To portray the transgender artist in “The Danish Girl,” Eddie Redmayne built the character from the inside out. He started by poring over Lili Elbe’s pseduo-autobiography “Man Into Woman,” chronicling her groundbreaking 1920s gender reassignment surgeries, and studying sketches of her.

He read other books, such as the 1974 memoir “Conundrum” by transgender author Jan Morris, and watched the British TV series “My Transsexual Summer.” He even met separately with six transgender women from different generations to absorb their experiences. “Their openness of spirit was unlike anything I’d ever seen,” Redmayne says on a recent afternoon near his home in London. “That was galvanizing — you felt the trust.” Read more