Felicity Jones spoke with You magazine about how she and Eddie prepared for their roles in Theory of Everything.

British actors Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne arranged a special visit to legendary scientist Stephen Hawking’s home in Cambridge, England to nail their performances in his upcoming biopic. The Like Crazy actress will star as Hawking’s first wife Jane in the Theory of Everything, alongside the Les Miserables actor, who will be portraying the celebrated physicist.

The film will examine the relationship between Hawking and his wife and how they lived with his motor neurone disease, and the two stars were so determined to portray their characters convincingly they visited Hawking at home to learn more about him.

Jones tells Britain’s You magazine, “Stephen is charming and incredibly charismatic; he has a very dry sense of humour. At one point we were talking about star signs: his birthday is on the same day as Galileo’s and he wrote ‘I’m an astronomer, not an astrologer’, which I thought was very funny.”

The visit also made Jones even more determined to get the role right: “They were so young when Stephen was diagnosed with motor neurone disease – she was 18, he was in his early 20s. They were told he was going to live for two years and he’s now in his 70s – I think a lot of his survival comes from sheer personal drive and Jane is still an incredible support… I wanted to tell her story.” Hawking and Jane divorced in 1990 after 26 years of marriage. They have three children – Robert, Lucy and Timothy.

(Source)