Redmayne: I want to be a part of it, New York!

Eddie Redmayne is "weirdly obsessed" with New York.

The 32-year-old actor grew up in London, UK, and attended top British school Eton College with Prince William.

However, his English roots didn't stop him lusting after life in the Big Apple. Luckily his mum Patricia took him there on holiday, where he admits he could barely contain himself.

"I’m weirdly obsessed,” Eddie smiled to Gotham magazine.

"When I was 13 or 14, I had a calendar of black-and-white New York photos and was endlessly trying to do drawings of them. And then my mum took me to New York, and we were lucky enough to stay in this hotel on the 21st floor. I opened the windows and the curtains, and there was St. Patrick’s Cathedral with all the high-rise buildings flying up above it. I kid you not, my knees buckled.”

As one of Hollywood's hottest young actors the star now works extensively in America, as well as all over the world.

His latest role sees him take on the part of Stephen Hawking in the Theory of Everything. Playing the legendary physicist and ALS sufferer has been Eddie's most challenging role to date, and he confesses meeting the man himself was a scary experience.

“I was terrified because I’d made choices, in terms of his physical decline and his character, that I couldn’t now go back on. So I was thinking, ‘Oh God, what if I meet him and it changes everything, is this going to undermine all the work I’ve done?’

"Then his carers, who are lovely, took me in to meet him, and the first thing I do is over-apologise for the fact that someone who’d studied art history is playing this great scientific mind," Eddie recalled to Intelligent Life magazine.