EDDIE REDMAYNE may get to grips with wands and wizardry in the upcoming Harry Potter prequel — but it was becoming a dad which left him spellbound.
The Oscar winner revealed how newborn Iris Mary changed his outlook on life while filming JK Rowling’s latest addition to her Potter universe, Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them.
Speaking for the first time about the role, the posh actor told The Sun on Sunday: “What’s been the most magical thing throughout all this, you know — this is probably really glib and naff — but I’ve just had a child not very long ago and when that arrives into the world, you’re like, ‘wow’.
“I kept saying to my wife, ‘How is it possible, that that just comes from . . .?’ I suppose that’s probably a cliched thing to say but it felt magical.
“It’s been an extraordinary adventure that nothing, no matter how incredible this film experience has been, could compare.
“And it’s exciting to be in a film that she could hopefully watch sooner rather than later and enjoy. It’s been a very special, eye-opening year.”
Eton-educated Eddie, 34, who went to school with Prince William, has admitted he has had a life of “extreme privilege” but he is modest and self-effacing.
There is a reason he is known as one of the nicest men in showbiz and has an army of loyal fans that could rival Benedict Cumberbatch’s so-called Cumberbitches.
Previously he favoured more adult roles, including a lovelorn soldier in 2012 musical Les Misérables and his Oscar-winning turn as Professor Stephen Hawking in 2014’s The Theory Of Everything.
Daddy’s in a dress or attempting to sing
He played the world’s first transsexual in last year’s hit The Danish Girl, but lost out to Leonardo DiCaprio in the Best Actor category.
But he is thrilled his daughter will be able to watch this more family-friendly offering, saying: “This is one role where she shouldn’t be left wondering why daddy is in a dress or attempting to sing.”
Eddie beefed up considerably for Fantastic Beasts and is the proud owner of a six-pack, which he keeps hidden with a plain woolly jumper to match his unassuming style.
He is understandably gutted a topless scene from the Warner Bros movie was cut at the last minute, because he spent months in the gym honing his physique.
But, typically, he plays down his heart-throb status and considers himself “a pin-down not pin-up” despite being a model for Burberry.
If Eddie did his own PR he would have won a Razzie rather than an Oscar, he is so regularly dismissive of his achievements.
Luckily, he married PR executive Hannah Bagshawe, 33, in December 2014 and welcomed baby Iris in June this year.
The pair met at a charity fashion show while Eddie — who was mortified he had to model topless next to “the best-looking boy in the school” — was at Eton.
But he and Hannah, who went to a nearby girls’ school, did not start dating until 2012.
Hannah soon gave up her office job to support Eddie as he became one of the hottest film stars in the world.
He had finished filming most of Fantastic Beasts — author JK’s first foray into screenwriting — when their daughter was born.
In the film he plays the “knotty and slightly spiky” Newt Scamander, an introverted wizard chasing magical creatures around New York in the Twenties, decades before Hogwarts’ student Harry was even born.
Eddie added: “He gets on much better with his creatures than he does with human beings. There’s a slight sense that he’s a bit damaged from his relationships with humans. He has this suitcase in which he can go down and be with his creatures and there’s a love of solitude.
“He’s perhaps not willing to open himself up to being hurt and through this film he finds people who are equally passionate outsiders, and he begins to start making connections.
“But he’s a weird anomaly of things, being quite physically awkward while also incredibly agile and capable.”
Details about the script and shoot were so tight that Eddie found himself in trouble with the studio’s stringent security force.
He explained: “It was so confidential I was scared for my life at times.
“We weren’t supposed to print out scripts. When we needed to, they had to be put in a safe at night.
“Once I accidentally walked off set at the end of the day with my pages and it was almost like a sort of police escort had to come to tell me off and bring it back.
“I am a bit of a rambler and prone to many an awkward conversational gaffe, so I lived in eternal fear that this would result in me blurting out a plotline.”
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The film is the second new Potter project following the books and their screen adaptations.
Earlier this year JK premiered a hugely successful two-part stage show, Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, which featured Harry as a middle-aged wizard and his teenage son, Albus.
But this movie is the first time the Potter universe has expanded outside of the exploits of Harry and pals Ron and Hermione.
JK has told how the plot was inspired by a spin-off book she wrote in 2001 of this same name for Comic Relief.
Between sales of this and companion book Quidditch Through The Ages, £17million was raised for the charity.
Eddie admitted to feeling the pressure to live up to the record-setting phenomenon of the original works.
I was born to be a Weasley
He even auditioned for the first eight films, hoping his red locks would land him a part as one of ginger character Ron Weasley’s brothers.
He recalled: “It was my little brother who got me into the book and the films became, for me, like this great escape every year or two.
“You’d just go and bathe in JK Rowling‘s world and just forget all your troubles. It became a ritual and I loved them.
“For years I always wanted to be in the films. There was a whole ginger family but I never got an audition. It felt like every actor in England got a role except me, it was a desperate time.
“I felt I was born to be a Weasley so I’m so glad that didn’t happen or they’d have trouble explaining why a Weasley was now in 1920s New York.”
Eddie confessed to being beside himself with “nerdiness” when he finally got to pick up one of the prop wands on set.
He said: “It’s this weird thing like when you get to pick up a wand, your inner nine-year-old is having the best moment of his life.
“It’s like, ‘Oh my god, I get to use one of these!’ I’ve always wanted to use one of these things.
“And then you pick one up and nothing happens, it felt so weird. I got complete stage fright and it took quite a while to get used to it. If the wand was real and I could change anything . . . how much time have we got? Brexit?
“On set Dan [Fogler, co-star] was great at inventing spells. He’d say, ‘Moon of Trump-urus’ or ‘Katherine Hepburnicus’.
“And if we were feeling a little bit lazy and needed some energy, he’d say ‘Leonardo DiCaffeinate!’”
Eddie — who has admitted to not asking original Potter star and fellow Brit Daniel Radcliffe for advice — enjoyed having JK on hand to help with his performance.
He said: “It’s extraordinary tapping into her knowledge.
“It’s like when you are getting to play a character that is written on a script but you can ask her anything, any detail from the smallest nuance to something big, she never hesitates.
“It’s there and it’s thorough, it’s encyclopaedic and so exciting.”