Oscar winner unrecognisable on record-breaking series The Day Of The Jackal

This Oscar winner has proven to be the ultimate acting chameleon as he’s virtually unrecognisable in this record-breaking new series.

Record-breaking British series The Day Of The Jackal has cemented Eddie Redmayne as the ultimate acting chameleon.

In the past, the British actor has transformed on-screen on various films – he portrayed a transgender woman in The Danish Girl and morphed into physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything; the former scored him a Best Actor nomination in 2014, the latter won him the Oscar the following year.

Eddie Redmayne won an Oscar in 2015 for playing physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Picture: Dan MacMedan/WireImage

Redmayne portrays a hit man in the new series The Day Of The Jackal. Picture: Binge

But now the 42-year-old takes his stunning transformation abilities to the small screen for the action series The Day Of The Jackal, in which he plays a ruthless lone assassin constantly changing his appearance before every kill in an attempt to evade the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.

In the Peacock series which airs locally on BINGE, Redmayne is a stone-cold master of disguises. In the first five minutes of the Episode 1, he expertly assumes the identity of a German janitor who infiltrates corporate headquarters to take out his target. Viewers later learn that the real janitor named Ralf is dead on a sofa as the Jackal hawks his identity.

Stream The Day Of The Jackal on BINGE and Foxtel, available on Hubbl

Redmayne is unrecognisable under layers of prosthetics on the show. Picture: Binge

This look alone took four hours in the hair and make-up chair. Picture: Binge

Elsewhere in the 10-part series – the explosive finale airs next week on BINGE – Redmayne shapeshifts into an elderly man in a wheelchair, a balding cashed-up bank customer, and a super-sleek classical music aficionado all while maintaining his sociopathic charm with every metamorphosis.

And it appears the series has been his most challenging physical transformation yet with Redmayne putting his blood, sweat (literally) and tears into every scene.

That janitor character alone, the actor spent four hours with hair and make-up designer Melanie Lenihan to age his face with prosthetics before sporting a rubber and foam suit to bulk out his body on a scorching hot day in Hungary, one of the filming locations. (Other locations included Munich, Paris, London, Sweden, Northern Ireland and Cadiz).

Redmayne says he was sweating under all the make-up and foam suits. Picture: Binge

The actor is barely recognisable on the show.

He also worked with a coach to help him perfect the accents.

It was so hot that the series’ prosthetics designer Richard Martin had to improvise to give the actor a little relief from the heat in the studio, which had no airconditioning.

“My overwhelming memory of those days was Richard coming and doing pin pricks through the prosthetic and this sweat oozing out the top,” Redmayne recently told Variety.

“You don’t get much time to prep with them, because it costs so much money, and they take so long to put on,” he continued. “And they’re so deeply uncomfortable that people quite often go, ‘Oh, that’s a prosthetic performance.’ But having experienced quite a lot of it myself, when I look at someone like Colin Farrell’s performance [in The Penguin] or Gary Oldman’s performance [in The Darkest Hour], you don’t get much time to prep in it. So it’s really a trial and error experience.”

Redmayne assumed each character on-screen before every kill.

It may have been a trial and error for the cast and crew on-set, but for viewers the series hit the target.

“If the make-up department for The Day Of The Jackal doesn’t win every single award imaginable this year, then you know it’s rigged,” tweeted one fan. “The makeup work on Eddie Redmayne’s disguises was incredible!”

“Never has Eddie Redmayne looked as good as he does in The Day of the Jackal — specifically in the several sequences when his assassin character dons painstakingly constructed prosthetics to pass as an old guy,” commented another.

Yet another viewers echoed, “Eddie Redmayne is fantastic - and chameleon like in The Day of the Jackal. What a gripping show!”

The series is an adaptation of the 1973 movie of the same name by author Frederick Forsyth, who in 1971 wrote the book in 35 days and went on to win the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel the following year.

The Day of the Jackal has been a massive it, it has been renewed for a Season 2.

It was then adapted into a feature film in 1973 starring Edward Fox before the novel served as inspiration for another movie in 1997 titled The Jackal, which starred Bruce Willis and Richard Gere. The film was a box office hit, but received mostly negative reviews from critics and Forsyth himself, who at the time filed an injunction to keep the film from using the same title as his book.

Redmayne’s version has proven to be a success, attracting more than 3 million viewers in the UK alone in the first week it premiered last month, and the views kept coming from the 200 other territories where it is streamed across the globe.

Here in Australia, The Day Of The Jackal has seen similar viewership to the UK, making it BINGE and Foxtel’s biggest new scripted series launch for the year. And with the season finale set to air last week, viewers are in for one explosive ending.

The Day of the Jackal is now streaming on BINGE and Foxtel, available on Hubbl

Originally published as Oscar winner unrecognisable on record-breaking series The Day Of The Jackal