- I don't know if anyone has seen the movie yet,
but you are amazing in this movie.
You are absolutely--
[cheers and applause]
It's all about--We'll talk about the movie in a minute,
but it was your birthday two days ago.
Happy belated birthday. - Thank you very much.
[cheers and applause]
- Today, as this airs, it's Stephen Hawking's birthday.
- It is, yeah.
- How weird is that,
that you're so close together in birthdays?
- I know.
Well, I made that mistake when I first met him.
When you meet Stephen, there are these long pauses
because it takes a while for him to communicate,
and I was just filling air.
And I started telling him how we shared the same month
and that we were both Capricorns, which--
He is an astronomer, not an astrologer,
which he reminded me of, which was quite embarrassing.
So--but, no, we do. We share the same month.
- That's amazing, though, I think.
I mean, did you know much about him
before you started getting into this film?
- I am embarrassed.
I gave up science when I was, like, 14.
- Mm-hmm. - I'm useless.
One of--the greatest feat for me playing Stephen Hawking
was trying to back my way into pretending
that I knew what I was talking about.
I'd go to all these sort of complicated websites,
and then I'd go to astronomyforkids.org
and kind of try to work out--
- But you knew of him, and you knew--yeah.
I mean, I've been fascinated by him.
I think the "Theory of Time" was the first book that--
- "Brief History of Time." - "Brief History of Time," yes.
- And what was amazing about that--
was a book that really translated
to people like me, who really are pretty useless,
kind of the meaning of the universe.
- Right, I mean, he's a fascinating guy.
And you are-- you're getting Oscar buzz,
and--and--I mean, you're really, really amazing.
The transformation between the healthy Stephen Hawking
to what you had to do with your body,
you had to be sore every day
from contorting yourself
in that kind of position every day, right?
- Well, you know, I--
I had about four months to prep for the film,
and I went to the-- this ALS clinic in London
and tried to educate myself on the disease
and met some extraordinary people,
really formidable people, who are dealing and coping
emotionally and physically with this disease.
I then worked with a dancer,
and the dancer helped me train for four months
to kind of teach your body to shorten muscles
and to be able to sustain some of the positions.
So the whole process was riveting,
and really, I learned a lot.
- Yeah, it really--
It's amazing, and you deserve the nomination
for the Golden Globe,
and you deserve a nomination for an Oscar, if that happens.
You really do deserve that. - Thank you.
[applause]
- So do you--
When you sat with Stephen,
was he excited about this project,
and did he give you
any tips or advice about playing him?
- Well, when I met Stephen, it was about four or five days
before we started filming, and because--
because when you shoot a film, you don't shoot chronologically,
you have to sort of jump between different periods
in his life over 25 years
within the same day.
It was-- Basically when I met him,
there was so much I wanted to ask him,
but I almost didn't know where to start.
I got completely tongue tied, and I--
When you spend time with him,
he just uses this muscle beneath his cheek
to communicate.
He has a sensor on his glasses,
so there are these long pauses.
And I just get nervous of silence,
and so I genuinely spent the first half an hour
just spewing forth information about Stephen Hawking
to Stephen Hawking.
It was--it makes me sweat even thinking about it.
But eventually I calmed down, and he's just so funny.
He has this incredible wit,
and even though he can move so few muscles,
he just emanates this charisma.
And it really was a great privilege
to spend time with him.
- Yeah, you can actually-- you can see that.
I didn't-- I didn't realize that,
that he communicates everything
from moving that one muscle there.
- Yeah, so now, because the muscles have closed
even--or closed down even further than in the film,
he has these glasses with a sensor,
and then this muscles by his cheek moves,
and then on a screen, he has the alphabet with a cursor,
and each time he twitches that muscle,
it stops on one letter.
So it's incredibly-- I can't get over
how frustrating it must be.
- Yeah, to wait that long to finish an entire sentence.
- And to find such humor and such compassion
in the way he lived despite that.
- It's just a reminder that we're in here, you know?
That's who we are.
That's all that matters,
is we're always, you know, still--
Our attitude is all that matters.