[first meeting with Stephen Hawking] I was terrified, because I'd made choices, in terms of his physical decline and his character, that I couldn't now go back on. So I was thinking "Oh God, what if I meet him and it changes everything, is this going to undermine all the work I've done?" Then his carers, who are lovely, took me in to meet him, and the first thing I do is over-apologize for the fact that someone who'd studied art history is playing this great scientific mind. And then, for some reason, I hear myself informing him he was born on January 8, because I've been talking about science and religion in our film and he makes this point in his book "My Brief History" about how he was born 300 years to the day after Galileo, and then I tell him I was born on January 6, I don't know why I say it, but I do, "so we're both Capricorns", and then the second it comes out of my mouth I'm like "Fuck. What did I just say to Stephen Hawking?" And there is this punishing four or five minutes as he blinks away. Finally, the voice says, with killer timing: "I am an astronomer, not an astrologer." And it's just, the idea that he might think the guy playing him in a biopic thinks he's Mystic Meg. I don't think I ever will get over it.
