German translator admits stalking Hollywood actor

A GERMAN translator has admitted stalking Hollywood star Eddie Redmayne after she saw him in a play five years ago.

Gaby Stieger, 49, repeatedly loitered outside the Oscar-winning actor’s house in Southwark, south London, and sent him love letters. She pleaded guilty at Camberwell Green Magistrates’ Court yesterday to stalking. Redmayne,

right, described the distress it caused him and his family in a statement read to the court.

He said: “I always try to be open and friendly as support (from fans) is what gives me a career. I deeply regret having met Gaby Stieger – she harassed myself and my family intermittently over five years, leaving us distressed, unsafe and deeply unsettled.”

She would appear outside his house “out of nowhere – observing me and my family without us knowing”, he added. “The safety of my family is everything to me and with her behaviour we can’t feel safe,” he wrote.

He also said her face would “contort with rage” when she spoke about his wife, Hannah Bagshawe. Stieger first met Redmayne, 35, after seeing him on stage at Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden in 2012. The following year, she began visiting the set while he was filming The Theory

Of Everything and tried to get Redmayne to pose in a picture with her. She followed him and his wife to a carol service at Eton College in 2013. She can be seen staring at him in a photograph taken by a fan.

The mother-of-two, whose teenage daughters live in Germany, sent Redmayne letters “expressing admiration and love”, prosecutor Sara Ashkboos said.

He was so worried about the stalking that he contacted a solicitor and repeatedly told Stieger to leave him and his family alone.

Stieger, of Colindale, London, was released on conditional bail, banning her from contacting Redmayne, and is due to be sentenced today.