Eddie Redmayne gets all reverential when he talks about you-know-who. That's J.K. Rowling, not Lord Voldemort.

Redmayne is playing Newt Scamander in the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and according to the Rowling legend, Newt travelled the world in the 1920s writing an encyclopaedia of creatures that is now read by first-year students at Hogwarts.



"I met her once," Redmayne whispers. "It was when her and David Yates were working on the script ... and it was meant to be a meet-and-greet and a wee chat. I got a sense that her time is so precious, so we ended up getting right down to the root of who Newt is. Her mind is so alive – it was a real pleasure. It was in one of these rooms, about 30 metres away."



We are in an office building on the Fantastic Beasts set at Leavesden Studio, just north of London, and the studio has been dressed to look like prohibition-era New York, where the action takes place over three days in December 1926. Redmayne is wearing the white shirt that will soon become part of the iconic look of his Newton Artemis Fido "Newt" Scamander.



The actor, 34, says working with Rowling is fulfilling a dream. Redmayne was 15 when the first Harry Potter book came out in England. A few years later, while studying art history at Cambridge University, "I was dreaming of getting an audition for the films," he says. "There was this moment where it seemed that every English actor was getting the opportunity, particularly if you had reddish-brown hair. While at university, I did audition for the part of Tom Riddle. I didn't get it."



Riddle grows up to be Voldemort, and it's impossible to imagine Redmayne in that role. He seems too nice and awkward to play the most evil being in the world. Redmayne has an embarrassing shyness that makes him modest and self-deprecating when talking about his own successes. He was apologetic when he first met Fantastic Beasts director David Yates.

"For five or six years I've had this battered old Globe-Trotter case that I use to put all the things that I need when I go on set," says Redmayne, who went to the boys' school Eton College just outside London alongside the likes of Prince William. "When I first met David, we went to have a coffee and he started telling me about Newt and that he had a magical brown leather suitcase. I quickly told him: 'I didn't come here with a case to be Method [acting] or show off. I had no idea'."

Yates quickly saw character traits he wanted to play the socially awkward Newt. "Eddie had got an amazing combination of fragility and strength, and depth, and he's funny. That is a wonderful combination for Newt Scamander. And he's slightly – and I hope he forgives me for saying this – he's obsessed with detail, so when he prepares for a scene, he needs to know the minutiae of everything, and that is very Newt."