Long before Amazon Studios’ “Transparent” became a hit, or Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn, Lili Elbe made her transition.
Elbe had previously been Einar Wegener, a popular artist in Copenhagen in the 1920s. One day his wife, Gerda Wegener, also a painter, asked him to don woman’s heels and stockings to fill in for a client who had missed her portrait sitting. It was a case of the clothes making the woman; Einar recognized that his true gender was female, and Lili was born. In 1930 she would be among the first to undergo gender reassignment surgery.
Portraying the tricky role of Einar/Lili in Tom Hooper’s adaptation of David Ebershoff’s 2000 novel “The Danish Girl,” a fictionalized account of the story, Tom Hooper cast Eddie Redmayne, whom he had directed previously in “Les Misérables” (2012).
Redmayne received an Academy Award earlier this year for his demanding lead performance in “The Theory of Everything” as the scientific genius Stephen Hawking, who suffered from motor neuron disease. In “Danish Girl,” which opens here Dec. 11, his character undergoes both a physical transformation and profound psychological introspection.
On the phone from London in October, Redmayne discussed the challenges and satisfactions of playing Lili.
Q. It must be an acting workout to go directly from Stephen Hawking to Lili Elbe.
A. As an actor, your dream is to portray interesting people, and I certainly thought after the last year I had my quota with playing Stephen. And when this film came together — I had actually been attached myself to the film for three or four years — when the financing came together, it really felt like a privilege. Our dream as actors is to get to play interesting people. So one doesn’t think of it in terms of difficulty. It’s a joyous thing to do. Continue reading »
