The Theory of Everything (2014) - IMDb IMDb 17 January 2017 4:34 PM, UTC NEWS There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error The Theory of Everything ( 2014 ) PG-13 | From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video A look at the relationship between the famous physicist Stephen Hawking and his wife. Director: a list of 38 titles created 04 Jan 2013 a list of 43 titles created 31 Jan 2014 a list of 46 titles created 17 Jan 2015 a list of 21 titles created 16 Apr 2015 a list of 22 titles created 2 months ago Title: The Theory of Everything (2014) 7.7/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin.

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Director: Spike Jonze Edit Storyline The Theory of Everything is the story of the most brilliant and celebrated physicist of our time, Stephen Hawking, and Jane Wilde the arts student he fell in love with whilst studying at Cambridge in the 1960s. Little was expected from Stephen Hawking, a bright but shiftless student of cosmology, given just two years to live following the diagnosis of a fatal illness at 21 years of age. He became galvanized, however, by the love of fellow Cambridge student, Jane Wilde, and he went on to be called the successor to Einstein, as well as a husband and father to their three children. Over the course of their marriage as Stephen's body collapsed and his academic renown soared, fault lines were exposed that tested the lineaments of their relationship and dramatically altered the course of both of their lives. Written by Spencer Higham His mind changed our world. Her love changed his.

See more » Genres: Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and suggestive material | See all certifications » Parents Guide: 26 November 2014 (USA) See more » Also Known As: The Theory of Everything See more » Filming Locations: $208,763 (USA) (7 November 2014) Gross: Did You Know? Trivia The quote "Daisy, Daisy Give me your answer, do" that Hawking uses while experimenting with his new speech-generating device, comes from the lyrics of the well-known song "Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)", written by Harry Dacre in 1892. This is the song that was used for the earliest known demonstration of computer speech synthesis in 1961, when it was "sung" by an IBM 704 computer. As a tribute to that event, "Daisy Bell" was also sung by the fictional HAL 9000 computer in a memorable scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), coincidentally also at a point where HAL's performance is slowly deteriorating (like Hawking's).

See more » Goofs When traveling to Bordeaux and also at the Bordeaux AirPort we can see snow-covered mountains. There are no such mountains in The Aquitaine region. See more » Quotes Jane Hawking : What is that? Stephen Hawking : It is a kind of religion for intelligent atheists. (New Jersey) – See all my reviews Encompassing all the best parts of films like A Beautiful Mind by Ron Howard but creating its own signature and style to the biopic genre, James Marsh's gorgeous and beautifully compelling The Theory of Everything, the true story of Stephen and Jane Hawking, is a sensitive piece of filmmaking that stands as one of the finest movie efforts of the year. Starring Eddie Redmayne as Stephen and Felicity Jones as Jane, the two develop a masterful and sonorous dynamic that behaves as a naturalistic relationship that inhabits qualities of both love and sadness. They're a match made in heaven. Also acting as a morality tale, screenwriter Anthony McCarten puts forth intriguing questions regarding love in the shadow of someone's disability. Do you really know what is asked of you when you vow to love someone in sickness and in health? What happens when disability doesn't allow you to love the way you want?

Are you better off just breaking free if you have the chance? The film acts as a moving oil painting. Benoît Delhomme shoots to utter perfection. Intimate in scenes requiring the viewer's undivided attention, and taking the liberty to capture the essence of the time where the innocence of love offers many possibilities. The scenes ultimately feel as if we're in a dream sequence, sleeping silently as these two lives play out in our minds. You don't get any tears or moving feelings without the bravura score of Jóhann Jóhannsson. Criminally overlooked last year in the grand scheme of things for his work on Prisoners, the composer orchestrates his best score of his career. Very likely not just my favorite score of the year so far but one of mine in the last few years. From the opening credits, Jóhannsson puts his stamp with heavy violins and beautiful piano playing. In the end credits, you can sit and marvel as the names cross the screen with the music that accompanies it. When it comes to biopics, people tend to automatically give credit to makeup and body language when talking about a performer.

Past winners like Jamie Foxx in Ray have always felt empty as a performance but people were so tied in with the mannerisms that he brought to the role, which he often did in his stand up comedy routines. In Eddie Redmayne, we get a fully realized and tender performance. The first twenty minutes of the film, prior to the diagnosis of Hawking's disease, Redmayne utilizes all the quick wit and charm to show what his Stephen loved the most of his work and his woman. Obviously going through the physical transformation must be rewarded. Contorting his body and learning the physical tics that Stephen Hawking has displayed in real life all ring true. Since his breakout work in Les Miserables, a role that should have landed him a nomination for Best Supporting Actor, I was wary to believe I'd revisit a praising session with the young actor so soon. It's one of the best things offered this year. When it comes to Felicity Jones, the emotional backbone of the entire process has to be awarded to her. With stunning works in Like Crazy under her belt, Jones takes upon a daunting and heavily emotional character, never afraid to have the audience dislike or be disappointed in what she's doing. Marsh directs her to astonishing resolve.

As a leading lady, Jones ignites such fiery and compelling questions not necessarily asked before in a biopic such as this. Complex and staggering in the way she decides to portray the brave Jane, Jones allows her character to grow, and both live and learn inside of her. What's most remarkable about Jones is she makes everything seem so effortless. She's not faking anything, she's really feeling and becoming Jane. She locates all the emotions required of her to execute successfully. It's a turn I wouldn't be surprised to see runaway with the Academy Award for Best Actress. The supporting players are no shortage of talent, though secondary to this type of story. Charlie Cox was just as good in his screen time. As Jonathan, Cox lays it all out on the table, heart on sleeve, and soul bared for all of us to see. David Thewlis, Emily Watson, and Simon McBurney are all solid but brief. Production Designer John Paul Kelly and Costume Designer Steven Noble should be commended for their meticulous craft in bringing the time period to the screen. An Oxford University dormitory along with a dozen outfits worn by all the characters can easily be taken for granted in a film like this.

Screenwriter Anthony McCarten adapts his script from the book "Travelling to Infinity: My life with Stephen" which was written by Jane Hawking. Audiences like their fair share of love stories, but some of them, rather most of them, don't like the ugly that goes with it. In real life, people make mistakes, and do things that can make some cringe. I believe some of the more questionable and controversial things during the Hawkings marriage was merely glossed over to not paint them negatively, even though the world is well aware of what went on. I'll be honest, I knew next to nothing about Stephen Hawking and his work prior to sitting for the movie. I knew the robot voice and that's where it about ended. If anything, the film inspires me to learn more about Stephen's work and theories presented. All of those things are definitely given a back seat to a film that doesn't really require them. The Theory of Everything is not about the equations or the mathematics. It's essentially about us. It's about love, and not just in the form of marriage. We as humans learn to love ourselves, our families, and our children.

They are placed in our lives but I'm not sure how much we realize what goes into maintaining those relationships. The movie makes you think of those things. 111 of 143 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes The Theory of Everything Official Trailer (2014) Stephen Hawking Movie HD - YouTube The Theory of Everything Official Trailer (2014) Stephen Hawking Movie HD Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Aug 6, 2014 - "The Theory of Everything" Official Trailer (2014) Stephen Hawking Movie HD Starring Eddie Redmayne (“Les Misérables”) and Felicity Jones (“The Amazing Spider-Man 2”), this is the extraordinary story of one of the world’s greatest living minds, the renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who falls deeply in love with fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde.

Once a healthy, active young man, Hawking received an earth-shattering diagnosis at 21 years of age. With Jane fighting tirelessly by his side, Stephen embarks on his most ambitious scientific work, studying the very thing he now has precious little of – time. Together, they defy impossible odds, breaking new ground in medicine and science, and achieving more than they could ever have dreamed. The film is based on the memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen, by Jane Hawking, and is directed by Academy Award winner James Marsh (“Man on Wire”). Director: James Marsh Actors: Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Charlie Cox, Emily Watson, Simon McBurney, David Thewlis Category How Eddie Redmayne Became Stephen Hawking in ‘The Theory of Everything’ | Variety How Eddie Redmayne Became Stephen Hawking in ‘The Theory of Everything’ Robert Maxwell for Variety October 28, 2014 | 09:00AM PT COVER STORY : Eddie Redmayne always knew that the toughest critic of “ The Theory of Everything ” would be the man he portrays onscreen — Stephen Hawking.

The 72-year-old physicist recently made the trek from his home in Cambridge, England, to Working Title’s production offices in London to watch the biopic based on his life. Hawking’s longtime battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has left him a quadriplegic, and he speaks through a computer-generated voice amplifier. Before the screening, he met Redmayne. “He took a while to type something, then said, ‘I’ll let you know what I think — good or otherwise,’ ” Redmayne recalls. “I said, ‘Stephen, if it’s otherwise, you don’t need to go into details.’ ” This story first appeared in the October 28, 2014 issue of Variety. Subscribe today. See more. After the lights came up, a nurse wiped a tear from Hawking’s eye. He called the film “broadly true,” and even celebrated with the film’s director James Marsh and screenwriter Anthony McCarten at a bar where he sipped champagne from a teaspoon.

“He emailed us,” Marsh says, “and said there were certain points when he thought he was watching himself.” Redmayne pulls off one of the most challenging — and bravest — transformations of the year in “The Theory of Everything,” which Focus Features releases on Nov. 7. It’s the first leading role for the 32-year-old actor, who won the Tony for the 2010 play “Red,” and appeared in 2011’s “My Week With Marilyn” as fly-on-the-wall Colin Clark, and 2012’s “Les Miserables” as the heartthrob Marius. In the Wachowski sibling’s upcoming space-opera “Jupiter Ascending” (slated for February), Redmayne plays an intergalactic tycoon, and he’ll take on Lili Elbe, a transgender woman born as the painter Einar Wegener, in Tom Hooper’s drama “The Danish Girl,” which starts shooting in January. But first, he’ll need to jump through the three-ring circus of awards season. Robert Maxwell for Variety After “The Theory of Everything” premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September, Redmayne earned raves and Oscar buzz.

The blogosphere is salivating over the prospect of him competing with another classically trained British actor, Benedict Cumberbatch, the star of World War II drama “The Imitation Game.” But Redmayne won’t campaign negatively against his friend, whom he met when the two were playing Scarlett Johansson’s husbands in 2008’s “The Other Boleyn Girl.” “I totally see why people are (comparing us), because of the subject matter; we both play geniuses,” says Redmayne, sitting on the outdoor patio of his SoHo hotel on a recent New York afternoon. “But I won’t be engaged in that. I think he’s the most beautiful actor. I’ve long admired his work, and continue to do so. I hope there’s room for both our films.” Cumberbatch had played Hawking in a 2004 BBC TV movie, and the actor’s name even showed up on set one day, when “Theory of Everything” was filming at his old boarding school. “There was this hilarious moment when we were shooting a scene at Harrow School,” Redmayne says. “There was a wooden board with names engraved on it, and by my head was ‘B.

Cumberbatch.’ I’m like, ‘Dude, you’re haunting me!’ I took a selfie of me dressed as Stephen and sent it to Ben.” Redmayne is part of the new British invasion in Hollywood — a group of actors that includes Cumberbatch, Andrew Garfield, Jack O’Connell (“300: Rise of an Empire”), Charlie Cox (“Boardwalk Empire”) and Tom Hiddleston (“The Avengers”). Many of these leading men have passionate fans on Twitter and Tumblr (“Redmayniacs” and “Cumberbitches,” for instance), though none is yet a giant global box office draw. “What’s really interesting about Eddie is that what turns him on are really tough, tricky roles,” says Working Title co-chair Eric Fellner. “But he’s an incredibly good-looking man. So he can be a movie star too.” Redmayne won’t classify himself that way. “A movie star is someone who has to open a film to gazillions of dollars,” says the actor, who lives in London with his fiancee Hannah Bagshawe.

“I’m just trying to pay my mortgage.” Redmayne grew up in England, where one of his first roles was in a West End production of “Oliver!” at age 11. He had only one line, as “Workhouse Boy No. 40,” but he still remembers it: “Books you ordered from the bookseller, sir?” He enrolled in prestigious boarding school Eton College, studied art history at Cambridge and appeared in an all-male stage production of “Twelfth Night” as Viola that landed him a U.K. agent. One of his early screen roles was as Julianne Moore’s son in the 2007 indie “Savage Grace,” which deals with incest. “Eddie came in for the audition with Julianne, and the two of us looked at each other and said, ‘Why should we bother reading anyone else?’ ” notes the film’s director, Tom Kalin. Redmayne says that after Moore commented on how much they looked alike, he was never more grateful for his freckles and reddish hair. Kristen Stewart, who co-starred with Redmayne in the 2008 indie “The Yellow Handkerchief,” says he thrives on taking risks.

“We had a great time together,” Stewart says. “This is not a word I use a lot, but it describes him perfectly. He is a fucking lovely man. And he’s astounding as an actor. He’s the type of actor, and guy, you want to go on an adventure with.” Robert Maxwell for Variety Redmayne recalls visiting Hollywood in his early 20s for auditions with other unknowns like Garfield, Tom Sturridge and Jamie Dornan. “You’d come over for a month,” Redmayne says. “We used to go to the Standard Hotel in West Hollywood, and split a sandwich between us because that meant we could get cheaper parking. We’d swim and play table tennis for hours.” It was, in many ways, a surreal existence trying to break into the business. “We were staying on friend’s agents’ floors, and renting places together,” Redmayne says. “I’d be driving the cheapest rental car. But then you’d get to turn up at the CAA party. All these huge limos would arrive.

I’d be in this red blob.” Redmayne says there was a comfort in his expat community, because even if he didn’t land roles, he’d be happy when one of his friends did. “When we started going out for the same parts, it never got in the way of our friendships,” says Cox, his co-star in “Theory,” who screen tested for “My Week With Marilyn.” Redmayne tells a story about how at the press junket for “Les Miserables,” a journalist asked him if he’d ever audition to play Christian Grey in “Fifty Shades of Grey.” After he said yes, the book’s author, E.L. James, dissed his candidacy. “She took to her Twitter feed to go, ‘Under no circumstances!’ ” Redmayne recalls. “I was like, all right, all right! Am I that bad? I can put a whip in my hand. I can get all kinky, can’t I?” He scrunches his face in a way that suggests more of an academic than an S&M expert. “Apparently not,” he concedes.

But he got into great shape for “Jupiter Ascending.” “The Wachowskis had encouraged me to develop a six-pack,” Redmayne says. “So I’d spent months basically doing sit-ups and eating chicken, and then the day that it finished, I started prepping for ‘The Theory of Everything.’ I was like, ‘Please, it’s the only time in my life that I’ve ever got close to abs! Can’t I just walk down a beach?’ ” He promptly started the process of losing 15 pounds to play Hawking. “I just didn’t eat dinner, basically,” he says. He also grew out his fingernails, despite protests from his fiancee, after reading that Hawking had that habit. “Mine were long enough to be pretty unattractive,” Redmayne says. “They were a bit scratchy and generally dirty.” But his appearance was the least of his worries — entering Hawking’s world would present far more formidable challenges. It took a decade to get “The Theory of Everything” to the big screen.

In 2004, McCar­ten read the book by Jane Hawking, Stephen’s first wife, about their life together, and traveled by train to Cambridge to meet her. “Will you let me in?” he recalls asking. “I had to convince her and her family it was a good idea.” He wrote several drafts of the script, and shared them with Jane. When she finally gave him permission to adapt her story, he optioned the rights independently. The project eventually landed at Working Title, with documentary filmmaker Marsh (“Man on Wire”) attached to direct. Universal, which picked up the biopic with a budget of less than $15 million, is releasing it via Focus Features. The movie’s creative team had drawn up a list of high-profile British actors who could play Hawking — including Garfield and Michael Fassbender — but Redmayne wasn’t on it. With the help of his agent, CAA’s Josh Lieberman, he was able to book a meeting with Marsh in a London pub. “It was 3 in the afternoon,” says Redmayne. The actor asked for a beer, and instantly regretted his decision when Marsh ordered a coffee for himself instead of alcohol.

“In the end,” Redmayne says, “he ended up drinking a ton of coffee and I ended up drinking a ton of beer, so I was pissed and he was high on caffeine.” But at least they could see they were creatively compatible. “We had a like-minded attitude of ‘We have no idea how we’re going to do this, but we trust in each other to be brave enough to make mistakes,’ ” Redmayne says. He got the offer to play Hawking without an audition, which was a double-edged sword. “At least when you’ve auditioned, they’ve seen some sense of what you can do,” says Redmayne (he read three times before nabbing his role in “Les Miserables”). “I was thrilled and instantaneously nervous.” He was then asked to read with British actress Felicity Jones (“Like Crazy”), who was being considered to play Jane Hawking. “James kept calling me saying, ‘Eddie, by the way, this isn’t an audition for you.’ I was like, ‘Bullshit!’ Don’t pretend for a moment that Donna Langley isn’t seeing this,” he says of Universal’s chairman, who shepherded the project.

Jones and Redmayne aced their scenes together, and she was offered the job on the spot. Redmayne spent four months studying Hawking’s life, a process that required so much research, it was like writing a doctoral dissertation. He watched every documentary and YouTube video he could find on the man. “I tried to read literally everything I could get my hands on,” says the actor, who pored over all of Hawking’s books. “It became hilarious, because I would get 40 pages in, and I was like — ‘Eddie, none of these words make any sense to you.’ ” He contacted a physics teacher at Imperial College London who proved to be a good translator. He also worked with a choreographer, Alexandra Reynolds (she made the zombies twitch in “World War Z”). “We put what we knew into picking up a pen, drinking, walking, existing,” says Reynolds, who labored with Redmayne for four hours a day, and filmed his movements on an iPad for them to study. She’d pose questions to him like, “What’s happening in your pelvis?

Are you holding your head right?” Hawking was diagnosed with motor neuron disease when he was 21, and wasn’t expected to live past 25. Doctors now know there are many forms of ALS, an illness that has sprung to the public’s attention with the Ice Bucket Challenge. Every two weeks, Redmayne would visit a neurology clinic in London, where he’d interview patients. He met with more than 30, and even went to some of their homes. Since the film wouldn’t be shot chronologically, he had to understand how the disease affected Hawking at different stages of his life, and had a doctor consult with him on vintage photographs to see how Hawking’s body deteriorated. Robert Maxwell for Variety Redmayne compiled his findings on a sheet of paper he carried with him everywhere. “It was like the Magna Carta,” says Marsh, who made him scan it in case it got lost. “It became the most important document beyond the script.” Redmayne knew that after the cameras started rolling, he’d have no room for error. “The thing about motor neuron disease, once a muscle stops working, it doesn’t start again,” he says. “So often in the edit, directors and editors will shift things around.

James and I were absolutely adamant that Anthony’s script would have to be pretty solid from the get-go.” Just days before shooting began, Redmayne finally got word that Hawking had agreed to see him in Cambridge. He was so nervous, he spent the first part of the conversation telling Hawking about the physicist’s own life. He called him “professor,” but Hawking wanted to be referred to by his first name. “It was complicated when I met him, because by that point, I’d spent so much time researching him,” Redmayne says. “It was the trepidation of not only meeting someone with an extraordinary brain and iconic status, but also — what if I got it wrong?” Not only were Redmayne’s instincts correct about Hawking, but the meeting proved invaluable in sketching out some final details. Hawking asked Redmayne if he would be playing him before he was forced to rely on his voice machine, and he told the actor, “My voice was very slurred.” Says Redmayne: “He has one of the most expressive faces. You’re never playing relaxed. The irony I found was that everything you’ve been taught about film acting is to reduce.

The weird thing here is you are doing the absolute opposite. Your face is in these huge extreme positions and expressions.” Redmayne was so on edge the night before the shoot, he couldn’t sleep. “It’s the only all-nighter I’ve done in my life,” he says. “One of the first scenes was an intense, emotional one. I think it helped.” When he played Hawking in the later years of his life, Redmayne would sit in a wheelchair with his legs crossed and his head tipped over, in a position that affected his breathing. It was at times physically painful to contort his body for that long. “He was really suffering, but he never complained,” Marsh says. And there was this other trick: prosthetic ears. “When we wanted to get him thinner and smaller, do you know what we did?” reveals McCarten. “You make the ears bigger and the whole body seems smaller.” Hawking made one more notable appearance before the film wrapped. He and Jane visited the set during the scene where their characters dance with each other at a Cambridge party. The physicist lived up to his reputation as a flirt. “When Felicity came in, sparks flew,” Redmayne jokes.

Hawking asked her for a peck on the cheek, and the actress was more than willing to oblige. “I was flattered,” Jones says. “I got to kiss an icon.” Judgment day came, with the nerve-wracking screening. But Redmayne had nothing to worry about. Hawking was so pleased with the movie, he even responded with a generous gift — that the filmmakers swap the synthetic voice they had to create and replace it with his own, trademarked computerized version. “We spent a lot of time and money trying to reproduce the voice, but we never got it,” McCarten says. Redmayne was moved when he heard of Hawking’s offer. He was never quite sure he was landing the performance, which he watched every night on the dailies — the first time he’s ever done that. “You’re just hoping to get there,” Redmayne says. “Yet there’s this constant frustration — it’s always underwhelming, because you never quite make it. But with his specific voice, it’s an actor’s dream. You’re one step closer to the truth.” L.V. Anderson L.V. Anderson is a Slate associate editor.

But how accurate is the movie when it comes to that marriage—and the couple’s relationships with friends and family? I read Jane Hawking’s memoir Travelling to Infinity , from which the film is adapted, and Stephen Hawking’s memoir My Brief History . What follows is a breakdown of fact and fiction in The Theory of Everything. On balance, the film is fairly faithful to Travelling to Infinity, but it makes Hawking out to be more sympathetic than he comes across in the book. The movie also changes the details of several events in the Hawkings’ lives for dramatic effect. Advertisement Stephen Hawking At the beginning of The Theory of Everything, Stephen is a charming, if somewhat awkward, PhD student at Cambridge who excels at physics despite not putting much effort into his work.

Hawking was indeed something of a brilliant slacker: Jane writes that he “had never been to a lecture” as an Oxford undergraduate; Hawking says, “I once calculated that I did about a thousand hours’ work in the three years I was there, an average of an hour a day.” As for his personality, Jane says in her memoir that she found Hawking “attentive and charming,” with a “way of hiccoughing with laughter, almost suffocating himself, at the jokes he told, many of them against himself.” But, she adds, “Stephen could be highly critical of people other than his closest relatives...He considered my friends to be easy victims and had no compunction in monopolizing the conversation at parties with his controversial opinions.” The Stephen played by Eddie Redmayne is far gentler and more sensitive than this description suggests. Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything, left, and Cosmologist Stephen Hawking in October 1979 in Princeton, New Jersey. Photo by Liam Daniel/Universal Pictures; Photo by Santi Visalli/Getty Images In life, as in the film, Hawking is a staunch atheist, a socialist, and an avid fan of classical music, particularly Wagner.

* Brian In The Theory of Everything, Stephen has a roommate, classmate, and close friend named Brian. In real life, Hawking had no such classmate; Brian is a composite character. But his attitudes seem drawn from Jane’s descriptions of “Stephen’s fellow lodgers and research students” at Cambridge: “They talked to him in his own intellectual terms, sometimes caustically sarcastic, sometimes crushingly critical, always humorous. In personal terms, however, they treated him with a gentle consideration which was almost loving.” In one scene, Brian carries Stephen up some steps on campus and inquires after his sex life; Stephen impishly replies that he is still fully potent. In real life, Hawking did sometimes get physical help from his research assistant, but Jane claims that he did not ever speak openly about sex, “which for him was as taboo a subject as his illness.” The exchange between Brian and Stephen in the movie seems intended to make audiences understand that Stephen and Jane had sex, but may diverge from Hawking’s real-life personality. Advertisement Jane Wilde Like Hawking, Wilde spent her childhood in Saint Albans, a small town north of London.

In the movie, it’s implied that Jane goes to college at Cambridge, but in real life Wilde went to Westfield College in London, where she later got her PhD. She did, however, as the movie indicates, study Medieval poets from the Iberian peninsula, and Jane Hawking spends a few passages of her memoir explaining her academic work and her favorite poems. In the movie, as in real life, she is a faithful Christian. * In the movie, Jane has a fear of flying that is never explained. In the memoir Jane says she developed this phobia after a disastrous trip to Seattle when her firstborn son, Robert, was still an infant. She recalls overcoming this phobia years later with the help of a clinic specialized in flying phobias. She overcame her phobia before Hawking went on his fateful trip to Geneva; in the movie, though, the phobia prevents her from accompanying Stephen to Switzerland. The Meet-Cute In the movie, Stephen and Jane meet at a party, presumably at Cambridge, and Stephen later finds Jane at her church and invites her to dinner at his parents’ home. In reality, Wilde met Hawking at a New Year’s party hosted by a friend who had gone out with Hawking previously.

At the time, Wilde was still finishing secondary school, and Hawking had just graduated with highest honors from Oxford and was embarking on his PhD. Jane writes, “we exchanged names and addresses, but I did not expect to see him again.” Hawking invited her to his 21st birthday party, after which they didn’t see each other for a few weeks. They only began dating after a chance meeting on a train some weeks later. The Diagnosis In the movie, Stephen is diagnosed with motor neurone disease (ALS) after he has met and wooed Jane, and Stephen’s friends break the news to her in a pub. In real life, Hawking was diagnosed after the pair had first met but before they started dating. In the film, the event that precipitates Stephen’s diagnosis is a nasty fall on a sidewalk on campus; in real life, his mother made him see a doctor after he fell while ice skating and “couldn’t get up.” He was given a life expectancy of two years. Wilde heard the news through the grapevine; she writes, “I was stunned.

I had only just met Stephen and for all his eccentricity I liked him.” Advertisement The Courtship In real life, Hawking and Wilde began dating after Hawking had been diagnosed with ALS, and their dates usually consisted of going to the theater and opera in London. The movie doesn’t depict these dates, but it does take a couple of anecdotes from Jane’s memoir: Hawking took her to the May Ball, an annual dance and festival at Cambridge, and in a room with “weird blueish lights,” he “explained that the lights were picking up the fluorescent elements contained in washing powder, which was why the men’s shirts were so visible.” This conversation is adapted faithfully. Jane also recalls in her memoir that she persuaded Stephen to dance after he had said “I don’t dance.” This, too, is in the movie. The movie portrays Stephen’s diagnosis as a turning point in the young couple’s relationship, manipulating the timeline for dramatic effect.

In a memorable scene, Jane comes to find Stephen after his diagnosis and tells him that if he doesn’t play a game of croquet with her, she “won’t come back here again, ever.” This didn’t happen, and in fact Jane appears to have generally been submissive to Hawking, making such an ultimatum seem unlikely. But the ensuing croquet scene does draw from life: Jane writes in her memoir of a time when Hawking was “so absorbed in himself that when he offered to teach me to play croquet on the Trinity Hall lawn, for example, he seemed to forget I was there.” Stephen “scarcely bothered to veil his hostility and frustration, as if he were deliberately trying to deter me from further association with him,” a dynamic that comes through in that scene in The Theory of Everything. Stephen’s Parents In The Theory of Everything, Stephen’s father, Frank, warns her away from marrying him, and she responds by affirming their love for each other.

This conversation is fairly true to life: Jane writes that Frank “was only able to warn me that Stephen’s life would be short, as would his ability to fulfill a marital relationship,” and she recalls telling Hawking’s mother that “I loved Stephen so much that nothing could deter me from wanting to marry him.” In real life, there was a great deal of tension between Jane and her in-laws; to her, they “seemed intent on undermining our relationship and our happiness” and seemed indifferent to the difficulties involved in taking care of Hawking. In the movie, this dynamic comes out when Jane and Stephen arrive at Stephen’s parents’ new house to find that there’s a steep hill to climb without easy access for Stephen’s wheelchair. This really happened; according to Jane, at her in-law’s cottage, “the hillside was little short of vertical.” Advertisement The movie also portrays a dramatic confrontation between Stephen’s mother, Isobel, and Jane, after the birth of the Hawkings’ third child, Tim. This, too, comes directly from Jane’s memoir: “‘Jane,’ she said, adopting a stentorian tone, ‘I have a right to know whose child Timothy is.

Is he Stephen’s or is he Jonathan’s?’” In the film, as in real life, Jane replies that there’s no way Timothy could have any father other than Stephen. In the book, Hawking’s mother replies, “we have never really liked you, Jane, you do not fit into our family.” In the movie, Jonathan overhears the exchange between Jane and Isobel, and then confesses his feelings for Jane, but in real life they had already acknowledged their attraction for each other. Hawking’s father really did make his own wine, and Jane really did like it, while Hawking “would wrinkle his nose in disgust.” Stephen’s Disability Redmayne’s performance captures the progressive symptoms of Stephen’s ALS: slurred speech, curled fingers, and the eventual inability to walk, dress himself, eat, bathe, or go to the bathroom without help. Jane writes, “one of the most perplexing stumbling blocks for some time had been Stephen’s absolute rejection of any outside help with his care.” In The Theory of Everything, Stephen relents after Jane meets Jonathan, who offers to assist the family in any way he can.

In real life, Hawking’s obstinacy went on for several years, and he refused to accept help even when Robert, his oldest son, had to begin helping Jane take care of Hawking’s bodily needs when Robert was 9. Compared to the book, The Theory of Everything underemphasizes Stephen’s stubbornness on this issue, perhaps because to hammer home this tendency the way Jane does in Travelling to Infinity would make Stephen look like a narcissistic jerk. Advertisement Jonathan In The Theory of Everything, Jane meets Jonathan Hellyer Jones, her church choir director, after her mother suggests joining the church choir. In real life, it was Stephen’s former physiotherapist who convinced Jane to join the choir for a Christmas carol service, and Jane met Jonathan not at an audition but at that carol-singing expedition. “I talked as I had not in years and had the uncanny sensation that I had met a familiar friend of long acquaintance,” she writes. In the film, as in life, Jonathan was a widower whose wife had died recently of leukemia.

Jones’ relationship with the Hawkings developed as he taught the children piano and helped take care of Hawking’s physical needs, and what we see in the film reflects real life (although the scene where Jonathan tries to feed Stephen at the dinner table is invented). Jones and Jane really did fall in love, and they went on camping trips and other vacations together while Jane was still married to Hawking. But the movie’s suggestion that the two began a sexual relationship right as Stephen slipped into a coma is not in Jane’s memoir. (Jane says she remained faithful to Stephen and doesn’t specify when she and Jones, whom she later married, began sleeping together.) In the film, Jonathan promises to “step back” from the family after Stephen’s medical emergency, but in real life the coma didn’t affect Jonathan’s dynamic with the Hawkings; he remained close to and supportive of the family throughout that crisis. The Tracheotomy In The Theory of Everything, Stephen begins choking and coughing up blood during a concert in Geneva, enters a coma, and quickly receives a risky tracheotomy to save his life.

In real life, this turn of events was less dramatic and more protracted: Stephen was en route to Bayreuth to see The Ring Cycle with friends; during a stop in Geneva, his friends were so concerned about his cough that they called a doctor, who diagnosed pneumonia and sent him to the hospital, where he was drugged to the point of unconsciousness and put on a ventilator. A Swiss doctor did suggest taking Hawking off the ventilator and letting him die, as in the movie, and Jane did respond, “Stephen must live.” But Hawking was brought round from the induced unconsciousness and lived on a ventilator for a few months afterwards before getting the tracheotomy. It was not, as the movie suggests, entirely in Jane’s hands to decide whether Hawking should get the tracheotomy. After the tracheotomy, Hawking learned to communicate with a rapid-eye scanner, which at first only typed out his communications, but which was later upgraded with a voice synthesizer. In the movie, Jane expresses surprise that the synthesized voice has an American accent; in her memoir, she describes it as “unnervingly like a dalek,” the cyborg race from Dr. Who .

Elaine In the movie, Stephen meets Elaine Mason, who appears to be some sort of specialist, after the tracheotomy. Jane has had trouble communicating with Stephen via an alphabet frame, so she calls in Elaine to help, and Elaine has a miraculously easy time communicating with Stephen—which leads to a close, and ultimately intimate, relationship between the two. In real life, Mason was one of several nurses hired by Jane to help Hawking after his tracheotomy, and she did not have any particular background or facility in communicating via alphabet frame. (Jane writes that she was herself quite good at communicating via alphabet frame, “developing a shorthand code so that Stephen only had to focus on one letter for his meaning to become apparent.”) In Jane’s view, Mason manipulated Hawking and undermined Jane’s role in the family.

The other nurses told her, she says, that Elaine “was exerting undue influence over Stephen, deliberately provoking and exploiting every disagreement between us.” Perhaps it’s not surprising that Jane had less-than-fond feelings toward the woman who became her husband’s second wife; nonetheless, rumors that Mason abused Hawking made it into the press, and Hawking admits in his memoir that he and Mason “had our ups and downs.” The Separation The Theory of Everything depicts Jane and Stephen’s separation as peaceful and mutual. This is not at all how Jane describes it in her memoir. Mason and her husband accompanied the Hawkings and Jonathan on a vacation to France, where an argument erupted—after years of mounting tension. “Flames of vituperation, hatred, desire for revenge leapt at me from all sides, scorching me to the quick with accusations,” Jane writes. Afterwards, Hawking announced that he was going to live with Mason; during this period Jane says, Hawking “sought to control me, as if I was simply a piece of property.” She reports feeling worthless and unmoored after the separation, although eventually she and Hawking revived a friendship for the sake of their children.

Hawking relays the tale of his separation from Jane in two sentences in his memoir: “I became more and more unhappy about the increasingly close relationship between Jane and Jonathan. In the end I could stand the situation no longer, and in 1990 I moved out to a flat with one of my nurses, Elaine Mason.” Stephen and Jane’s Children The Hawkings had three children, as depicted in the movie: Robert was born in 1967, Lucy in 1970, and Timothy in 1979. In her memoir, Jane writes that Tim “was larger than either Robert or Lucy at birth” and describes “panting for breath under the weight of the hefty infant.” This fact is captured on film: In The Theory of Everything, Timothy is played by an exceptionally large baby. Update, Nov. 10, 2014: This post has been updated to clarify that both Stephen and Jane Hawking are still alive. ( Return to the updated sentence.) Interview: Eddie Redmayne, Actor In 'The Theory Of Everything' : NPR Eddie Redmayne plays Stephen Hawking in director James Marsh's The Theory of Everything.

Liam Daniel/Focus Features Stephen Hawking, the British theoretical physicist and cosmologist who wrote A Brief History of Time, is getting his own brief history as told in a new movie. The film is called The Theory of Everything and it starts with Hawking, played by Eddie Redmayne, healthy, active and going to college. There, he's diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS, and given a very grim prognosis. "This man was given two years to live," Redmayne tells NPR's Linda Wertheimer, "and rather than go into a sort of deep melancholia, which he did for a moment or two ... he says that every day beyond those two years has been a great gift." Not long after his diagnosis — which would ultimately leave him in a wheelchair and only able to talk through a computer — Hawking married his then-girlfriend, Jane. Their relationship is one of the film's central plots, a point that has drawn criticism from those who say the film skips over Hawking's accomplishments. But Redmayne says the story of Hawking's professional life has been told many times. Article continues after sponsorship "This film is based on Jane's autobiography ," he says.

"And really, this story is, for me, an investigation into love and love in all its guises; whether that is young love and passionate love, but also the love of family and love of a subject matter. ... There are so many documentaries that have been made that it felt like this was a different story, this was the personal element." Interview Highlights On how he prepared for the role, which called for him to contort his face and body to resemble Hawking I went to a neurology clinic in London and they educated me on ALS, and I met maybe 30 or 40 people who suffer from this horrific disease, but also their families. And then I decided to work with a dancer because when you're filming, unfortunately, you don't shoot chronologically. So you're having to jump between different periods in Stephen's life and, therefore, different physicalities. And what I wanted to make sure was that those physicalities were so embedded in me that I wasn't going to be playing a physicality, as it were; wasn't gonna be playing the disease, but could actually just play the human story at the core of the piece.

On replicating Hawking's computer-aided speech for the film We had some specialists who created a program pretty much identical to what Stephen had in that period. And quite often we would type it out for real (that's been condensed in the editing process of the film). But what it creates is, you know, if that is the only way you can communicate, then all that Stephen has is those muscles that he can use on his face; he's lost gesture. ... So you can't use tone of voice. And so, I remember when I met Stephen the first time, I was talking to him for a while and I was calling him "Professor Hawking." And then the first thing he said to me is, "Call me Stephen." And because it was in that voice, I couldn't work out whether he was saying, "Oh," you know, "call me Stephen," or whether he was going, "Stop being so sycophantic, stop calling me professor. Call me Stephen." You know, it's really interesting because you can't really judge.

On what Hawking thought of his performance He did go see the film and I saw him just before the screening, and I said to him, "Stephen, look, I'm very nervous. Please, you know, do let me know what you think." ... And he took a wee while to respond and then he said in his iconic voice, he said, "I will let you know what I think, good or otherwise." And I was like, "OK, Stephen. If it's otherwise, perhaps you can just stick to 'otherwise.' We don't need to know all the things I got wrong." But, no, he's been incredibly generous about the film. And when we made the film we had used an approximation of his iconic voice. I mean, Stephen owns the copyright to the actual voice, to his voice, and after seeing the film, he gave us his voice. So he's been wonderfully supportive.

'Theory of Everything' Movie Review, Trailer, Stephen Hawking Biopic - AARP Run time: 2 hours 3 minutes Stars: Felicity Jones, Eddie Redmayne Director: James Marsh One of the best movies of the year, The Theory of Everything is a stellar biopic anchored by two young actors who blaze mesmerically bright in virtually every scene. It's also a realistic portrait of one of the greatest thinkers of our time, Stephen Hawking , told through the intimate lens of the woman behind him: Jane Wilde was Hawking's wife for 25 years and is the mother of their three children, all now grown. Sign up for the AARP Leisure Newsletter — and get movie reviews, great games and more delivered to you every month Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne star in the Stephen Hawking biopic, "The Theory of Everything." — Universal Pictures Based on Wilde's 2007 memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen , the film avoids canonizing Hawking. To its further credit, it refuses to gloss over the complications in a marriage where one partner's priorities and needs — both professional and physical— so thoroughly eclipsed the other's.

Wilde withheld the rights to her story until she could be assured that screenwriter Anthony McCarten ( Death of a Superhero ) would tackle the gritty caregiving story at its core. (She also received script approval.) And once Hawking himself, now 72, saw an early version of the movie, he agreed to let the filmmakers use his own distinctive — and trademarked — computerized voice in the film. "At times I thought he was me," Hawking has said of Eddie Redmayne 's portrayal. We meet the theoretical physicist and author of the best-selling A Brief History of Time , played by Redmayne — so engaging as a production assistant in My Week With Marilyn and as the rebel fighter Marius in Les Misérables — as an energetic, spirited doctoral student at the University of Cambridge . He quickly falls for coed Wilde (the lovely Felicity Jones , best known until now for The Invisible Woman ), and the air crackles with their chemistry. But when the 21-year-old Hawking is diagnosed with motor neuron disease ( similar to ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease ), he threatens to end the relationship for Wilde's sake; after all, his doctors have just given him only three years to live.

But Wilde won't go away. Accurately portrayed by Jones as possessing a soft exterior but steely insides, Wilde commits herself to Hawking for the long haul. She remains devoted to him throughout his physical decline, which ultimately reaches the point where he can move but a single finger. Sure to receive an Oscar nod for his performance, Redmayne stages a bodily manifestation of Hawking's deterioration that is nothing short of remarkable. To prepare for the role, the actor studied photos and videos of his subject at each stage in the progression of his disease. He also made several visits to a London ALS clinic and worked with a dance instructor to find ways to train his muscles to contort or atrophy as Hawking's did. (After long days of shooting, Redmayne would relax in a hot bath to recover.) When his character inexorably loses the ability to speak, Redmayne must communicate mainly by facial expressions — and, later still, only with his eyes, deftly using them to convey the impish brilliance that Hawking courageously exudes. It's hard to imagine a bigger challenge for an actor, but Redmayne nails it.

Huge kudos likewise go to director James Marsh for his casting, which extends even to minor characters played by Charlie Cox (as a church organist who helps care for Hawking and eventually marries Wilde) and Maxine Peake (as Elaine Mason, Hawking's second wife). Hawking may never have perfected his grand unified theory, but the cast and crew of this movie shine starlight on an even deeper and more enduring product of the man's lifework: The love he shared with Wilde was one for the eons. Meg Grant is West Coast editor of AARP The Magazine. Also of Interest

Question: Who played Stephen Hawking in the 2014 film, ‘The Theory of Everything’?
Answer: EDDIE REDMAYNE