The Danish Girl

The Danish Girl is a novel by American writer David Ebershoff, published in 2000 by the Viking Press in the United States and Allen & Unwin in Australia.

Summary

The novel is a fictionalized account of the life of Lili Elbe, one of the first people to undergo sex reassignment surgery.

The Danish Girl, as Ebershoff stated, does not try to tell a true story. He has not only imagined most of what he wrote about Elbe's inner life, but he has also fabricated all of the other characters in the book, most important among them Wegener's blue-blooded American-born wife, Greta Waud, who like Ebershoff comes from Pasadena, California. The real Gerda Wegener was Danish, but in the novel her name was changed to Greta to please the American audience.

Awards

The Danish Girl won the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Lambda Literary Award. It was also a finalist for the Tiptree Award, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award, and an American Library Association Award, and was a New York Times Notable Book.

Eddie Redmayne

Edward John David Redmayne, OBE (/ˈrɛdmeɪn/; born 6 January 1982) known as Eddie Redmayne, is an English actor, model and singer. He started his professional career in both theatre and television roles in the early 2000s and then made his film debut, Like Minds, in 2006. He has since appeared in films such as The Good Shepherd (2006), Savage Grace (2007), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), My Week with Marilyn (2011), Les Misérables (2012), The Theory of Everything (2014), Jupiter Ascending (2015), and The Danish Girl (2015).

Redmayne received acclaim for his performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, the BAFTA Award, the Golden Globe Award, and the Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2015, he received further critical acclaim for his portrayal of Lili Elbe, one of the first known recipients of sex reassignment surgery, in The Danish Girl. For his performance, he received nominations for his second Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor. He has continued to perform in theatre, most notably in the play Red (2010), on Broadway, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play.

Alicia Vikander

Alicia Amanda Vikander (Swedish pronunciation: [aˈliːsɪa aˈmanda vɪˈkandər]; born 3 October 1988) is a Swedish actress and dancer. Born in Gothenburg, she studied at the Royal Swedish Ballet School and began her professional acting career by appearing in Swedish short films and television series, most notably in the TV drama Andra Avenyn (2008–10), which brought her to attention of a Northern European audience. She made her feature film debut in Pure (2010), for which she won the Guldbagge Award for Best Actress and received the Shooting Stars Award at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival. She first received recognition when she appeared in the 2012 adaptation of Anna Karenina and gained one of the leading roles in the Academy Award-nominated Danish film A Royal Affair. Her breakthrough earned her a nomination for the BAFTA Rising Star Award in 2013 and the same year, she starred in the Julian Assange-biopic The Fifth Estate.

In 2015, Vikander garnered widespread recognition for for such starring roles as Vera Brittain in Testament of Youth, for which she was nominated for a British Independent Film Award for Best Actress, Ava in Ex Machina, for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and Gerda Wegener in The Danish Girl, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama, and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and was awarded the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role. In 2016, she is set to appear in three films, including the action film Jason Bourne, where she will appear alongside Matt Damon.

Tom Hooper

Thomas George "Tom" Hooper (born 5 October 1972) is a British film and television director of English and Australian background. Hooper began making short films at the age of 13, and had his first professional short, Painted Faces, broadcast on Channel 4 in 1992. At Oxford University Hooper directed plays and television commercials. After graduating, he directed episodes of Quayside, Byker Grove, EastEnders and Cold Feet.

In the 2000s, Hooper directed the major BBC costume dramas Love in a Cold Climate (2001) and Daniel Deronda (2002), and was selected to helm the 2003 revival of ITV's Prime Suspect series, starring Helen Mirren. Hooper made his feature film debut with Red Dust (2004), a British drama starring Hilary Swank and Chiwetel Ejiofor, before directing Helen Mirren again in the Company Pictures/HBO Films historical drama Elizabeth I (2005). He continued working for HBO on the television film Longford (2006) and in John Adams (2008), a seven-part serial on the life of the American president. Hooper returned to features with The Damned United (2009), a fact-based film about the English football manager Brian Clough (played by Michael Sheen). The following year saw the release of the historical drama The King's Speech (2010), starring Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush, which was met with critical acclaim. Hooper's next film was Les Misérables (2012), which featured an all-star cast led by Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe.

David Ebershoff

David Ebershoff (born 1969) is an American writer, editor, and teacher.

Life and career

David Ebershoff is an award-winning writer, editor, and teacher.

His debut novel, The Danish Girl, was adapted into a feature film nominated for four Academy Awards, three Golden Globes, two SAG awards, five Critics' Choice Awards, and five BAFTAs. It stars Academy Award winner Eddie Redmayne and Academy Award nominee Alicia Vikander, who won a SAG Award and a Critics' Choice Award for her role, and is directed by Academy Award winner Tom Hooper. Ebershoff's most recent novel is the #1 bestseller, The 19th Wife, which was made into a television movie that has aired around the globe. His books have been translated into twenty-five languages to critical acclaim. Ebershoff has appeared twice on Out Magazine's annual Out 100 list of influential LGBT people. He teaches in the graduate writing program at Columbia University and worked for many years as an editor at Random House. Originally from California, he lives in New York City.