Rise to Fame
The Theory of Everything wasn't supposed to change everything. He'd had the Cambridge degree, the Burberry campaigns, the stage work, but it was six months studying Stephen Hawking's deteriorating movements that broke him through. Hawking himself said "At times I thought he was me." The 2015 Oscar made him the first man born in the 1980s to win the acting prize. He immediately followed with The Danish Girl and a second consecutive nomination, which almost nobody does.
In the Spotlight
Three Fantastic Beasts films and a franchise that quietly died before completing its five-movie arc cooled the post-Oscar momentum considerably. The reset came via The Day of the Jackal (2024), a Peacock thriller that hit No. 1 on the platform and pulled SAG and Golden Globe nominations, with Season 2 already confirmed. He brought Cabaret back to Broadway and signed onto a Julia Roberts thriller for Warner Bros. The industry went from writing him off to fighting over him again, which is a better comeback than most actors manage.
Side Notes
Eton on a music scholarship, rugby with Prince William, Tom Hiddleston as a classmate. His Cambridge thesis was on International Klein Blue, which is a particularly odd choice for someone who's colour blind. He auditioned for Harry Potter's Tom Riddle and got a few lines in before being shown the door, then tanked a Star Wars read he didn't even know was for Kylo Ren, accidentally doing a Darth Vader impression instead. He first played Cabaret's Emcee at Eton at 17. The Olivier Award came over two decades later.