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THE DANISH GIRL'S JOURNEY

It’s hard to imagine that this film was once considered a “commercial poison” and producer Gail Mutrux had to patiently seek a glint of hope for the right people and attraction to bring it to the silver screens. Taking a decade to be finally produced from the time screenwriter Lucinda Coxon started working on it, The Danish Girl had been circulating among numerous filmmakers and actors, and had a fair share of drop-outs including Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow and Rachel Weisz. All three were initially slated to play the role of Gerda Wegener, the wife of Lili Elbe who supported him in his journey to be one of the first known recipients of sex reassignment surgery. In fact, finding the right actor to play Elbe proved to be even much harder. Nicole Kidman at some point in 2008 signed on to produce and play Elbe, that too didn’t pan out. Then finally in that same year during the filming of a battle sequence in Les Misérables, director Tom Hooper handed a large unmarked envelope to Eddie Redmayne and calmly said, “Read it.”

"I knew the script had a long, tortured history," Redmayne shares on his experience, “But it's a wonderful love story. It reframed my notion of love, that love is not about gender or bodies. It's about souls. The minute I read it, I wanted to do it – I wanted to make it right away, right after Les Mis." But Hooper told him to calm down as it would take time, and it took three years before he actually signed on officially to The Danish Girl. "It was a very vulnerable feeling," the Oscar-winning actor shares on his extreme transformative role. "You're being judged wherever you go by crew and castmembers. You're scrutinized. People think actors are always wanting to take their clothes off for the camera, like, 'I'm ready to get naked!’ But it's not true. It was as uncomfortable an experience for me as it would be for anybody." In one particular scene, Redmayne stands naked in front of a full-length mirror, his genitalia tucked between his thighs.

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