Preview: Eddie Redmayne as transgender pioneer Lili Elbe
Yes, that’s recent Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne, in the first official picture released from The Danish Girl.
Based on the eponymous novel, The Danish Girl is a fictionalized account of the life of Lili Elbe, a Danish woman, who — in 1930 — was one of the world’s first people to undergo sexual reassignment surgery. Elbe died in 1931 after her body rejected an attempted uterus transplant. However, she remains an icon not only as a pioneer for living as an openly trans woman at a time when it was relatively unheard of, but also for the paintings of her by her wife Gerta Gottlieb, whose images of a delicate, beautiful women were revealed to be Elbe pre-transition.
Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech, Les Miserables) is directing the film, and Redmayne will be joined on screen by Amber Heard, Matthias Schoenaerts and Ben Whishaw.
Of any potential controversy surrounding a cisgendered male playing Elbe, Redmayne told The Telegraph that the decision wasn’t an easy one.
“There is an incredibly valid discussion for why a trans actress isn’t playing the part, because there are so many brilliant trans actresses, and I’m sure there are many who could play this part sensationally,” he said. “But one of the complications is that nowadays you have hormones, and many trans women have taken hormones. But to start this part playing male you’d have to come off the hormones, so that has been a discussion as well. Because back in that period there weren’t hormones.”
“There’s also a great history of cisgender, cis people sort of gaining on the back of trans stories, and I absolutely understand that that is not cool,” he added. “But I hope firstly this is a specific period piece, and really is set in its time, in which the bravery that it took, if you were in your mind not of the same gender as your physical being, to undertake when there was no question…. To be authentic and strive to be comfortable in your own… gender, was pretty formidable and brave to me.”
The Danish Girl will release later this year.
Image Credits: UPI Media, Wikimedia
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