“I suppose my dream as an actor is you hopefully get to tell interesting stories and play interesting people and they don’t come as extraordinarily interesting as Stephen Hawking very often,” said Eddie Redmayne at the Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala held on Saturday, January 3, at the Palm Springs Convention Center. Julianne Moore presented Redmayne with the Desert Palm Achievement Award for an actor for his work in The Theory of Everything (Focus Features), James Marsh’s film about Hawking’s early years as a Cambridge University physics student. Redmayne said the role “felt like a formidable challenge.”

At the festival, Redmayne also noted that this was his second trip to Palm Springs over the past few years. “I came here a couple of years ago when I was with Les Miserables and Tom Hooper won a prize and I had the most wonderful time. I never dreamed I would get to come back here and of actually winning something,” he added.

Fellow British actor Benedict Cumberbatch was also glad to log some time in the California desert, “It’s a great excuse to be flown out to an amazingly exotic place far away from the winter, the English winter,” said Cumberbatch who also plays a British scientist, Alan Turing, in The Imitation Game (The Weinstein Company). Morten Tyldum’s film about a Cambridge graduate who cracked Nazi codes during World War II but was later sent to prison for being gay, received the Ensemble Performance Award at the festival.

Both Redmayne and Cumberbatch joined fellow actors and directors at the post-party held at the Parker Palm Springs, a charming desert oasis where a beach-themed party that included two lifeguards sitting atop towers placed beside the dance floor hinted at the resort’s nautical assets.

Pictured: Eddie Redmayne and Hannah Bagshawe at the Palms Springs International Film Festival.
Photo by: Jason Kempin