK Rowling: if I had an idea, I was never made to feel kept at a distance, and often with big studio films you can feel that way, like your job is to turn up and just say the lines and not screw it up.”
Being the first “non-Harry-Potter Harry Potter film”, the pressure to get Fantastic Beasts right was immense.
Screwing up would be so much more significant than simply making a bad film – it would effectively be an act of cultural vandalism.
Put this to Eddie and he appreciates it immediately – not least because, first and foremost, he’s a huge fan himself.
“I read the [Harry Potter] books and I then started watching the films and it was just like the most wonderful escapism,” he says.
“When the films came out, I’d look forward to it so much, coupled with the fact that there was an entire family of gingers! And I never got an audition for it. I was bereft. When I heard they were making a new film, I was like: ‘Please can I be a part of it?’”
And then, of course, there was the thrill of getting his own wand.
“You have to hold discussions about your character and what sort of wand you think might be appropriate,” he says. “Then this amazing array of drawings arrives. And you get to pick one! It was extraordinary. It instantly released an inner 10 year old in everyone.”
Fantastic Beasts started life as a book itself back in 2001.
Supposedly one of the set texts on the Hogwarts curriculum, it was packaged with a foreword by Albus Dumbledore and scribbled comments and doodles in the margins by Ron Weasley.
But despite that – and perhaps because Rowling adapted the book for the screenplay herself – Eddie felt confident enough to take on Newt Scamander in his own way.
“We’re all aware of the legacy and the heritage of these amazing worlds,” he says. “But at the same point, you want to start afresh in some ways, and what makes that easier is Fantastic Beasts starts before those films.
“As far as the character was concerned, I felt like I had a blank page to start on.”
And being a JK Rowling story, there was enough in the script to keep all the actors on their toes throughout, without having to worry about the legacy of the Potter franchise.
It’s all a far cry from his early brushes with fame – Eddie’s first official credit was on a Children’s ITV show called Animal Ark in 1998.
“I was 14, and I did an episode called Bunnies In The Bathroom,” he says. “I’m not sure if it was my finest hour.
“I was on holiday from school and was going through a period of trying to momentarily rebel, but I didn’t want to dye my hair peroxide because I wasn’t quite that rebellious, so I put that Sun-In stuff in. During this week of filming my hair just went more and more ginger. So progressively each day the character went more ginger…”
He also carved a successful career as a fashion model and is unashamed in his love of a sharp suit, as well as his fascination with the fashion industry.
“I do find it riveting,” he says. “I just did a campaign for Prada and hearing artists talk about the big influence of their whole collection, it’s the same thing that actors do.
“I was just lucky. I was doing plays when I was a kid being paid £300 a week, and then suddenly Christopher Bailey, who runs Burberry, wanted to work with me.
“Photography I find interesting as well, so I found the process enjoyable. I don’t think of
it as brand building. Also my dad is a pretty slick dresser, so perhaps I sort of aspire to be him.”
Fantastic Beasts is Eddie’s second big “special effects” film.
After building his reputation with a series of subtle character studies, he followed up The Theory of Everything with the sci-fi epic Jupiter Ascending.
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Despite co-starring Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum and being directed by the Wachowskis (responsible for The Matrix), the film was a flop.
And (whisper it) the critics were especially unsure of Eddie’s “melodramatic” performance.
If he let the setback get to him – and to be fair, it only stands out thanks to the near-universal praise that all of his other work has received – he doesn’t let it show.
“I spent so many years being scared of making mistakes,” he says. “And within that period I did some really boring work.
“So I try to free myself up and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. With Jupiter Ascending, I love the Wachowskis. I think they’re extraordinary and I tried to sort of get into their world and their imagination. And clearly somewhere along the way I didn’t make it work. But I enjoyed the process hugely and I was trying to do something interesting.
“I suppose that if I let the criticism affect me too much, then I will feel restricted. But you definitely try and then fail, and then try again. You never go into something not giving it 100%. Sometimes that 100% can be channelled in totally the wrong direction… but you still give it your all.”
Still fiercely private about his personal life (he lives in London, is married to PR executive Hannah Bagshawe and this summer became a dad to daughter Iris Mary… and that’s about all he’s prepared to divulge), Eddie insists that accolades and Oscars and the lead role in the most talked-about film of the autumn aren’t about to change him.
“You can’t freak out,” he says, simply. “In the past people have gone: ‘Oh my god, you’ve won an Oscar, your life’s changed!’ And it really hasn’t. The Oscar sits on a little side table in my flat in London and looks a bit unreal. It’s very shiny and surreal. The answer is: you just put one foot in front of the other and you hope that it goes alright.”
And as for what he predicts might happen to his career after Fantastic Beasts?
He laughs. “Well, firstly I hope people enjoy it. But certainly being part of this particular world, once I read the script it wasn’t even a question. I felt so damn lucky, frankly.”
But then as the old saying goes… you tend to make your own luck.