Eddie Redmayne, who made a big success of the television version of Birdsong, says he has no desire to star in the planned cinema version.
By Tim Walker7:15AM BST 02 Jun 2013
Rupert Wyatt may have announced to great fanfare that he was about to make a big-screen version of Sebastian Faulks’s bestselling novel Birdsong, but the author told me last month that he had not yet signed anything. “I only want to see it be made into a film if it is a very good one,” he said. “Nothing is definite.”
In what amounts to a further cold bird bath for Wyatt, Eddie Redmayne, who made such a success out of playing the central character Stephen Wraysford in the BBC television adaptation of the book, has now made it patently clear that, despite some early speculation, he never had any interest in reprising the role for the cinema.
“I wouldn’t have wanted to be in the film because I think when you’ve done it, you can’t come back,” the amiable 31-year-old actor told me at the first night of The Great Gatsby ballet at Sadler’s Wells. “Honestly, doing it once is enough.”
Redmayne, who has been on a roll with his film career after My Week with Marilyn and Les Misérables, added that he was happy to hear that Wyatt planned to cast fellow British actor Nicholas Hoult in the role of Wraysford. “I couldn’t think of a better actor for the role,” he said, generously. “I won’t be giving Nick any advice because he won’t need it.”
Redmayne didn’t think that the public had had its fill of Birdsong. “They have done it on television and on the stage now, and so it makes sense, too, to do it for the cinema. It is a really beautiful piece of writing and it deserves every adaptation it can get.”
