Eddie Redmayne: 5 essential performances

In the decade since he appeared in forgettable boarding-school murder tale Like Minds (2006), Eddie Redmayne’s acting has shown considerable range. He played a monk in medieval action romp Black Death (2010), student revolutionary Marius Pontmercy in Les Misérables (2012) and, yes, a large purple train in Thomas & Friends: Sodor’s Legend of the Lost Treasure (2015).

Meanwhile, the former Eton pupil played a drifter in the critically maligned Hick (2011) and was deliciously slimy in the Wachowskis’ camply amusing but utterly risible space opera Jupiter Ascending (2015).

Redmayne is perhaps best known for his stunning performance as Professor Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (2014). But if his assured lead role in the restlessly inventive J.K. Rowling fantasy smash Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is anything to go by, a future in leading franchise blockbusters could yet be his for the taking.

Director: Tom Kalin

In Tom Kalin’s elegant, chilly and chilling drama, Redmayne plays Tony Baekeland, the heir to the Bakelite fortune who murdered his socialite mother Barbara (Julianne Moore). By far the best of Redmayne’s early career performances, his languid take on Tony is unsettling, always suggesting a kind of unhinged ennui. Hearing the sparingly used voiceover, listeners may recognise a tremulous, super-medicated Andy Warhol timbre, and he’s worthy of praise for holding his own alongside Moore, on typically fine form as a smothering and incestuous alcoholic. Both actors excel in this unpleasant true story, which charts the path of a disintegrating super-rich family through the postwar period to 1972, when matricide drags the sad tale to its grim conclusion.

Director: Simon Curtis

Colin Clark’s diaries about his experiences looking after Marilyn Monroe when she visited the UK to shoot The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) yielded Simon Curtis’s gentle and nostalgic semi-biopic. Redmayne excels with a winning mix of naivety and cunning as Clark, the studio gopher caught amid the Monroe maelstrom. Redmayne’s scenes with Michelle Williams (an excellent, damaged but dazzling Monroe) are never less than amusing or poignant. In particular, scenes late on where Clark realises with sorrowful inevitability that Monroe was obviously never going to leave her husband for him – in spite of the love that may have grown between them – have a bittersweet and truthful air.

Director: James Marsh

By now, Redmayne’s Oscar-winning turn as Stephen Hawking must have been seen and admired by nearly as many people as have swooned at Hawking’s formidable intellect. Yet playing the world’s most famous living physicist is not without its challenges. As Redmayne told the Guardian: “I had to train my body like a dancer but learn to shorten muscles instead of stretch them.” In the early scenes, set while Hawking is at Cambridge figuring out the black hole thesis that would make his name, Redmayne is merely charming and brilliant as the shambling, charismatic soon-to-be professor. But once the debilitating ravages of motor neurone disease set in, Redmayne’s thoughts and feelings come from glances, eyebrows and cheeks (alongside Hawking’s famous voice synthesiser). It’s easy to be cynical about able-bodied actors winning awards for playing disabled roles, but Redmayne is remarkable here.

Director: Tom Hooper

In taking on the role of Danish painter Lili Elbe, Redmayne again proved himself as an actor unafraid of taking on a challenge. Having been born male, Elbe struggled with her gender her whole life before eventually becoming one of the first people to undergo male to female sex reassignment surgery, ultimately dying from its complications. Such a story should make riveting cinema but while Tom Hooper’s handsome film has some finely composed scenes, it is ultimately a showcase for Redmayne’s talents. Vulnerability, uncertainty and deep feelings of internal conflict are not the most straightforward emotions for an actor to impart, yet Redmayne’s glances and countenance are fraught and fragile.

Director: David Yates

From his auspiciously amusing and mischievous introduction scene at New York customs, Redmayne’s role as wizard-author Newt Scamander is terrific fun throughout. He doggedly runs around a 1926 Big Apple, chasing the titular beasts and, of course, hilariously winding up the po-faced magical establishment as he goes.

Aside from his extraordinary portrayal of Stephen Hawking, this is probably Redmayne’s most satisfying performance to date. There are fine moments of ‘magizoologist’ tenderness where Scamander comes on like Chris Packham with a book of spells, but there’s also meaty battles with enigmatic and possibly mendacious ‘Director of Magical Security’ Percival Graves (Colin Farrell), while Redmayne’s one-liner delivery is at its best here. Reports claim the four planned Beasts… sequels may not feature Scamander as the lead, but if not that would surely be a missed opportunity.