Eddie Redmayne wins Best Actor for The Theory of Everything
Congratulations to Eddie Redmayne on winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his revelatory performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. The honour goes alongside his awards for Best Actor at the Golden Globes and the Baftas.
The film chronicles Stephen Hawking’s diagnosis of motor neuron disease while at university in the 1960s, his blossoming romance with his future wife, and his early success in physics. It was inspired by the memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Jane Wilde Hawking.
Eddie Redmayne with Stephen Hawking at the film premiere in London
Stephen was just twenty-one when he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a form of motor neuron disease, and given a life expectancy of two years. Despite this devastating news, he determined to carry on with his studies, and quickly earned a growing reputation among physicists for his work in cosmology and black holes. Along with Roger Penrose, he showed that the universe began as a singularity – a confirmation of the Big Bang as opposed to Steady State theory of the universe. All the while, his condition was worsening, but he has survived longer than even the most optimistic prognosis and become an iconic figure in science.
In accepting the Oscar, Eddie Redmayne paid tribute to the Hawking family and to "all of those people around the world battling ALS." On his Facebook page, Stephen congratulated the actor: "Well done Eddie, I'm very proud of you."
Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking
