When the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last month, Vanity Fair film critic Richard Lawson declared it “witty, engaging, and genuinely moving.” But in case you want further evidence that the film, from director James Marsh, is worth seeing, look no further than Hawking himself for an additional endorsement.

In today’s Variety cover story, Redmayne tells Ramin Setoodeh how he met with Hawking before the 72-year-old physicist screened the film for the first time.

“He took a while to type something,” Redmayne recalls of the meeting, “then said, ‘I’ll let you know what I think—good or otherwise.’ I said, ‘Stephen, if it’s otherwise, you don’t need to go into details.’ ”

Fortunately for Redmayne, Hawking was so moved by the film that “a nurse wiped a tear from Hawking’s eye” once the lights came up. The film’s subject even offered a bit of praise. Per Variety:

He called the film “broadly true,” and even celebrated with the film’s director James Marsh and screenwriter Anthony McCarten at a bar where he sipped champagne from a teaspoon. “He emailed us,” Marsh says, “and said there were certain points when he thought he was watching himself.”

In fact, Hawking felt so strongly about his biopic that he allowed filmmakers to use his own trademarked synthetic voice—a relief since the voice that the filmmakers had come up with was not quite right.

The biopic—which is based on a memoir written by Hawking’s first wife, Jane—opens in U.S. theaters on November 7.

Related: Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones are Extraordinary in the Sharp Biopic The Theory of Everything