How Britain’s hottest new pin-up first broke hearts - as a very convincing girl
WITH a full head of ringlets, a dash of periodappropriate make-up and a darling hat, it has to be admitted that Eddie Redmayne makes an adorable young woman.
Indeed, the actor — strongly tipped for an Oscar next year for his performance as physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything — spent much of his teens in female roles. He explains that as a pupil at all-boys’ school Eton, it was necessary for some boys to take the female roles in drama productions.
And it is no surprise to learn that Eddie — full- l i pped, with high cheekbones, delicate features and a stardust sprinkling of freckles — was often chosen to trip prettily across the gender divide.
Photos of him playing Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night — a girl dressed as a boy, played by a boy actor in the Bard’s day — show he is undeniably beautiful.
Indeed, one national newspaper critic who reviewed the production gushed that Redmayne was ‘scandalously persuasive as Viola’ in this all-male production and ‘would bring out the bisexual in any man’.
Equally floridly, the play’s director, Tim Carroll, observed that the young actor was ‘quite troublingly beautiful’.
As luck would have it, this cross-dressing performance was Redmayne’s big break.
Having excelled at drama at Eton — where he was a contemporary of Prince William and regarded him as a ‘mate’ — he went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, on a choral scholarship.
Two years into his history of art degree, he was contacted by his Eton drama master and asked to audition for the role of Viola in a production at London’s Globe Theatre.
Aged only 20, he got the part and starred opposite the brilliant Mark Rylance — managing to counter the established actor’s scene - stealing tendencies with a performance of remarkable freshness and intelligence. There was an immediate bidding war between various London agents who were keen to sign Redmayne.
Leading theatre and film roles followed, notably in the film musical of Les Miserables and My Week With Marilyn (about Laurence Olivier’s troubled relationship with Monroe), plus a stint as one of the faces of fashion label Burberry.
NOW, at 32, he is hot property on an i nternational scale, and on the verge of Alist status. He is also — to general heartbreak — just married to his l ong- term girlfriend, Hannah Bagshawe, an antiques dealer.
On Monday, the couple tied the knot at Babington House, a private members’ club in Somerset. They are rumoured to have had the venue turned into a ‘ winter wonderland’ with fake snow.
It is certainly an eventful time for Redmayne. Last week, he was nominated as Best Actor in the Golden Globes — a sure- fire indication that he will be in the running for an Oscar in February.
The critics are drooling over him — with his performance as a young Stephen Hawking described as ‘mesmerising’ (The Theory Of Everything is set for release here on New Year’s Day).
So, what makes Edward Redmayne such movie gold dust? Born in 1982, one of five sporty, academic and accomplished children, Eddie was raised in considerable privilege. Home was a magnificent pile overlooking the Thames on London’ s Chelsea Embankment.
Although his parents were not in showbusiness (his father is a successful banker), he had drama lessons and, aged 12, played an urchin in a West End production of Oliver! He wanted to go to drama school, but his parents persuaded him to go to university first. To his credit, he has never tried to play down his moneyed roots, nor has he been the target of much of the criticism of ‘ over- privilege’ that has been directed at fellow posh boy actor Benedict Cumberbatch.
‘Do I feel posh? Well, I suppose,’ Redmayne once said. ‘I went to Eton. I also went to Cambridge. So, yes, I definitely come from a privileged background. But I have lots of friends from different walks of life.’
And explaining why there seems to be a disproportionate number of actors f r om upper- crust backgrounds (Tom Hiddleston, who plays Loki in the Thor films, Homeland’s Damian Lewis and The Wire’s Dominic West are also Old Etonians), Redmayne has pointed to fee-paying schools’ superior facilities.
An inspirational drama teacher was also a huge influence. Simon Dormandy, known as ‘Dormo’ to the boys, chose Redmayne for a leading role in his first school production — a version of E. M. Forster’s A Passage To India. Next, he played Henry VI.
Dormandy recalled: ‘I knew as soon as I met [Eddie] that he was exceptionally gifted. He was able and happy to be very raw. That remains part of the essence of why he’s such an extraordinary actor.’
AFTER school, and that key turn as Viola, the roles and praise kept on coming. Michael Grandage, former artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse, London, says: ‘Eddie finds an honesty and purity in the moment.’
Redmayne played a psychotic schoolboy in the thriller film Like Minds, then Angelina Jolie’s son in The Good Shepherd, followed by a role as Julianne Moore’s incestuous son in Savage Grace.
As for his personal life, in 2011 he was linked to actress Carey Mulligan (now married to Marcus Mumford of f olk- r ock band Mumford & Sons). But romance soon faded. The following year, he was spotted cosying up to pop star Taylor Swift, after she went backstage having watched him perform. But he denied any relationship, saying: ‘I spoke to her for seven-and-a-half minutes.’
In truth, he was dating Hannah Bagshawe, a brunette with a taste for Gucci frocks, who is believed to have been introduced to Eddie by one of his siblings.
The couple announced their engagement in June, with Redmayne telling Vogue how he had very romantically attempted to measure Hannah’s finger for a ring by waiting until she was asleep.
The marriage plans were kept very quiet, but according to sources, the couple became man and wife in a candlelit ceremony at 5.30pm on Monday.
But his female fans can comfort themselves that, though he’s now married, they will be seeing an awful lot more of him on the big screen in years to come.