The trailer for 'The Theory of Everything' focusing heavily on the relationship between Stephen Hawking and his first wife Jane, whom he met while a graduate student at Cambridge University in England.
"Look what we made." Anyone fighting back tears throughout The Theory of Everything let them run freely in the final scene, when Stephen Hawking types out these four words on his voice machine.
In the Oscar-winning film, the late, great scientist – who has died aged 76 – and his ex-wife Jane are watching their three children playing in the sunshine. Their 26-year marriage is over, but so too are any recriminations, and there's a sense that the love, loyalty and mutual respect that remains is as much of an achievement as those three children.
Stephen's ex wife, Jane Hawking. Photo / Getty
Their unconventional love story – so convincingly portrayed on the big screen by Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones – captivated the world because, as Jane told me, "it showed that a marriage can end and still be a success".
I interviewed the 73-year-old back in 2015, just as the film adaptation of her book, Travelling to Infinity, was nominated for five Oscars, four Golden Globes, ten Baftas and grossed £77 million worldwide.
For those who knew the pioneering British physicist for his work on black holes and relativity, and had read his books such as a A Brief History of Time, this was the film which would give them a glimpse of his personal life. One which was often as complicated and flawed as any other.
Jane Hawking and Felicity Jones attend the UK Premiere of The Theory Of Everything. Photo / Getty
Despite his marriage breaking down in 1990 after he left her for his carer Elaine after 25 years of marriage, Jane told me: "I think our marriage was a great success. Stephen achieved what he wanted to achieve, we had those wonderful children, and we kept going for a very long time."
Jane Hawking – then Jane Wilde - first set eyes on the young man who was to become science's brightest star, not in the picturesque streets of Cambridge, as The Theory of Everything would have us believe, but in St Albans in 1962. Hawking was just 21 and about to be diagnosed with motor neurone disease, when he would be given two years to live.
Stephen Hawking attends the closing night after party for 'Monty Python Live (Mostly)' at The O2 Arena on July 20, 2014 in London, England. Photo / Getty
"That was a about a month after I first met him," Jane explained when we sat down together in her son's flat in Ealing. "We weren't going out at that moment, but I was already falling in love with him. He had beautiful eyes and was such fun to go out with. He had this amazing sense of humour, so we were always laughing."
The Cambridge PHD student hadn't yet completed his ground-breaking 1966 doctoral thesis, Properties of Expanding Universes, and although Jane maintained she was "no mathematician myself and hopeless at physics, Stephen could explain things to me in a way I understood".
"His intelligence fascinated me. We would look up at the night sky together and although Stephen wasn't actually very good at detecting constellations he would tell me about the expanding universe and the possibility of it contracting again, and I did find all that very appealing."
Felicity Jones, Professor Stephen Hawking and Eddie Redmayne attend a UK Premiere. Photo / Getty
In James Marsh's film, the newly diagnosed Hawking tells Jane: "I want you to go away and never come back." "And that was absolutely true," she told me. "Stephen did say that. But by that stage I was so in love that I just had to come back to him. I thought that I could easily devote two years of my life to help someone I loved achieve his ambitions – somebody who evidently had so much potential."
Nobody could have believed then that Hawking would not only survive for more than half a century - writing his best-seller A Brief History of Time in 1988 - but that he would continue to teach and write about the origins of the universe until his death, despite being confined to a wheelchair and having lost the ability to either speak or write.
And yet when I asked Jane whether Hawking was ever self-pitying, she shook her head.
"He really wasn't. I remember Stephen saying early on to me: 'Where there is physical illness, you can't afford to have a psychological illness as well.' That was his mantra. And by extension, it became my mantra too."
After the emergency tracheotomy, Hawking was forced to undergo in Cern in 1985, however – an operation that saved his life but robbed him of his speech - Jane admitted that things did get "very bleak". Hawking had been so ill that the doctors in Geneva had asked her whether they should withdraw life support.
"But I couldn't let him die," she told me. "I was the agent of life for Stephen." Nevertheless over the following years "life was just so dreadful," she admitted, "so physically and mentally exhausting that I wanted to throw myself in the river – although of course I stopped myself because of the children."
And yet both Hawking and his wife were fiercely optimistic – a trait that clearly bound them. Only whereas Jane's optimism stemmed from her strong Christian faith, her husband was famously an atheist, and the two used to enjoy sparring about their differing beliefs, she said.
Professor Stephen Hawking (L) and his wife Elaine Mason attend the international bookfair on October 19, 2005. Photo / Getty
"I remember once asking Stephen how he knew which theory to work on, to which he replied: 'Well, you have to take a leap of faith in choosing the one that you think is going to be most productive.' I said: 'Really? I thought faith had no part to play in physics?'"
Although Hawking's fame "gave him the recognition he deserved for all his hard work", Jane told me, and was something he very much enjoyed, it didn't make things any easier. "It drew all sorts of people into our circle and really made our home life intolerable," she explained.
After the pair eventually divorced in 1990, however - with Hawking embarking on a relationship with his carer, Elaine Mason, whom he subsequently married, and Jane marrying the organist Jonathan Hellyer Jones - the tensions dissipated.
Two years ago Jane described Hawking's life to me and the Sunday lunches she and the children - Robert, 50, Lucy, 47, and Timothy, 38 - would still enjoy at his house, just ten minutes down the road from hers, in Cambridge as "a miracle" plain and simple.
"It may be a miracle of modern medicine," she shrugged, adding that the Vitamin B12 shots her ex-husband had been having regularly had been very helpful, "and a miracle of Stephen's own courage and perseverance, but it is also quite simply a miracle. There were plenty of times when I thought he wouldn't make it."
Jane never lost the sense of awe Hawking prompted in her when they first met, she said, and continued to feel "a great deal of admiration for him – and a lot of love too". However hard those years were, she "wouldn't take back a minute" she insisted.
And although Jane chose to grieve quietly, her feelings were very much in evidence in the statement Lucy, Robert and Tim released: "He once said: 'It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love'. We will miss him forever."
