West Sussex man in the running for double Oscars and BAFTA glory with Tom Cruise film

For Edward (he’s Eddie in the film business), it all started opposite John Mills on the Chichester Festival Theatre stage in Goodbye Mr Chips 40 years ago. Edward, later a founder member of Chichester Festival Youth Theatre, now finds himself named among the Oscar hopefuls in the best film editing category, vying for the ultimate accolade for his work on Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick.

Edward, who grew up in Easebourne, is up against: The Banshees of Inisherin – Mikkel EG Nielsen; Elvis – Matt Villa, Jonathan Redmond; Everything Everywhere All at Once – Paul Rogers; and Tár – Monika Willi.

The 95th Oscars take place on Sunday, March 12. By then, Eddie will know the results of the BAFTAs where he is also in the running in the film editing section (up against All Quiet On The Western Front – Sven Budelmann; The Banshees Of Inisherin – Mikkel E G Nielsen; Elvis – Jonathan Redmond, Matt Villa; and Everything Everywhere All At Once – Paul Rogers).

Mrs Hamilton admits she wants to keep pinching herself at the thought of it all, just to make sure it's really happening: “We are obviously delighted but when I tell people I wonder if I'm lying. It feels like I'm saying something that's just so fantastic it can't possibly be true!”

Edward was born in June 1972 and went to Conifers School in Easebourne and then The Heights in Haslemere before, following family tradition, to Radley in Oxfordshire.

Before that, at the age of nine and a half, he saw something in the paper about Goodbye Mr Chips at the CFT, for which they were wanting boys: “We were having another baby and we thought it wouldn't do any harm if Edward tried to take part,” Mrs Hamilton said. “He went along to the audition and got the part just before his tenth birthday. He was on the stage with John Mills as one of the boys, and that was his stage debut.”

Two years later he was back on the Chichester Festival Theatre stage again, this time with 40 Years On in which Paul Eddington was playing the headmaster: “And they had this new chap that nobody had heard of who was straight out of Cambridge called Stephen Fry! Then when they finished 40 Years On, that was when they started the youth theatre at Chichester. Edward was a founder member.”

After school Edward went to University College London where he did psychology: “But he’d been in all the school productions, behind the scenes as well as acting.

"He loved films and did various bits. They had a TV network around the colleges at London University and he tried to get into film and TV. They had an orienteering week to see who would get picked and he didn't so he did temping on his computer skills around London while he looked for editing jobs.”

He even sent Kit Kat attached to the bottom of his CV for people to eat while they were looking at it, Mrs Hamilton recalls: “He started in 1995 and he was doing the editing digitally. At the time quite a lot of big editors back then were still into cut and paste.”

Eddie is currently working on the next chapter in the Mission: Impossible movie series. Before that, Eddie cut Paramount Pictures' Top Gun: Maverick, directed by Joe Kosinski, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and Mission: Impossible – Fallout and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation for director Christopher McQuarrie. Other credits include Kingsman: The Secret Service, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, X-Men: First Class and Kick-Ass for director Matthew Vaughn. Eddie has worked on more than 20 feature films (both indies and studio movies) in a wide variety of genres as well as TV dramas, documentaries and award-winning short films.

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