Scientist Stephen Hawking joined acting stars on the red carpet for the premiere of a film about his life, "The Theory of Everything" on Tuesday.
Actor Eddie Redmayne, tipped for an Oscar for his performance, said he felt starstruck at the prospect of playing Hawking.
"I'd been a student at Cambridge and seen Stephen across campus, heard his voice, but I was pretty ignorant so when I read the script, everything was a revelation," Redmayne said.
"We felt an enormous amount of responsibility to get it right."
Redmayne, known for playing Marius in "Les Miserables", has said he trained his body like a dancer to learn how to portray Hawking's motor neuron disease.
The film is based on the memoir "Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen" by the physicist's former wife Jane Hawking, who joined him at the premiere and is played by actor Felicity Jones in the film.
The film tells the story of the couple's beginnings as students in Cambridge, Hawking's diagnosis and ascent to fame with his book "A Brief History of Time". It is released on January 1.