Eddie Redmayne has revealed why he couldn’t get close to Taylor Swift for her screen test for 2012’s Les Miserables.

The Golden Globe winner, 42, shared that he ate garlic bread before the audition, and so, when he was asked to create chemistry with the singer, he couldn’t get too close to her.

At the time of the audition, Redmayne was already cast as Marius, and Taylor was screen testing for the role of Eponine.

He said: “I'll never forget it because firstly, I hadn't met [Taylor] and she had been taken into be sort of made to look like Eponine, who is this street urchin. So you're meeting one of the most glamorous women in the world and she arrives with mud in her teeth and looks like a street urchin.”

The Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them star recounted: “The director had us on the floor and we were singing this love duet to each other. I hadn't realized it was going to be quite so intimate. I had just been to a pizza restaurant and had shoveled quite a bit of garlic bread into my mouth so I remember they were wanting chemistry and I was trying to play chemistry with Taylor while keeping a distance.”

Taylor Swift herself called the audition a nightmare in her 2022 appearance on The Graham Norton Show. She admitted that she had dark circles created under her eyes and had her teeth painted brown for the audition. The singer noted that Tony-award-winning actor Eddie Redmayne was “'nice” to her despite how she looked.