Eddie Redmayne reveals how he REALLY won an Oscar for playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything – and claims it wasn’t just because of his acting ability

Eddie Redmayne has admitted that extreme exhaustion from anxiety ultimately won him the Oscar win for his portrayal of Professor Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything – and not his acting talent.

The British actor, 42, wowed viewers and critics alike with his extraordinary performance as the celebrated theoretical physicist, who was living with a rare form of ALS – a neurodegenerative disease that attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.

For the role, Redmayne trained for months with zombie choreographer and movement director Alexandra Reynolds, to accurately embody the scientist during different stages of the disease.

But despite the training, Redmayne claimed a lack of sleep due to nerves was to blame for his Oscar-winning performance ten years ago.

Speaking to an audience on 92Y in New York City on Monday, he told host Josh Horowitz, “When I did The Theory Of Everything… the thing that scared me the most about that movie was portraying him authentically.

But the actor (pictured with Professor Hawking in 2014), 42, said extreme exhaustion from anxiety was behind the win – and not just his acting skills.

‘I spent months preparing it, but the way films work is that you obviously can’t film chronologically.

‘And especially during the first days of shooting, we had to film everything that was happening in Cambridge, because the students had not yet returned for the semester. So we had to shoot all the scenes that were outdoors.”

The star went on to explain how he had felt immense pressure prior to his first day on set, having to play the famous physicist at four different stages of his life: when he was a young man before the diagnosis, when the symptoms manifested he could no longer walk without a cane, when the disease ‘really took hold of him’ and he was confined to a wheelchair.

“Every time I feel the fear before shooting, it becomes so intense,” he recalls. ‘The night before the shoot it was four in the morning and I didn’t sleep. And I was picked up at six o’clock!

“I got there at five in the morning and thought, ‘Okay, I’m just not going to sleep.’ I took a bath, woke up and walked through the streets of Cambridge.’

He then recalled, “I think the fatigue was so overwhelming. At the end of the day I had to do a full breakdown scene and I was so tired and so exhausted.

“So when it came down to it, the director [James Marsh] poked me and I just fell apart… which is probably really helpful and might have gotten me an Oscar.”

Redmayne’s Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar was one of several during the 2014 awards season, with the star taking home a BAFTA, Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his portrayal of Professor Hawking alongside Felicity Jones as his wife, Jane Wilde .

“I think the fatigue was so overwhelming,” Redmayne said. “At the end of the day I had to do a full breakdown scene and I was so tired and so exhausted.”

Redmayne pictured with his wife Hannah Bagshawe and his Oscar statuette at the Vanity Fair party in 2015

But perhaps the ultimate accolade came from the eminent scientist himself, who said: ‘I thought Eddie portrayed me very well. Sometimes I thought he was me. I think Eddie’s commitment will have a great emotional impact.”

Professor Hawking died in March 2018 at the age of 76.

Redmayne paid tribute at the time, writing: ‘We have lost a truly beautiful mind, an amazing scientist and the funniest man I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. My love and thoughts are with his extraordinary family.”

Redmayne, who is married to Hannah Bagshawe, threw himself into training and research for the role and previously told The Guardian he visited the Queen Square Center for Neuromuscular Diseases in London to talk to ALS patients and their doctors.

He also treated the disease as if it were a dance, working closely with choreographer and movement specialist Reynolds, who created the famous zombie movement in World War Z (2013).

Redmayne said he was so tired on the first day of filming that the director poked him and he ‘fell apart’

“I had to train my body like a dancer, but learned to shorten muscles instead of stretching them,” he told the publication.

In an interview with Nightline, he said, “I just had to train my body just to hold the positions.

“I knew some of the positions would be specific and contorted and not necessarily comfortable.”

The film focuses on the love story between Professor Hawking and first wife Jane, whom he met shortly before his devastating diagnosis when he was 21 – and given just two years to live.

Redmayne is currently starring in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club on Broadway, following a transfer from London’s West End, alongside Gayle Rankin from The Greatest Showman.