Can Eddie Redmayne nab Oscar No. 2?
LOS ANGELES — One might expect Eddie Redmayne to brag. Just a little.
After all, he won the best actor Oscar this year, and already has racked up Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and Critics' Choice nominations for his role as a transgender woman in the 1920s love story The Danish Girl, in theaters nationwide Christmas Day. Pundits are wondering if he could be the first actor since Tom Hanks to win back-to-back Academy Awards. (Hanks won for 1993's Philadelphia and 1994's Forrest Gump.)
Redmayne also happens to be the new face of the Harry Potter franchise, having taken on the role of Newt Scamander in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (now filming in London).
Still, he's just so normal.
"Oh, good. Good!" says Redmayne, 33, laughing. "I thought you were about to say, 'You've changed.' "
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The actor is on a 24-hour release from shooting Fantastic Beasts, having flown in on a private plane from the set for a 10-hour trip to The Danish Girl's U.S. premiere. "There was a bed on the plane," he says, a bit agog, noting that he and his wife Hannah "were sort of high five-ing each other."
But after a walk down the red carpet, he'll whisk back to London and hit the set an hour later. "He's incredible like that," says his Danish Girl director Tom Hooper, who last directed him in Les Miserables. "His head is not being turned by his success, and that's rare."
That work ethic was evident on The Danish Girl. In February, Redmayne stood on the Dolby Theatre stage, accepting his first Oscar for portraying Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. He recalls "the euphoria, 5 o'clock in the morning, the morning after the Oscars, roof of the Sunset Towers with seven friends, sun coming up, Sunset Boulevard with a flipping Oscar that almost didn't look real it was so shiny, going, 'Ahhhh!' "
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A day later he was strapped to a turn-of-the-century medical table, as Lili Elbe.
"He came straight from the airport back on set," says Hooper. "We're chatting about what it's like to win an Oscar, five minutes goes past, I look at my watch, and then he's like, 'We should go back to work.' "
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In The Danish Girl, Redmayne plays Einar Wegener, a celebrated landscape artist who hides a longing to live as a woman. Alicia Vikander, who plays his wife, Gerda, remembers the power of seeing Redmayne as Lili the first time.
"I was looking for Eddie, and then I see this gorgeous red-headed woman just turning around and I was just quite amazed," she says. "This is something that everyone teased me about. Tom was like, 'Yes! She was on set for about five minutes without realizing that was Eddie!' "
Redmayne shows great care when speaking of Lili, a longtime icon of the transgender community. The film "has been the most extraordinary education for me," he says. He hopes audiences turn out to see what a unique love story The Danish Girl is. "We strive to have order amongst fluidity (when) actually love is the one thing that can't be defined in the way that perhaps gender can't either," he says.
As for Oscar, experts say the icy wilderness drama The Revenant could give Redmayne a run for his money. "Eddie is looking like a sure thing for a second consecutive Oscar nomination," says Fandango.com Oscar expert Dave Karger. "But just as Michael Keaton (Birdman) was tough competition last time, he's got to contend with Leonardo DiCaprio, who has never won before and has to be considered the front-runner at this point."
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Let magic take care of the rest. Tomorrow, it's back to Fantastic Beasts. "Whoosh!" says Redmayne, shooting off an imaginary wand as he scoots down a hotel hallway.
And then?
"That's a question you'll have to ask my wife," he grins. "I'm like, 'I'm going to take months off!' She's like, 'You always say that.' And then you get sort of itchy feet."