Academy Award-winner Eddie Redmayne will be awarded a Golden Eye for his career achievements during the 18th Zurich Film Festival (Sept. 22-Oct. 2). The British actor will receive the award in person on Sept. 25 prior to presenting the European premiere of Tobias Lindholm’s thriller “The Good Nurse,” in which he plays a nurse who poses a deadly threat to his patients. He will also participate in a ZFF Masters session.
Redmayne is one of his generation’s leading character actors. The broader public will recognize him as Newt Scamander from the fantasy franchise “Fantastic Beasts,” the arthouse crowd will know him from more challenging dramas like “Trial of the Chicago 7.” Redmayne won the Academy Award for best actor for his portrayal of the paralysed physicist Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything” (2014).
Redmayne will be accompanied at the screening of “The Good Nurse” by Lindholm.
“Eddie Redmayne is one of contemporary cinema’s most versatile actors. He furnishes his characters with a rare human depth and captivates us with his extraordinary powers of expression. Eddie was already in Zurich in 2007 when he played the lead role alongside Julianne Moore in the opening movie ‘Savage Grace.’ Back then he was a newcomer, now he returns as an Academy Award winner – and we’re super excited,” Christian Jungen, the festival’s artistic director, said. “In ‘The Good Nurse,’ Redmayne once again proves his versatility with a performance that keeps us riveted to our seats.”
Lindholm added: “Eddie was a joy to work with. He is incredibly caring, incredibly well prepared, and incredibly technical. His preparation allows him to work with great freedom and – what looks like – great ease. And his technique makes the seemingly impossible possible. He humanizes the inhuman. He warms the cold. He glows in the dark. Undisturbed and without blinking. It was not rare that I drove home from the set with the feeling of having been close to greatness.”
In “The Good Nurse,” Redmayne plays Charles Cullen, the nurse who became known as the “Angel of Death.” The film tells the story of Amy, a compassionate nurse stretched to her physical and emotional limits by the hard and demanding night shifts at the ICU. But help arrives when Charlie (Redmayne), a thoughtful and empathetic fellow nurse, starts at her unit. But after a series of mysterious patient deaths sets off an investigation that points to Charlie as the prime suspect, Amy is forced to risk her life and the safety of her children to uncover the truth.
A gripping thriller based on true events, “The Good Nurse” is directed by Academy Award nominee Lindholm, written by Academy Award nominee Krysty Wilson-Cairns, and stars Academy Award winners Jessica Chastain as Amy and Redmayne as Charles, as well as Nnamdi Asomugha, Noah Emmerich, and Kim Dickens.
The true story underlying “The Good Nurse” is new territory for Redmayne. So far, he has played an array of characters in dramas such as “The Danish Girl” or “My Week With Marilyn,” he starred in the musical adaptation “Les Miserables” (2012), and as Newt Scamander in the “Fantastic Beasts” film series, which became a blockbuster success as a “Harry Potter” spin-off franchise.
Redmayne took to the stage at an early age: He was in Sam Mendes’ “Oliver” in London’s West End, and performed and featured in many British theater productions. Movie directors soon began to take a growing interest in the actor and, while he was playing smaller roles, for example, alongside Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons in “Elizabeth I” (2005), or in Robert De Niro’s directorial work “The Good Shepard” (2006), he won a starring role as the lead in Tom Kalin’s “Savage Grace” (2007).
His breakthrough in entertainment cinema came with Tom Hooper’s “Les Miserables,” featuring an all-star cast ranging from Hugh Jackman to Russell Crowe, from Anne Hathaway to Amanda Seyfried.
Redmayne will speak at a one-hour ZFF Masters session at the Arena Cinemas 4 on Sept. 25 at 4:15 pm.
Previous award winners are among others Iris Berben, Kristen Stewart, Jake Gyllenhaal, John Malkovich, Helen Hunt and Olivia Colman. (Variety)
