Hawking and the ‘everything of love’
It was this extraordinary love story, an analysis of love. If our dream is to tell great stories, this felt like a really interesting one
BRITISH actor Eddie Redmayne was among the millions of people all over the world who got swept up in the ALS IceBucket Challenge last year. But the 32-year-old’s contribution to creating awareness about motor neuron disease has gone further than just the 21-second video he made in which he dumped a bucket of ice over himself and let out a full-bodied “phwoar” in response.
Redmayne, who was part of 2012’s all-star Les Miserables film, has humanised the disease by taking on the role of British scientist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, which opens in SA next weekend. Hawking, who was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) shortly after his 21st birthday, has lived with the disease for almost five decades. He is a revered physicist and deeply influential author to boot.
Redmayne portrays the pivotal time in Hawking’s life when ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, took over his body. It’s also the time, crucially, when the young Hawking began his doctoral research in cosmology at Cambridge University, leading him to work on the basic laws which govern the universe, thereby changing our understanding of the world.
Most important, it is also time he met and fell in love with the woman who would come to be a pillar during it all, his first wife, Jane. She is played in the film with a firm but gentle strength by Felicity Jones, who earned an Oscar nomination for best actress.
Playing Hawking has earned Redmayne much applause and a number of accolades. It has earned the actor the right to go into this Sunday’s Oscars (Academy Awards) as very stiff competition for veteran star Michael Keaton. Just a few months ago, Keaton seemed the one to beat for the best actor statue, after his stellar turn as a washed-up actor in Alejandro G Inarritu’s Birdman rejuvenated his career and gave him his first Oscar nomination.
While Keaton has picked up a number of awards in the run-up to Oscar Sunday, so too has Redmayne, most notable among them the Screen Actors Guild award, which has predicted every single Academy Awards Best Actor winner in the past 10 years.
“I fought very hard for it,” says the theatre-trained Redmayne, about scoring the role, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September last year.
“I read the script and I thought I was reading a biopic of Hawking. It subverted all my expectations as it was this extraordinary love story; almost an analysis of love — young love, passionate love, love of a subject matter, the boundaries of love, the failings of love.
“As actors, if our dream is to tell great stories, then this felt like a really interesting one to tell.”
FOR all the praise and award attention the film has attracted, Redmayne says he is just happy to have got the blessing of Hawking and Jane Wilde Hawking after they had seen the film themselves. “They’re the ultimate judges, so the stakes felt incredibly high. The fact that they saw the film and were so generous about it, that was the greatest award. It’s a universal story about obstacles and how one chooses to overcome them. Any nice thing being said about the film that gets people to go see it, and learn more about ALS, is great,” he says.
Redmayne took four months to prepare for the part — which required him to learn to use muscles in his face that he’d never used before. The wheelchair-bound Hawking is dependent on a computerised voice system for communication and Redmayne had to contort his body to mirror the effects ALS has had on the physicist’s limbs.
“It’s like a dance, learning how to move new muscles, and I worked with a choreographer to find ways to access those so that it wasn’t such a shock to my system,” he says. Redmayne also loaded his iPad with any documentary and every photograph he could find of the physicist.
Hawking himself came to the set and met Redmayne a few days before filming began in Cambridge. “He had gone from idol to iconic in my mind. I was pretty terrified,” says the actor. “And I couldn’t stop talking. I spent the first half hour telling Stephen Hawking all about Stephen Hawking, and he had this smile on his face and a look that said, ‘Really? I do know about myself, you know.’ ”
While Hawking was unable to say much during their first encounter, Redmayne says it felt like he still communicated a lot.
“He uses one eye muscle,” he says. “In two to three hours he said maybe eight sentences, but I still gained so much from him. He has a charismatic face, and still emanates this humour, mischief, and great wit. He has great power, and really controls a room.”
Wilde Hawking, too, visited the set, adding her own touch of authenticity. “I remember she came and ruffled my hair, saying, ‘No, Eddie, his hair would be much messier!’ I couldn’t believe it, here was Jane Hawking styling my hair as the young Stephen Hawking.”
The film taps into a side of Hawking most may have overlooked, having become used to seeing images of him in his wheelchair with its small computer and American-accented trademark voice talking about scientific theories. It is based on Wilde Hawking’s memoirs, and details their 25year relationship and the three children they had together — a life-affirming feat that defied the doctors who said Hawking would live for only two years after his diagnosis.
In its own way, for Redmayne to have made it this far is a feat in itself too. The bright-eyed young actor will this weekend go up against a seasoned veteran in Keaton who is almost double his age and, if the pundits are to be believed, Redmayne may just triumph. Come what may, he has already played his part in illustrating what living with ALS truly means — beyond a bucket of ice.