 VOICE OF STEPHEN HAWKING: 'There 
 should be no boundary 
 'to human endeavour. 
 'However bad life may seem, 
 'while there is life, there is hope.'
 Thank you. 
 It almost felt like, um, 
 a sort of investigation into love, 
 and to love in every sense, 
 in every guise, 
 whether it was young love 
 and passionate love, 
 but also love of subject matter, 
 love of family, 
 and then the limitations, 
 the boundaries of love. 
 I found it just completely 
 eye-opening, 
 for someone that... 
 I went to Cambridge, 
 I'd seen Stephen across the campus, 
 I knew his voice. 
 I knew that he had done stuff to do 
 with black holes, 
 but I had no idea that there was 
 this extraordinary story behind. 
 It would have been easy to make this 
 into, like, a kitchen-sink drama, 
 and to make it grim and realistic 
 in that sort of dogged way 
 that you could have done. 
 But our idea was to go the opposite 
 direction, 
 was to flood the film with light. 
 And to make it, in a way, to pick up 
 on the mood of the characters who, 
 despite all the things that happen 
 to them, are really quite optimistic.
 I loved sitting down 
 and reading this film 
 and that it was a love 
 story, essentially, 
 and it's about 
 this love surviving over 25 years. 
 But also the film is asking broader 
 philosophical questions about, 
 you know, why are we here, 
 what is the meaning of life, 
 and I loved the way it moved 
 between this domestic relationship 
 story and then these broader themes.
 And I liked that straight away 
 from reading the script. 
 So, if you reverse time, then 
 the universe is getting smaller. 
 All right. 
 So, what if I reverse the process 
 all the way back to see what 
 happened 
 at the beginning of time itself? 
 At the beginning of time itself? 
 Yes. 
 So the universe getting smaller 
 and smaller, 
 getting denser and denser, hotter 
 and hotter... 
 You mean wind back the clock? 
 Exactly, wind back the clock. 
 Wind back the clock. 
 Is that what you're doing? 
 Are you winding back the clock? 
 That is what I'm doing. 
 Well, keep winding. 
 You've got quite a long way 
 back to the beginning of time, 
 we've got a long way to go! 
 Keep winding! Keep winding! 
 Really, on this film, 
 I felt like I had to just educate 
 myself on everything, 
 so I went wherever I could 
 and I try, for my own sake, 
 when I'm working, 
 to make it three-dimensional, 
 to try and, just to keep myself 
 enlivened - and I have quite a short
 attention span, so - but otherwise 
 the most complicated side of it was 
 working out - all the documentary 
 start coming out in the '80s, 
 when Stephen became more famous, 
 but by that point 
 he's in the wheelchair, 
 so what was complicated was 
 finding out how he physically 
 progressed into the wheelchair and, 
 although there's stuff 
 written about that, 
 I had to go and look at photographs,
 and I would take those photographs 
 to a specialist 
 called Dr Katy Seidel and she, 
 by looking at what the hands were 
 doing, 
 Stephen's hands were doing, 
 or his feet, would help work out 
 what his specific physical 
 decline may have been. 
 Because with motor neurone disease, 
 you have what are called 
 upper neurons and lower neurons, 
 and if your lower neurons 
 stop working, there's 
 a kind of softness and a wilting, 
 and if you upper neurons stop 
 working, there's this rigid quality.
 MND is a combination 
 of those two things, 
 but which part of your body 
 has which is completely unique to 
 each patient, so by analysing 
 the photos we could try 
 and work out what his specific 
 decline would have been. 
 Eddie was spending time with people 
 with motor neurone disease 
 and studying Stephen's physicality, 
 and he would bring details that we 
 would then use in the film. 
 Felicity did her own version of that
 with Jane and her research. 
 Also, we improvised in the film as 
 well. 
 The screenplay was very good 
 but, at the same time, there was 
 scope for the actors to 
 kind of elaborate, 
 sometimes with dialogue, sometimes 
 with physical actions, 
 to enhance the screenplay. 
 I was very open to that. 
 The book is so detailed about her 
 experience, 
 physically and emotionally, 
 um, and I realised I'd have to start 
 going to the gym 
 in order to get the physical strength
 that Jane had. 
 And Eddie Redmayne may look very 
 light but he's actually very heavy! 
 And just the sort of physical 
 lifting of being the carer, 
 but also the emotional 
 side of that experience, 
 I was constantly coming back 
 to Jane's book. 
 But what was important is that she 
 is this woman who has this 
 incredible capacity for love, 
 and has this strength 
 and determination, but I was 
 keen that she wasn't a saint, 
 you know, she's also a woman that has
 a very strong sexual identity, 
 and also has a career that she's 
 absolutely vehement about, 
 and rightly so. 
 She's someone who, 
 I wanted to show this complexity. 
 Are you going to talk about this or 
 not? Excuse me, just go. 
 Is that what you want? 
 Yes, it is what I want, so please, 
 if you care about me at all, 
 then please just go. I can't. 
 I have two years to live. 
 I need to work. 
 I love you. 
 You-you've leapt to - that's a 
 false conclusion. 
 I want us to be together for as long 
 as we've got, 
 and if that's not very long, well, 
 that's just how it is. 
 It'll have to do. You don't know 
 what's coming. 
 It'll affect everything. 
 When Stephen is diagnosed, 
 Jane doesn't want to burden him 
 with her pain and distress 
 so it's always for him 
 she's giving a face of strength and 
 determination and we're going to get 
 through this and that was constantly 
 throughout their relationship. 
 She wanted to give him 
 the best support she could 
 and that was about being 
 quite selfless. 
 The innocence of their early time 
 together was very 
 important to the way the film was 
 then going to unfold. To enjoy that.
 The charm of that, of people 
 falling in love, you know, 
 in Cambridge, all very innocent 
 and like a fairy-tale, knowing that 
 a nightmare was going to come 
 and descend upon these characters, 
 you know, inexorably in this story. 
 A true story of course. 
 Erm, but it was important that 
 the foundation was there, that we 
 felt the genuine reciprocal 
 love between these two 
 characters because 
 when you test it in such difficult 
 ways as their lives 
 unfolded together. 
 Because we weren't shooting 
 chronologically it was 
 important for me to be absolutely...
 and because it's a disease 
 that once, 
 once a muscle stops working, 
 it doesn't start again. 
 And quite often with film, 
 you know, 
 you make a film and then in the edit
 you can shift this scene to 
 here and that one can go there. 
 And James and I were...and Anthony, 
 the writer, all wanted to be 
 rigorous that with this film we 
 couldn't do that. 
 Because you couldn't have Stephen 
 sort of not moving here 
 and then starting moving 
 again there. 
 Um, and so, 
 I made this chart with each muscle 
 and when it was stopping working, 
 whether it was upper or lower 
 neuron, whether it, um... 
 what glasses he was wearing, 
 which wheelchair he was in. 
 And then, of course, 
 we have chapter four, 
 this black hole 
 at the beginning of time. 
 It's brilliant. 
 Brilliant, Stephen. Superb. 
 Therefore, all there is to 
 say is, "well done". 
 Or perhaps I should say, to be more 
 precise, "well done, doctor". 
 Bravo, Stephen. 
 An extraordinary theory. 
 Thank you. 
 So, what next? Prove it. 
 And prove...with a single equation, 
 that time had a beginning. 
 Wouldn't that be nice, professor? 
 When you meet Stephen, the disease 
 is entirely secondary to him. 
 He has no interest in it 
 and I didn't want this to be... 
 in the way that he is someone who 
 looks forward and passionately... 
 I didn't want this to be 
 a film about a physicality 
 and so, what was important, was to 
 make the physicality so 
 embedded that they 
 are the character, 
 they become conjoined with 
 the character and that by the time 
 Felicity and I were playing 
 together, we could just play. 
 My name is Stephen Hawking. 
 It's American. Is that a problem? 
 They have an unsentimentality that 
 was really important to us 
 that we put that into the film. 
 You know, they are incredibly 
 sharp-witted, always using humour to 
 survive quite difficult situations 
 and there was no self-pity. 
 For Stephen, it was very important, 
 and Jane, you know, 
 with disability often there can be 
 prejudice and you can be patronised 
 and it was so important for them that
 they would just retain Stephen's 
 character and dignity and the illness
 was never important, you know? 
 She always saw Stephen. 
 That was just... 
 For both of them the illness is 
 the least interesting thing. 
 There's far more interesting things 
 they want to be thinking about. 
 However much research and however 
 much you educate yourself...what is 
 at the root of this story is human 
 emotions of the indescribable 
 things of love and family 
 and so ultimately you also end up 
 bringing your own experience 
 into that and I think as you get 
 older you just experience more and I
 think that's probably no bad thing. 
 You have to have empathy for a 
 character in order 
 to play them honestly. 
 And that's quite 
 an instinctive reaction 
 when you read something, 
 but you do become their advocate. 
 You know, you really... 
 It takes a bit of time after filming,
 I remember both of us, you know, 
 taking a few months before we really 
 let go of Jane and Stephen. 
 And you do... 
 you become obsessive about that 
 person and there is a lot of, 
 you have a lot of care for them. 
 Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd 
