Jeremy Irons at the AARP Movies for Grownups Awards Gala

Jeremy Irons presented the Best Picture Award for The Theory of Everything to actors Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, on Monday 2 February 2015, at the AARP Movies for Grownups Awards Gala. The ceremony was held at the Beverly Wilshire hotel in Beverly Hills.

Video from Getty Images of Jeremy on the Red Carpet

Excerpt from Starry Night: The Movies for Grownups Awards

Legendary British actor Jeremy Irons held the audience transfixed as he paid tribute to Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, stars of this year’s Best Movie for Grownups, The Theory of Everything. In it Redmayne plays astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, while Jones plays his long-suffering first wife, Jane Wilde.

“Together,” Irons told the hushed audience, “they create cinematic gold dust in their heartrending portrait of a couple who were forced to grow up before their time.”

From Jeremy’s speech:

“But why should this story which, for most of its length, is about young love, earn the highest accolade from AARP Movies for Grownups? Perhaps because, in The Theory of Everything, director James Marsh connects with our mature knowledge… and charts the course of astrophysicist Stephen Hawking falling victim to Lou Gehrig’s disease, while his fiercely devoted wife Jane comes to terms with her place in his universe. Such an emotional story is hard to tell without falling into the myriad cliché’d traps that lie in wait for the film maker. And the strength of Mr Marsh’s work is that he draws from Eddie Redmayne as Hawking, a performance of a man whose mind leaps light years as his body shrivels, that is sometimes funny, always true, and finally deeply moving. And as his long suffering wife, Felicity Jones offers us a performance of rigorous and searing honesty. Together they create cinematic gold dust in their heart rending portrait of a couple who were forced to grow up before their time.”

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