A prolific actor with a knack for playing diverse roles with effortless ease, Eddie Redmayne turns 40 today. A recipient of several awards and accolades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA, a Tony Award, an Olivier Award and a SAG Award, Redmayne made his acting debut as a guest actor in 1998 years after being a thespian at the West End Theatre.
Having started quite early, Redmayne first received acclaim at 22 when he won a few newcomer awards in London for his theatrical performance in The Goat or Who is Sylvia. Redmayne’s first feature film was the 2006 flick Like Minds. He followed up with roles in films like The Good Shepherd, The Other Boleyn Girl, Hick and more.
However, his breakthrough role is the biographical depiction of Colin Clark in the 2011 film My Week With Marilyn. Redmayne has not looked back ever since, having starred in films like Les Miserables, The Danish Girl and The Theory of Everything. His portrayal of the legendary Stephen Hawking secured an Academy Award as proof of his phenomenal acting skills and ability to transcend all genres.
Redmayne will next be seen as Newt Scamander in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, as well as Tobias Lindholm’s crime thriller The Good Nurse. Today, we take a look at some of his best films streaming on Netflix:
The best Eddie Redmayne films on Netflix
3. Les Miserables (Tom Hooper, 2012)
In a compelling and heart-wrenching adaptation of Victor Hugo’s eponymous novel, this musical revolves around the character progression of Jean Valjean, who spends a little less than two decades as a prisoner. After his release, he becomes a successful factory owner and the mayor but is pursued by his arch-nemesis, the former parole guard, against the backdrop of student rebellions and doomed romances.
Hopper’s star-studded film boasts of heavyweight names like Hugh Jackman, Russel Crowe, Eddie Redmayne, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Sacha Baron Cohen and Amanda Seyfried, among others. Redmayne stars as a student revolutionary in the film who is in love with Seyfried’s character. The actor gushed over the “incredibly helpful” creative process and spoke about how the actors would often collaborate with Hopper to add more to the book and make it more compelling.
2. The Trial of Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin, 2020)
Starring Redmayne, Sacha Baron Cohen, Alex Sharp, Mark Rylance and more, the film revolves around Chicago 7, a group of anti-Vietnam War protestors who are conspiratorially charged with inciting the notorious 1968 riots at the Democratic National Convention. The trial that follows such allegations goes down in history as one of the most legendary and riveting proceedings, with a mix of political and racial undertones strewn throughout.
Redmayne starred as one of the main protesters, Tom Hayden. With its insanely claustrophobic atmosphere, this intense courtroom drama is a result of Sorkin’s brilliant and ingenious directorial efforts mixed with phenomenal performances from the cast. The act of silencing on the part of the government, compelling performances on the part of the actors, especially Cohen and Redmayne catapulted the film into becoming the major success it was.
1. The Danish Girl (Tom Hopper, 2015)
Einar Wegener and his wife Gerda are happily married painters. However, when Einar poses in a dress for Gerda’s portrait, Einar comes to terms with his latent gender identity as a woman, leading her to undergo a brilliant and irreversible transformation into Lili Elbe. However, this quest for self-discovery is not without daunting obstacles before leading to the victorious first-ever sex-change operation for Lili.
Loosely inspired by the lives of Danish painters Lili Elbe and Herda Wegener, this biographical drama received plenty of nominations and was celebrated worldwide. However, recently, in the wake of representation debates, the lead actor Eddie Redmayne, who played Lili Elbe, spoke up about how playing a trans character was a “mistake” since he identified as a cishet male. Talking about how he would not accept such a role presently, he said, “I made that film with the best intentions, but I think it was a mistake.”
