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 September 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.
Eddie Redmayne is one of his generation’s most outstanding character actors. The broader public will recognise 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. Eddie Redmayne won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the paralysed physicist Stephen Hawking in THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING (2014). The Zurich Film Festival honours the Brit with a Golden Eye for his outstanding career achievements. Redmayne will accept the award on September 25 at the Zurich Convention Centre, prior to the European premiere screening of his most recent film THE GOOD NURSE by Tobias Lindholm. The acclaimed director will be in Zurich to present his latest film in person. “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,” explains Christian Jungen, Artistic Director of the Zurich Film Festival. “In THE GOOD NURSE, Redmayne once again proves his versatility with a performance that keeps us riveted to our seats.”
Director Tobias Lindholm adds: “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 (Eddie 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 Tobias Lindholm, written by Academy Award® nominee Krysty Wilson-Cairns, and stars Academy Award® winners Jessica Chastain as Amy Loughren and Eddie Redmayne as Charles Cullen, as well as Nnamdi Asomugha, Noah Emmerich, and Kim Dickens.
The true story underlying THE GOOD NURSE is new territory for Eddie 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 delighted audiences as Newt Scamander in the “Fantastic Beasts” film series, which became a blockbuster success as a “Harry Potter” spin-off franchise.
Born in 1982 and raised in London, 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 theatre 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 the two-parter 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.
Eddie Redmayne will speak at a one-hour ZFF Masters session at the Arena Cinemas 4 on September 25 at 4:15 pm. Tickets are available from September 12 at zff.com.
Previous award winners are among others Iris Berben, Kristen Stewart, Jake Gyllenhaal, John Malkovich, Helen Hunt and Olivia Colman.