Eddie Redmayne says nursing is ‘one of the most extraordinarily hard jobs’

By Ellie Iorizzo and Danielle De Wolfe, PA

Eddie Redmayne has said the combination of physical labour, intellect and emotional intelligence needed to be a nurse makes it “one of the most extraordinarily hard jobs out there”.

The Academy Award winner, 40, most recently plays real-life serial killer Charlie Cullen who murdered numerous patients during his 16-year career as a nurse in New Jersey.

Redmayne said he completely appreciated the difficulty of a nurse’s job after having nursing lessons.

He told the PA news agency: “We had two weeks of nurse training and it became absolutely clear what an extraordinarily hard job it is.

“One of the reasons Charlie was able to slip through the system was because there was a shortage of nurses in New Jersey at the time, because it’s such an incredibly hard, underpaid job.

“The expectations on nurses, the physical expectation, the actual physical labour… along with the science, the intellect involved, let alone the emotional quality.

“You have to be a translator of what doctors do, you have to be the person that is there with the families, that sort of emotional intelligence, I think it’s one of the most extraordinarily hard jobs out there.”

The Good Nurse sees nurse Amy Loughren, played by Jessica Chastain, become suspicious that her colleague Cullen is responsible for a series of patient deaths.

Chastain told PA: “I was very interested in, being an American, the hospital system, the whole idea that she’s working and taking care of others, and yet she doesn’t have the resources to be able to take care of herself. I found it really upsetting.

“I am a New Yorker, I didn’t know this story, I’m sure that it’s been kept quiet, probably because of the hospital system and the way that it works in the United States.

“I’m really happy to be part of a film that might have an audience take a second thought about how it’s organised.”

The Netflix crime drama, directed by Tobias Lindholm, is based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Charles Graeber.