TORONTO -- Eddie Redmayne got the awards universe buzzing here on Sunday night with his astounding physical transformation from a vivacious, sprightly Stephen Hawking into the wheelchair-bound form we've come to know him by in The Theory of Everything. But he wasn't the first actor to play the cosmologist -- that distinction belongs to Benedict Cumberbatch.
In 2004, a few years before a small role in Atonement helped kick off his film career, Cumberbatch played Hawking in the 90-minute made-for-television movie Hawking, which ran on the BBC.
And as you can see, the whole movie is on YouTube at the moment.
(It's not clear whether the channel, novoiluminismo, really has the right to do that, but it's been up for 18 months now, certainly long enough for someone to notice.)
Just like Theory, Hawking opens as the budding cosmologist meets his future wife, Jane Wilde, at a party. But unlike Redmayne's portrayal, which follows the Hawking's degeneration of Hawking's muscle function to the point that he's unable to use his own voice, Cumberbatch's teleplay ends when Hawking is still very much able to walk and talk.
Cumberbatch was nominated for a BAFTA TV best acting award in 2005. Look for Redmayne, who's just the second actor to play Hawking onscreen, to seriously challenge for the Oscar after The Theory of Everything comes out Nov. 7.
