Eddie Redmayne will star as transgender icon Lili Elbe in the upcoming film “The Danish Girl,” and wants to world to know what he learned: Gender and sexuality aren’t related.
The actor opened up to Out Magazine about what it was like to play the woman recognized for pulling off the first successful gender reassignment surgery, how he prepared for the role for three years, and how he thinks gender issues should be addressed in society today.
“It’s a civil rights moment,” he says. “My greatest ignorance when I started was that gender and sexuality were related. And that’s one of the key things I want to hammer home to the world: You can be gay or straight, trans man or woman, and those two things are not necessarily aligned.”