Eddie Redmayne: I was profoundly moved by working on the Danish Girl
Danish Girl star Eddie Redmayne has said working on the film “moved him profoundly”.
The star of the film, which is about Lili Elbe, the first trans woman to undergo gender reassignment surgery, said he was moved by what he found when working on the film.
He said it is “about the lives of two extraordinary women and it moved me profoundly.”
Of Lana Wachowski, director of the matrix who revealed her transition last year, and Olympian Caitlyn Jenner, Redmayne said he thought it was important for people who raise awareness of trans issues.
“Lana is just the most wonderful woman… What Caitlyn has been doing is great,” he said.
“Her transition is a very unique and specific one. She has used her status to highlight some of the serious problems that trans women and trans men have to go through. Her show has made everyone educate themselves on things like terminology.”
Of using the correct pronouns to address trans people, Redmayne said it is extremely important.
“It’s so important that Caitlyn is described with the pronoun ‘she’. I find myself occasionally making mistakes but when you meet trans men and women you realise how upsetting that is, because they were born a gender and it just happened to not be this one that they were assigned.
“And I hope that in some ways our film continues the discussion, because us learning to be allies to the trans community is so important.”
Redmayne has recieved high praise for his portrayal of Elbe, and is being tipped for success during awards season.
However, the decision to cast Redmayne in the role of a transgender woman has resulted in criticism from the transgender community.
Rebecca Root, star of the BBC sitcom Boy Meets Girl, originally auditioned for the role of Elbe but landed a smaller role in the film.
She has said that cisgender people shouldn’t play transgender roles, and that she hoped that Redmayne, even though she had nothing but praise for the actor, would be the last high profile cisgender man to portray a transgender woman.
Tom Hooper, the director of The Danish Girl, has said that he cast Eddie Redmayne in the lead role because of the actor’s ‘gender fluidity’.
He then went on to say that he hopes the casting of Redmayne in the role will highlight the lack of diversity in Hollywood.
Redmayne has been very outspoken on the subject of transgender issues since his casting, saying that it is “shocking” that trans issues haven’t improved much since Lili Elbe and calling for people to become more educated on trans issues.
