It’s easy to forget with all of the Cumberlunacy, but Eddie Redmayne does have a pretty good shot at an Oscar nomination this year, and he’s been playing a very smart Oscar campaign. He’s been showing up to lots of events, getting lots of face time in LA, NYC and London, but he’s not oversaturating the media or anything. His interviews are humble, charming and informative, and it’s also clear that he has very loyal friends supporting him. One of those friends? Andrew Garfield. Garfield interviewed Redmayne for the new issue of Gotham – it’s the cover profile. It’s a good read, although Garfield is basically just letting Eddie talk about what he wants to talk about. You can read the piece here. Some highlights:

Getting to know Stephen Hawking: “Stephen has so much humor. It’s very difficult for him to communicate—now he can only do so using an eye muscle—yet he has the most fiendish timing. I belly-laughed a lot in his presence. That’s something we really tried to bring into the film, to always find the positive. Hearing the audience laugh at that premiere, and to have them feel like they were allowed to laugh, despite the subject matter—a family dealing with gritty obstacles—made me so happy. Because that’s the feeling I had when I left my meeting with Stephen. He’s had a guillotine over his head since the age of 21, yet he lives each moment hopefully, and lives life with humor. When I saw the audience responding to those parts of the film, I was thrilled.”

Hawking is a lady’s man: “Hawking took on an idol-like status. When you’re in a room with him, he absolutely controls it. He really has an amazing strength, which can be difficult and complicated. He loves women, and women love him. You can see this glint in his eye.”

Preparing to play someone with ALS: “I met 30 to 40 people suffering from motor neuron disease [which afflicts Hawking] and their families. One person described it as being in a prison cell where your walls just get smaller every day. Your brain is obviously functioning entirely, and as a consequence, there’s this sort of timer on your life. Time shifts, so every hour is like a day, every day is like a week, and every week is like a month. I’m such a culprit for getting caught up in my own foibles. But you have to realize just how damn lucky you are and make the most of every minute. I have to keep reminding myself, because you quickly get back to the same pattern of frustrations.”

He was an art history major: “I was asked in an interview this morning what I would be if I wasn’t an actor, and I said a curator. But I think that was far too hyperbolic.”

The perils of being a working actor: “I was reading an interview with Rachel Weisz a few years ago and she said, “Every time I finish a job, I think I’m never going to get hired again,” and I was like, “Come on, you’re Rachel Weisz.” But I absolutely get it. Because I think if you’re lucky to do this thing professionally, that you loved doing as a child, and you don’t feel like you’re qualified—it’s that old shtick of waiting to be found out. The idea that you do this job and get paid for it doesn’t seem like it should be allowed.”

He loves New York: “I’m weirdly obsessed. When I was 13 or 14, I had a calendar of black and white New York photos and was endlessly trying to do drawings of them. And then my mum took me to New York, and we were lucky enough to stay in this hotel on the 21st floor. I opened the windows and the curtains, and there was St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with all the high-rise buildings flying up above it. I kid you not, my knees buckled. I find New York the most electric, enlivening place. There’s something about the theater world, too. In London the theaters are geographically spread out so there’s no sense of community. In New York, the theaters back onto each other so you’d come out after doing the Rothko play, and Lucy Liu would be walking out from God of Carnage, and you were sharing this back alley, all of you together.

[From Gotham]

There’s also a little bit of gossip in this interview too – Andrew jokes about Eddie stepping back into his old life after playing Hawking and how Eddie picked up a copy of Us Weekly, which is where Eddie quips, “My favorite, FYI.” The Andrew says: “Singing to, I don’t know, to a third-rate Rihanna song as opposed to a first-rate Rihanna song…” And Eddie replies, “Or maybe a little Swift.” OMG. Remember when Taylor Swift tried to make that happen? I do. It was when Tay-Tay was hired for Les Miserables for a few days (she ended up leaving/getting fired from the project) and there were lots of suspicious stories about Taylor wanting to date Eddie. Huh.

Anyway, this was a lovely piece – Eddie talked about which charities he’s involved with and how much he loved bringing a play to Broadway and all of that lovely stuff. He seems like such a sweetheart.

Photos courtesy of Brian Bowen Smith/Gotham.