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Eddie Redmayne felt ‘uncomfortable’ filming Stephen Hawking biopic


Eddie Redmayne never felt "comfortable" whilst filming ‘The Theory of Everything’.

The 32-year-old actor – who plays the lead in a biopic about Stephen Hawking’s life – admitted that he couldn’t relax on set because of the pressure of playing someone so "iconic".

When asked at what point he felt comfortable during shooting, he said: "Never, actually. Particularly because there is so much documentary material on Stephen and I watched and continued to watch sort of all of it …

"It’s unheard of, really, for an actor to see every day’s material but I kept seeing it. I had this iPad with all this footage of Stephen and then I’d see the footage of me and wish it could just blend.

"There was never a moment where I could relax, right to the last scene."

Meanwhile, Eddie also opened up embarrassing himself when he first met Stephen.

He explained to Collider.com: "I’d spent maybe four or five months researching everything about [Stephen] and in the process, I began to idolise him more and more and what he’d achieved and how he chose to live his life.

"I suffer from verbal diarrhoea and I basically spent the first 35 minutes just genuinely vomiting forth information about Stephen Hawking to Stephen Hawking."

He continued: "I ended up saying: ‘Of course, Stephen, you were born on the 8th of January, which is Galileo’s birthday … I was born on the 6th of January, so we’re both Capricorns.’ There was the six minute pause and in his iconic voice, he came out and said: ‘I am an astronomer, not an astrologer’."