Movies Eddie Redmayne says his big Les Miserables number was 'appallingly sung' The actor said he focused more on emotional truth than technical precision. By Maureen Lee Lenker Maureen Lee Lenker Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly with over seven years of experience in the entertainment industry. An award-winning journalist, she's written for Turner Classic Movies, Ms. Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, and more. She's worked at EW for six years covering film, TV, theater, music, and books. The author of EW's quarterly romance review column, "Hot Stuff," Maureen holds Master's degrees from both the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, It Happened One Fight, is now available. Follow her for all things related to classic Hollywood, musicals, the romance genre, and Bruce Springsteen. EW's editorial guidelines Published on September 15, 2022 09:07PM EDT There's a grief that can't be spoken, there's a pain that goes on and on... at least when Eddie Redmayne thinks about his vocals in Les Miserables. While appearing at the Toronto International Film Festival for a conversation reflecting on his career, the British actor turned self-effacing about a clip of him singing "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" as Marius in 2012's Les Miserables. As some might recall, director Tom Hooper shot the musical numbers live-to-film, wanting to recreate the emotional experience of doing a musical on-stage. This won Anne Hathaway her Oscar, but for Redmayne, it was a daunting proposition requiring a huge amount of takes to ground the raw emotion above all else. "I love the frailty," he said. "Technically, it's appallingly sung, but it's got like a fragility that helps sell the song." Everett Collection Redmayne said he took his approach of focusing on emotion over vocal precision from working with director Robert De Niro on The Good Shepherd. "De Niro has this process where he's filming, and you'd do a take, an emotional take, and then he would stop you and get you to go back and start again, and take the accumulation of that emotion and repress that and fire that back into the start of a scene, and that's what we did here on this piece eventually." The actor said Hooper was happy after only five or six takes, but Redmayne was determined to push himself to the brink in his performances. "I'm going to go until I can't go anymore," he recalled. "Because at least when you're not happy with what you end up seeing, you know that you went for it. We did that there. We did push it pretty far." Redmayne can be seen this fall (not singing) in The Good Nurse, which made its premiere at TIFF and stars the actor as Charlie Cullen, a nurse turned serial killer. Related content: Eddie Redmayne was accidentally drunk at his final audition for breakout role in Twelfth Night Jessica Chastain, Eddie Redmayne star in chilling trailer for true crime drama The Good Nurse Eddie Redmayne says he'd turn down Danish Girl role today: 'I think it was a mistake'