Age: 44
male
Edward John David Redmayne OBE (born 6 January 1982) is an English actor and model. He is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a British Academy Film Award. He began his professional acting career in West End theatre before making his screen debut in 1996 with guest television appearances. His first films were Like Minds (2006), The Good Shepherd (2006) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). On the stage, Redmayne starred in the productions of Red from 2009 to 2010 and Richard II from 2011 to 2012. The former won him the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. Redmayne's film breakthrough came with the roles of Colin Clark in the biographical drama My Week with Marilyn (2011) and Marius Pontmercy in Tom Hooper's musical Les Misérables (2012). He garnered consecutive nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayals of physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (2014), and transgender artist Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl (2015), winning for the former. In 2016, he began starring as Newt Scamander in the Fantastic Beasts film series.
During a summer party at the family farm in the English countryside, sixteen-year-old Laurel Nicolson has escaped to her childhood tree house and is happily dreaming of the future. She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and watches as her mother speaks to him. Before the afternoon is over, Laurel will witness a shocking crime. A crime that challenges everything she knows about her family and especially her mother, Dorothy—her vivacious, loving, nearly perfect mother. Now, fifty years later, Laurel is a successful and well-regarded actress living in London. The family is gathering at Greenacres farm for Dorothy’s ninetieth birthday. Realizing that this may be her last chance, Laurel searches for answers to the questions that still haunt her from that long-ago day, answers that can only be found in Dorothy’s past. Dorothy’s story takes the reader from pre–WWII England through the blitz, to the ’60s and beyond. It is the secret history of three strangers from vastly different worlds—Dorothy, Vivien, and Jimmy—who meet by chance in wartime London and whose lives are forever entwined. The Secret Keeper explores longings and dreams and the unexpected consequences they sometimes bring. It is an unforgettable story of lovers and friends, deception and passion that is told—in Morton’s signature style—against a backdrop of events that changed the world.
