Fantastic Eddie
Oscar-winning actor Eddie Redmayne talks about J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (opening Nov. 18), his wife and new daughter and where he finds true happiness
FOR MORE THAN
20 years, Eddie Redmayne has loved acting. He’s played opposite Emma Watson and Michelle Williams in My Week With Marilyn, sung with Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway in Les Misérables and portrayed a transgender woman in The Danish Girl and physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Now Redmayne, 34, is Newt Scamander, a young “magizoologist” scouring the pre–Harry Potter world for magical creatures, collecting samples of them in his suitcase.
Parade caught up with Redmayne from his house in the English countryside, about three hours outside London. He was there with his wife of two years, Hannah Bagshawe, 34, and Iris, their 5-month-old daughter. Why was the role of Newt Scamander in Fantastic
Beasts appealing to you? It was a mixture of Newt’s vulnerability and strength. He wasn’t an obvious hero. He’s not a people pleaser. He’s content in his own skin. He wasn’t someone that needed to be liked. In fact, at the beginning, he has a naughty, slightly spiky quality to him. He’s not someone that you’re going to instantaneously warm to, but he has a great heart. When you see him interact with his creatures, you realize what his passion is. And for me, anyone who has a passion in life is
instantly interesting. It doesn’t matter what that passion is. Did you decide to play Newt because you wanted to star in a movie that your daughter would love? When I took the role, [my wife] Hannah wasn’t pregnant yet. Now Fantastic Beasts feels like a wonderful benefit for my daughter, although it’ll be a few years before she can see it. Are you doing a sequel to Fantastic Beasts? I know that J.K. Rowling has written
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Oliver! in London. I said to my parents that I wanted to audition for it, and I got cast as one of the urchins. I was 11. I got to leave school in the middle of math class every week and go do a performance. I was like, “This is it!” It was incredibly seductive and completely hypnotizing. It grabbed me. It was love.
How did you learn to act? I did lots of theater in school. In [Cambridge] university I was cast in Twelfth Night with Mark Rylance [the spy in Bridge of Spies]. That was my training, playing opposite a virtuoso in Mark Rylance and really trying to listen and learn. I always feel incredibly grateful for that. I didn’t go to drama school, but what I did get was the opportunity to work, even in tiny parts, with some really brilliant actors onstage and in film, observing not only how they acted but how they behaved. I was very lucky with that. From admire? whomI’ll neverdid you forget learn Mark the Rylance,most, andor workingwhom do with you Robert most De would Niro directon Theby keepingGood Shepherd.the cameraDe Niro’s rolling,a wonderfulallowing you man. to He take the the emotion beginning fromof a the scene. end I of useda scenethat a and lot re-channelon The Theoryit backof Everything,into
Blanchett,The Danishwhen we Girl were and doing Fantastic Elizabeth: Beasts. The I’ll Goldennever forgetAge, sittingCate on her chair in her costume, with headphones on, doing her dialect work, one word after another. I thought, My God, despite all her success, the work ethic remains because she cares about the work. There are a lot in my generation that I admire hugely. I love Ben Whishaw. He’s a phenomenal actor. He cast his own path. You’ve taken on some very risky roles. The idea of playing interesting, complicated, delicate, vibrant, strong, rigorous human beings is what [actors] live for. That’s the stuff that we dream of. I don’t see it as risk taking. I see it as an amazing opportunity to play interesting people. In 2009, you were onstage in Red in London, and a year later on Broadway. Your performance won the British Olivier Award and a Tony. Did you have any idea then that you’d become, seemingly overnight, hugely successful? It doesn’t happen suddenly. Everything for me has been little baby steps. You’ve fought for parts really hard and not won them, not had the opportunities, and the second you are given it, it’s just the most wonderful thing. In some ways, Red was the dream for me. I was getting that play at a time in which I was auditioning for hundreds of things and couldn’t get anything. It was a bit of a savior, this amazing moment. It was a wonderful thing.
How do you handle stardom? You keep focused on the task at hand and basically realize that work is at the core of it. You have massive lows and highs. Don’t indulge too much in either. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. When you couple
that with having a great family and a wonderful wife who keeps me pretty grounded, there’s not time for the other stuff. The rest of it is ephemeral.
Meaning what? Like, you’re on a pecking order that oscillates, depending on how successful your last film was. It’s how financeable you are. Has fame has changed you? It’s made me less open, more private. Fame made me want to find places of solitude in my private life. How did you meet Hannah? I met Hannah when I was about 15 years old! It took us another 15 years to get together. You didn’t forget about her in all those years? Nope, nope, didn’t forget her. But it took a while. Were you in school together? I was at Eton [an English all-boys high school], she was at a girls’ school. There was a [school] charity event and they shipped in a load of boys. I was one of them. Hannah and I met then. We became friends and saw each other periodically over the years. Weirdly, later when I was doing Red in New York, we bumped into each other in the street, but it took a while for us [romantically]. When did you get together? We got together between the rehearsals and the filming of
Les Misérables. I had four days off and I booked a holiday to Florence by myself, just to take a moment’s breath before I
began filming. Hannah came with me. And that was when it all started.
What does Hannah do? She works in antiques. Quite often people say she’s my publicist because she used to work in financial PR. But for the past five years she’s been working in the antiques business. For all we’ve seen, you’ve lived a very upright life. Where do your values come
from? I have very good parents, and I love them. They are strong people. They instilled in me things that are important: kindness, respect and a work ethic. And those other things that pertain to celebrity, to the need for attention, aren’t the reasons I got into acting. But you wanted to be famous, yes? If it all ended tomorrow and I was still able to do a play or two a year—that would make me incredibly happy. That’s the truth of it. All the bells and whistles [of celebrity] are a wonderful embellishment, but it wasn’t the reason I got into it.
You miss doing theater? I absolutely do. And I’m constantly thinking about when I’d be able to do it again. What I love doing are new plays. I’ve been talking to [theater] directors. I’m desperate to do a play.
Are you happy? I’m very happy where I am at the moment, which is literally home with my wife and my child. I’m incredibly content when I’m surrounded by my family and, ideally, playing a piano.