![]() Neglecting to properly maintain his voice all those years has not stopped him from racking up millions of YouTube views for his emotional rendition of “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” when he revisited his roots in 2012, singing the character of Marius in Tom Hooper’s Oscar-nominated Les Misérables. “It’s not very good, though.” He remembers composing, for GCSE music, “some very over-the-top, romantic piano piece that was slightly ridiculous”. Has he ever written his own music? “Yeah, I have,” he chuckles with embarrassment. He is helping his daughter to learn, and identifies well with her frustrations. I’m not good enough to think about other stuff,” he says, miming finding notes laboriously with his fingers. “I find playing the piano incredibly calming, because it’s all-consuming. He still plays the piano, which he finds a mindful distraction. Music remains just as important to him, though. “I know it’s not the best it could be,” he says quietly, “but it’s lovely to be able to revisit.” Eddie Redmayne at Paris Fashion Week earlier this month (Photo: Victor Boyko/Getty Images) And when I started work, it just stopped.”Īs his acting career took off, finding the time to maintain his voice became impossible. Singing won him a choral scholarship to St Paul’s Preparatory School at eight years old, where he sang with the St Paul’s Choir, then a music scholarship to Eton, and a choral scholarship to Trinity College Cambridge, where he read history of art. Redmayne has sung from as young as he can remember and made his way into acting through music aged 11, he starred in Sam Mendes’s production of Oliver!. Performing eight shows a week certainly would, especially with the added pressure of keeping vocal cords at full strength. ![]() So the answer to your question is I’ve had a thrilling experience, and theatre is in my DNA and blood. He slows down to add, lest he sound ungrateful, “and that is just our actor’s life, if we’re lucky enough to be working. ![]() “Unless you get up in the mornings to take your kids to school, you’re not seeing your children, and then you’re working weekends…” he says in one exasperated flow. ![]() There is the need to be at the theatre early to warm up, then the late nights working. “Doing theatre when you have young children is really complex,” he says. He has given lots of thought to this, it seems, and wrestles outwardly with the pros and cons – namely, having two small children to consider: Iris, who is six, and Luke, four. And so, on the one hand, I couldn’t keep doing it.” “It was one of, if not the, greatest experience of my career artistically,” he says carefully, “but the physical toll that it takes is overwhelming. Eddie Redmayne as the Emcee in Cabaret (Photo: Marc Brenner)Īs for whether the experience has rekindled his wish to be on stage, his feelings are mixed. “I loved being in the process from the grass-roots level,” he says. Redmayne thought instantly of Jessie Buckley (“One of the great actors of our generation”) for Sally Bowles and director Rebecca Frecknall. The pair invited him to star again, this time helping to put it together. Redmayne previously performed the role as a 19-year-old student at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, at producers Ed Bartlam and Charlie Wood’s then new Underbelly venue. “It superseded all my expectations, which were already pretty high.” “You can see into the eyes of every single person there,” he says, lit up. The transformation of the theatre into the 30s Berlin-set Kit Kat Club – complete with dancers writhing on top of the bar as you arrive – made for an intimate show which won a staggering seven Olivier awards. The 41-year-old recalls not only their “overwhelmingly thrilling excitement” but also the audience’s “thirst for it”. The show arrived when the cast had for so long been home-bound by Covid. Slippery and seductive, he contorted his face and body into something otherworldly, his voice full of the same rich vibrato we saw 10 years ago when he starred in the Oscar-nominated Les Misérables. It is not an easy role – the Emcee serves as a sort of host and narrator, his songs becoming darker and more distorted as Weimar Berlin falls into the grips of Nazism – but Redmayne was phenomenal. We have met at Universal’s Decca, the record label that has just published the cast soundtrack of Cabaret, immortalising his Olivier-winning performance as the shape-shifting Emcee at the West End’s Playhouse Theatre, and Redmayne, nursing a hot drink and looking understatedly stylish in a grey cashmere jumper, is thrilled.Ĭabaret marked the actor’s first stage performance since Shakespeare’s Richard II, 11 years earlier. Still, being off-colour hasn’t diminished the star’s well-documented warmth and politeness. He is just back from the Golden Globes and, since everyone else there seemed to catch Covid – which he has had “plenty of times” – he is just glad it’s not that.
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