Marriage is hard work, goes the saying. But what about being married to one of the world's most brilliant men — afflicted with one of the most debilitating diseases?
Jane and Stephen Hawking in 1990.Photo: Getty Images
The new film "The Theory of Everything," adapted from Jane Hawking's 2008 memoir "Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen," tells the unconventional love story of the renowned theoretical physicist and his former wife.
When the two first met at Cambridge University in the early 1960s, Stephen was a charismatic, laid-back student with a reputation for doing minimal work. Felicity Jones, who plays Jane in the film and researched the role through meetings with her real-life counterpart, says the real Jane and Stephen connected instantly. "It was very much love at first sight. He had gray eyes and a lovely smile," Jones tells The Post.
Stephen's essential cool is a quality the physicist has retained through all of his physical changes, says actor Eddie Redmayne, who plays him in the film. "There's this glint in his eye — this sense of mischief," Redmayne, who met with Stephen prior to shooting, tells The Post. "He doesn't miss a beat. He says very little, but he's in complete control of a room."
The Hawking's wedding day in 1965, right, and Jones and Redmayne in the movie's depiction.Photo: Focus Features; Alma Books
Jane and Stephen quickly became an item despite their differing worldviews — she a churchgoer who studied medieval love poetry, he a cosmology scholar and vehement atheist. As the film shows, Jane was the one to prod Stephen out of a bleak depression when, at age 21, he was given the chilling diagnosis of motor neuron disease (also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease), with two years to live. The couple married in 1965 and had three children, while Stephen became increasingly well-known for his findings on black holes and the nature of time. They traveled the world as Stephen accepted one academic prize after another, with Jane serving as his full-time nurse in addition to caring for their brood.
Photo: Getty Images
The physicist refused to consider hiring outside help — or even, largely, to discuss his rapidly deteriorating condition with his wife. "I well understood," she writes, "that if once he admitted the gravity of his condition, his courage might fail him."
But due to his reticence, the entirety of the work of taking care of him — not to mention leaving him large swaths of time in isolation to think his brilliant thoughts — fell to Jane.
"He required my help with the minutiae of every personal need, dressing and bathing, as well as with larger movements," she writes. "Food had to be cut into small morsels so that he could eat with a spoon . . . I felt like that traveller, who had fallen into a black hole: stretched, tugged and pulled like a piece of spaghetti by uncontrollable forces."
Eventually, she convinced her husband to let her hire a friend to help them: her choirmaster, Jonathan Hellyer Jones (played in the film by Charlie Cox), with whom she shared an attraction that both hid for many years. He grew close to both Jane and Stephen, living with them for a time. "Theirs was a very unconventional relationship — a three-way relationship," says Jones. "But love comes in many different forms, and when people are going through the difficulty of dealing with disease, you find any way to survive."
Soon thereafter, Stephen would survive solely thanks to Jane; after a choking incident (common for ALS sufferers) left him comatose, doctors doubtfully asked her whether he should be revived or not, telling her he would never be able to speak again or breathe unassisted. She angrily insisted he be revived.
The couple in 1989.Photo: Getty Images
They went on to hire a personal nurse for Stephen. Elaine Mason, Jane quickly realized, had designs on being more than just a health aide — and viewed Stephen through the lens of his vast celebrity. He was now a cultural fixture, thanks to the success of his 1988 book, "A Brief History of Time."
Hawking with Elaine Moss in 2004.Photo: Getty Images
And he enjoyed Mason's attention, Jane writes: "Apparently he had not liked being treated as but one member of the family when he considered his rightful place to be on a pedestal at the centre. Someone had come along who was prepared to worship at his feet and make him the focal point of her life."
Stephen would eventually divorce Jane and marry Elaine; Jane would marry Jonathan the choirmaster.
The film's climactic scene depicting their split is widely open to interpretation, according to Redmayne. "Everyone has a different opinion," he says. "Some people will say, 'How could she leave him?' But I saw it as that his life had been entirely reliant on her, and he couldn't imagine a sense of being independent. Suddenly he had found someone who was falling for him, and reinvigorating him with a sense of pride. And I think he had also witnessed her chemistry with Jonathan when he lived with them. I feel like it was a release more than a breakup."
The former spouses are said to be friendly today (he and Mason divorced in 2007, while Jane and Hellyer Jones are still married), and both came to watch the filming of "The Theory of Everything."
"There was this moment," says Jones, "where they were both on set, watching us being them when they first met. Which was very surreal."
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