‘Well done, Eddie’—Hawking hails Redmayne on Oscar win

Stephen Hawking and Eddie Redmayne winner of Best Actor for The Theory of Everything pose for photographers at the British Academy Film and Television Awards 2015 After Party on Feb. 8, 2015.  Hawking congratulated Redmayne on Feb. 23, 2015, for winning the Oscar for best actor. AP

LONDON, United Kingdom – Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking on Monday congratulated British actor Eddie Redmayne, who won an Oscar for playing him in the film “The Theory of Everything”.

“Well done Eddie, I’m very proud of you,” the wheelchair-bound academic, who suffers from motor neurone disease, said in a Facebook post.

“Congratulations to Eddie Redmayne for winning an Oscar for playing me,” he said.

When the film came out last year, Hawking said of the performance: “At times I thought it was me.”

Redmayne, 33, dedicated his Oscar on Sunday to people like Hawking suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and thanked the academic’s family.

The film, which came out in the United States in November and in Europe in January, tells the love story between Hawking and his first wife Jane with whom he lived for 30 years and had three children.