Apple cider vinegar Is Pilates for you? 'Ambient gaslighting' 'Main character energy'
MOVIES
Academy Awards

How Eddie Redmayne found his 'Danish Girl'

Andrea Mandell
USA TODAY
Eddie Redmayne stars in 'The Danish Girl.'

LOS ANGELES — An early peek at Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe, in a red wig and makeup, went viral.

But that image is a mere shadow of the transgender woman — "a pioneer," says Redmayne — at the heart of The Danish Girl, the drama he was shooting when he won his best actor Oscar for The Theory of Everything.

Seven months before cameras started rolling, "we went through different looks, different wigs, different makeup. And at the end, I was like, 'Let's just take everything off, I'm just going to photograph you as yourself,' " says director Tom Hooper, who last directed Redmayne in Les Misérables.

7 Oscar-worthy films to finish out 2015

"It was just his own hair, minimal makeup, he was just wearing a slip. And he looked the best of all the pictures — he looked beautiful, he looked feminine. Suddenly, there was a confidence there that I hadn't seen all day ... Suddenly, I saw Lili."

The Danish Girl (opens Friday in New York and Los Angeles, expands nationwide through December) begins in 1926, in the home of a real-life Danish couple. Lili lived as Einar Wegener, married to Gerda (Alicia Vikander). Both were painters; Einar was famous for his reserved landscapes, and Gerda was trying to make her mark in portraits.

Eddie Redmayne (left) as Lili Elbe and Alicia Vikander as Gerda Wegener in 'The Danish Girl.'

One day, Gerda asked her husband to sit in for her female subject — a fun game, she thought. But the session triggered a longing. Einar began to dress as Lili in private and then in public, ultimately becoming the first person to undergo gender confirmation surgery.

Redmayne calls Elbe a hero. "She knew at a period in which there was no vocabulary, no context, no trans community. She knew she was born in a different gender to that which she had been assigned," he says. "And the bravery — the stakes were so high that it was either death or getting to live to be herself."

Gender identity at core of two Toronto films

To prepare, the 33-year-old actor  spent three years undergoing "the most extraordinary education": meeting transgender women and hearing their stories; learning fundamentals, including that gender and sexuality are separate; and talking to his Jupiter Ascending director, Lana Wachowski, who is transgender. 

"She basically told me where to start reading," says Redmayne, who absorbed texts such as 1933's Man Into Woman (a book published after Elbe's death purportedly drawn from her writings), Jan Morris' 1974 Conundrum and the 2000 novel The Danish Girl, by David Ebershoff (upon which the film is based).

 

Research allowed Redmayne to find the character of Lili, not Einar, first. "Things became absolutely clear. It was about finding out who Lili was and then working back to who she was when she was living as Einar," he says.

The Danish Girl has taken more than 15 years to reach the screen (at one point, Nicole Kidman was attached to play Lili). It arrives on the heels of a new public dialogue, thanks to TV's Transparent (for which Jeffrey Tambor, playing a trans woman, has won an Emmy and a Golden Globe) and the evolution of Caitlyn Jenner.

 

5 books that took bumpy paths from page to screen

"We couldn't ever imagine we'd be releasing it in this kind of climate," says screenwriter Lucinda Coxon, who says she had never come across a love story like the one beating inside The Danish Girl. "It's in some ways a very mainstream period romance with a pretty big twist."

Redmayne, too, marvels at the love story. "One hopes the film continues the dialogue (around trans issues) that has sort of hit the mainstream media in the past couple of years," he says. "But the thing that was so profound and moving when I read it, it was also an investigation into love."

 

 

Featured Weekly Ad