Eddie Redmayne and Benedict Cumberbatch share Oscars disbelief

British actors Eddie Redmayne and Benedict Cumberbatch sent text messages to each other within minutes of the Oscars nominations on Thursday (15Jan15) to share their disbelief after they were both shortlisted for a major honour.

The two will go up against each other for the prestigious Academy Award for Best Actor after Redmayne was nominated for playing scientist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything and Cumberbatch was shortlisted for his role as World War II code-breaker Alan Turing in The Imitation Game.

Redmayne was asleep at his hotel in Los Angeles when the nominations were announced on Friday morning, but within minutes he was awoken by a knock on the door, a ringing phone and a flurry of text messages from his fellow Brit nominee.

He tells Sky News, "I'm feeling pretty good. It's an amazing, amazing thing. It's the crack of dawn here in Los Angeles and I was in the middle of a deep, dark sleep and suddenly there was a rap on the door and I stumbled to the door and it was my manager there and a team of people on the phone screaming, which was very exciting.

"I'm just trying to come to terms with it all. I've gone from 0 to 100 miles per hour in the space of about four minutes. It's extraordinary... It's sort of beyond dreams really... It's really beyond anything I ever imagined. I'm thrilled."

When asked if he had heard from Cumberbatch, he adds, "I just got a text message from him. We texted each other. There were a lot of exclamation marks used! I was so excited."