Hawking film distorted truth, says ex-wife

THE former wife of Stephen Hawking has claimed that the Oscar-winning film about their life “distorted” the truth and omitted the contribution her parents made to his care.

The Theory of Everything, starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, was based on Jane Hawking’s memoir.

While she felt Redmayne’s best actor Oscar was “well-deserved” and Jones’s performance was excellent, Hawking said she was disappointed in the film.

“On reflection, there were aspects with which we were not so pleased. Facts were distorted in the interests of limiting the running time to two hours,” she told an audience at the Henley Literary Festival.

The couple were portrayed as meeting in Cambridge, yet in reality they met in their home town of St Alban’s where Jane had just left school.

The film also missed out the early years of their married life in which they travelled widely and lived in the US.

But Hawking said she felt most aggrieved about the omission of her parents’ role.

“My dear parents, who were such willing helpers, scarcely get a look-in in the film, especially sad since the premiere took place on what would have been my dad’s 100th birthday,” she said.

Her late husband approved of the film, she said, although “Stephen’s reaction was that he would have liked the film to be more about science and less about emotion, but my feeling was the exact opposite, for the film was emotionally very true to life”.