Here is what Stephen Hawking has to say about Eddie Redmayne's Oscar win

Eddie Redmayne won an Oscar last night for playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.

The film chronicles a young Hawking, his genius and hid struggle with Motor Neurone Disease (also known as ALS). In his acceptance speech, Redmayne dedicated the award to all those "battling" the disease around the world.

This morning Hawking congratulated Redmayne, writing on Facebook: "Congratulations to Eddie Redmayne for winning an ‪Oscar‬ for playing me in The Theory of Everything Movie. Well done Eddie, I'm very proud of you."

Redmayne has previously revealed he had "verbal diarrhoea" when he first met Hawking, telling the Independent he "basically just spewed forth information about him, to him, for the first half an hour".

When I met him, I'd done the first six months of research, in that process, having known very little about him, other than what I suppose is the voice icon, black hole something, that I became quite, the more I read about him, the more idol-like he became.

• Eddie Redmayne