EXCLUSIVE - BWW Interviews: Eddie Redmayne At The Critics' Circle Awards

Hi Eddie, and congratulations on the award!

Thank you! It's really lovely and unexpected.

You won Best Newcomer at the Critics' Circle Awards a few years ago (for The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?), so it must be nice to come back for another award.

Yes, and particularly these awards - there's an interesting relationship between actors and critics! I actually hadn't done Shakespeare for years, since I did Twelfth Night with Mark Rylance in the year that he won Best Shakespearean Performance, which was the first year I came along to these awards. 

And of course you won your Olivier Award in 2010 for the work you did at the Donmar - you must enjoy working there. 

I have to thank the Donmar for a lot, and Michael Grandage. We're very lucky in London to have such interesting spaces, where there is an unrivalled intimacy, and you can keep going back to work in the same space and find something different there every time.

Your new television series Birdsong began this week, which seems to have been received well so far.

You can draw a parallel, actually - if you're doing a new play, there's nobody to be compared to. With Richard II, everyone has an opinion, and with Birdsong, everyone has an idea about how it should look in their imaginations. But yes, it does seem to have gone down quite well, which is a gentle load off my mind! 

I can't let you go without talking about the Les Miserables movie - I saw the interview you gave the other week where you talked about singing live on set. Is that scary?

It is a bit scary, but we did that through the auditions and in the screentest - singing live with the earpiece, so it helps us retain the spontaneity. I think it'll be interesting.

How well did you know the musical before you got the part of Marius?

I knew it well! Our parents took us to see it when we were kids. When we went on holiday we'd always have to drive for hours, so they'd put the soundtrack on and one of us would be Jean Valjean and one of us would be Javert. My family were just as excited about me getting the part in the movie as I was!

Eddie Redmayne is starring in Richard II at the Donmar Warehouse until February 4, and will be playing Marius in the forthcoming movie of Les Miserables.

Photo by Walter McBride / Retna Ltd.