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Eddie Redmayne Sparks Oscars Buzz With Portrayal Of Transgender Woman In New Film, While Secretly Worrying He’s ‘Not Pretty Enough’

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 04:31 PST, Nov 22, 2015

Eddie Redmayne sure knows how to be in the spotlight of Academy Awards critics. Redmayne won his first Oscar for playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything earlier this year. And now, the British actor is getting buzz that he has a high chance of winning his second Academy Award in a row, according to Today.

The movie The Danish Girl, in which Eddie Redmayne plays an artist who was one of the first people on earth to undergo transgender surgery, opens in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on November 27, and goes nationwide on December 25.

Eddie Redmayne revealed more about his character in an interview with Today‘s Matt Lauer on Thursday.

“Lili was born Einar Wegener. She was an artist, and she was living in a time in which there were no examples or even vocabulary with which she could understand what it was that she was going through.”

The plot describes the story of Einar being married to a fellow artist, Gerda, who is at first supportive of Einar’s discovery of the woman within himself. Then Einar (who later becomes Lili) pursues his dream of becoming a woman by going through a surgery. Gerda first supports Einar’s transformation into a woman, but the couple later develops a huge gap in their relationship.

Eddie Redmayne was shooting in the director Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables when he was offered the script to play the transgender woman. He accepted the role, and called it an “amazing, beautiful love story,” as reported by Today.

If the movie does manage to help Eddie Redmayne receive his second Oscar in a row, he will become the third actor to earn back-to-back Academy Award as the lead actor, after Tom Hanks and Spencer Tracy.

When asked by E! Online if he was hoping to earn a yet another Academy Award for the movie next year, Eddie Redmayne humbly mumbled “Oh, god” before continuing.

“It’s been 15 years in the making. The fact the film is coming out into the world and people seem to enjoy it, it’s for me one of the greatest things.”

In an interview with E! Online, Eddie Redmayne also revealed that he doesn’t take it personally when visitors to his home ignore him when they arrive. Instead, they go directly to the Oscar statue to take a selfie!

“It’s sort of like they walk in and before they’ve said hello to you and it more about taking a selfie with the thing. I still can’t even believe it exists.”

Playing a transgender woman made Eddie Redmayne experience of what it’s like to be judged, and even made him worry about being “pretty enough,” according to the Daily News.

The stares given by the crew members were enough to make him feel self-conscious when he first appeared on the set of The Danish Girl in a woman’s dress and with full face of makeup, Eddie Redmayne revealed in an interview with the Daily News.

“One of the most interesting things for me was my first day on the set as Lili Elbe and the gaze of the crew members — being looked at and being judged, it really made me nervous. Many of the trans women I met had described that feeling when they first went out of being judged, though of course for them it’s coupled with the fear of violence.”

Eddie Redmayne also recalled a moment in the movie where Lili asked, “Do you think I’m pretty enough?” and it was something that was on his mind as well, he revealed.

Producers of The Danish Girl struggled for almost fifteen years to raise the $15 million production budget that would probably just cover the makeup budget on a big budget film such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens. And now the film is generating Oscars buzz. It just goes to show.

[Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images]

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