Eddie Redmayne as transgender pioneer Lili Elbe – first picture released

First it was a Thomas the Tank Engine movie, now it’s a film about a pioneer of sex reassignment surgery, The Danish Girl. The first still of Eddie Redmayne in character as Lili Elbe has been released, showing the Oscar-winning actor of The Theory of Everything with full makeup, curled red hair and what would appear to be false breasts.

The Danish Girl, adapted from David Ebershoff’s novel and directed by Tom Hooper, is the story of Elbe, who became one of the world’s first known recipients of this type of surgery. She was born in Denmark as Einar Mogens Wegener and underwent a series of then experimental operations in Berlin in 1930-31. Organ rejection following an attempt to transplant a uterus resulted in her death in 1931.

The UK’s Working Title is producing the film, with Redmayne in the central role and Alicia Vikander as Wegener’s wife, Gerda. Intriguingly, earlier versions of the project suggested that the pair may have been played by Nicole Kidman (as Wegener/Elbe) and Gwyneth Paltrow.