Eddie Redmayne doesn't think he has made "many" films that are "great".
Eddie Redmayne isn't his own biggest fan
The 40-year-old actor - whose extensive career has seen him recognised with an Academy Award, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA , and two Laurence Olivier Awards - insisted he hasn't done that well in his work and even as a student at Cambridge alongside the likes of Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens and Tom Hiddleston, he always found his own performances lacking.
He told The Times' Saturday Review: “The aspiration is always to make a great film and I don’t think I’ve made many of those...
"[At university] I remember seeing Tom in 'Arcadia' and he was amazing. Rebecca was always extraordinary, and I remember Dan doing the Scottish play with extraordinary power too.
"But to be clear, the theatre that I did in Cambridge was utterly appalling.”
When Eddie made 'Les Miserables', he confessed to asking director Tom Hooper if he could do multiple takes of the 'Empty Chairs' number because people on set had been praising his co-stars so much.
He admitted: “I did twentysomething takes, back to back.
"Because every day on that set you’d hear someone saying [drops voice to reverential whisper]: ‘Oh, have you heard Hugh’s [Jackman] extraordinary rendition of 'Who Am I'? And, oh, Annie’s [Hathaway] 'I Dreamed a Dream'?’
"But my one they kept pushing further down the schedule. So, by the time you get there, the pressure is immense. So I said: ‘Let’s give it as many times as we can!’ ”
The 'Good Nurse' star hit the height of his fame in 2014 when 'The Theory of Everything' was released and he married wife Hannah Bagshawe, and he admitted the whole "extraordinary" period is still a "hazy blur" to him.
He said: “The whole year of making 'The Theory of Everything' was a blur because the stakes were so high and because I knew Stephen [Hawking] was going to see it.
"Then, when I was promoting the film, I was making 'The Danish Girl'. And then, when I was making 'Fantastic Beasts', there was a day where I left the shoot, flew to LA, did press for 'The Danish Girl', walked the red carpet, got back on the plane and flew straight back into the 'Fantastic Beasts' shoot. It is a period that is a hazy blur, and also because I was newly married, and then with young kids. It was an extraordinary time, but one that I still haven’t made much sense of.
Though Eddie loves his job, he wants to find the right balance between his career and what is best for his children, Iris, six, and four-year-old Luke.
He said: “Actors are essentially circus performers. And yet I had an upbringing that was very settled. And so trying to work out what’s best for our family is something that I question every day. It’s about not wanting my job, and my interests and my love for what I do to, like, damage my poor little ones.”
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