Desert Island Discs

U.K. Radio Programme Transcript
October 31, 1999

PART 2 of 2

SL: Next record.

RF: I met Anthony Minghella for the first time to talk about The English Patient, but also shortly after meeting him I met the wonderful producer of The English Patient, Saul Zaentz, and because the character I play, Count Almasy, the English patient, has a private obsession with, with - ah - jazz music, or swing music, or dance band music of that time, the 30s, 40s, Saul sent me a whole batch of CDs of different artists and I played this a lot during the filming.

[Record plays]

SL: Ted Murphy and his jazz band with "When My Sugar Walks Down The Street" recorded in Los Angeles in 1949. And now, Ralph Fiennes, we're about to see Onegin, Evgeny Onegin, the 19th century Russian dandy and cynic who rebuffs the love of a beautiful girl, and then only to fall madly in love with her years later and get rebuffed himself. Tchaikovsky wrote the opera of course, as we know - why did you want to make this film? This has really been a passion, hasn't it?

RF: Yes, it's been a sort of quiet passion that's, that's sort of - obsessed myself and my sister Martha, who's directed it. I first read Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin. I didn't know the opera. I read it when I was at drama school and became most intrigued by this character Onegin - he's the first of the Russian literary type - the [Russian phrase], the superfluous man, the man who has no role, who's lost.

SL: Mmm.

RF: He's quite well off, he's a bachelor, but he's, he's taken himself almost out of the world and he has a sort of cynical stance on things, and he's a narcissist and egoist and, but not stupid - he's sort of removed himself mentally removed himself from any emotional involvement and interaction with the world and definitely he's based on types created by Byron, like Childe Harold.

SL: Such a wonderful part - it's a demanding part - why did you want to do more than just play that part, and exec produce it as well, and take on board all of those kind of, um, less creative responsibilities?

RF: It came about because we had, well, principally, the key producer initially on the film, who really was responsible for helping us find the money - Eileen Maizel - she, ah, said to me "I think you should be executive producer." I didn't quite know what that would involve. It turned out to involve - I think it involves different things on different films - in this case I think it involved really having a say creatively, particularly on the screenplay, the devlopment of the screenplay.

SL: But are you saying that you produced it because no-one else did - are you saying you were pushed into it, or was it that you actually wanted to have that kind of control?

RF: I wanted to have involvement - involvement in creative decisions.

SL: Did you enjoy having that kind of control, over yourself, as it were?

RF: Yes, but it's - I came away from the whole thing with completely different respect and admiration for anyone who makes a film, who gets the finance, who works on the script, who fights the battle with people who want to change ideas, change the initial vision, often, often because there are voices that appear in the process who say the audience won't like it, the audience won't this, the audience want such and such, the audience want emotional music, and -

SL: You've got to go with your gut - you've got to trust your gut.

RF: Yeah, well I think one of the things was that Martha and I, you know, 99 per cent of the time, had the same gut feeling about it.

SL: And the other one per cent was creative tension.

RF: Creative - healthy, healthy creative tension.

SL: Healthy. Noisy?

RF: Not too noisy, no.

SL: Record number six.

RF: Well, in the film of Onegin we - I'm sure the purists will think "Why have they put Beethoven in a film about Russia?" But it's from Fidelio and it's a quartet [German phrase] and Martha came to me and we were discussing what music we should use and she said "I just want to use this piece of Beethoven, this Fidelio - I think it's wonderful" and I said "Oh my God, that's - I know - this piece is extraordinary"

[Record plays]

SL: Ingeborg Halstein, Christa Ludwig, Gotlob Frick and Gerhardt Unger singing the quartet [German phrase] from Beethoven's Fideliowith the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Otto Klemperer. Um, you said that the theatre is your base camp, Ralph. Do you, despite all this great success in film, do you find it more thrilling, do you think, the stage?

RF: Well the process, I think, for an actor's a bit more pure, in that the process of film-making's very chopped up.

SL: Mmm.

RF: After a while, I think you long - I've longed to have that sort of open run, if you like, of rehearsing and then, and playing, playing, playing a part right through.

SL: And getting that instant reaction from the audience which is -

RF: Yeah, that instant - interaction, which is -

SL: Mmm

RF: Is what you miss, I think, when you're, when you're filming.

SL: But more of an excuse to go home and beat yourself up every night, as it were, because you can't redo a performance, and I think you do agonize, don't you, you do fret.

RF: Well, one of the worst feelings is feeling that that night you've missed it, and it's a horrible feeling knowing that that night people were in and you feel you messed up.

SL: But do you find it very difficult to find professional peace?

RF: I think I'm probably naturally a bit over-anxious. I'm a worrier. Yes, it's - it's not a help, being anxious. It can be a hindrance, I think.

SL: Your mother died, as I said, um, earlier on, of breast cancer in 1993. She didn't really live to see you become a big bankable star [he chuckles] - the big bankable star that you are, did she?

RF: Well, she didn't live to see Joseph become a bankable star, sadly, nor did she live to see Martha directing Onegin, and - but her own novel, last novel, Blood Ties, we managed to publish, thank-you to Liz Calder of Bloomsbury books and that I wished she had seen.

SL: You were 31 when she died, and um, you had a pretty turbulent time of it one way and another around then. Have you come to terms with all of that now, do you find?

RF: Well I mean we all have, all of us. I mean - I think, you know, it's not unique to us as a family. If a family loses a parent, or any member of a family that is much loved, then for anyone, I think, is turbulent and we've all, I think, come as a family, I think become stronger because of it and closer.

SL: And if you - if professional peace continues to elude you, have you found personal peace?

RF: Er, slowly, but ah - I suppose I think they're intertwined.

SL: And you might find peace one day.

RF: I - well, some of this music that we've been playing gives me peace.

SL: Let's have another piece of it.

RF: This is about feeling good. Nina Simone and "Feelin' Good".

[Record plays]

SL: So, off to a desert island with you, Ralph Fiennes. To an extent you ought to be able to take - I mean, as you say you had this rather nomadic childhood, lots of people around, you must know how to fend for yourself.

RF: Yes, yes, my father would be very disappointed if I couldn't.

SL: Would you miss an audience, or is acting more to do with intellectual fulfilment?

RF: No, I don't think acting is at all intellectual activity. In fact, going back to what we were saying, I think more and more it's a physical thing, it's closer - it uses the part of the brain that you use if you're - I'm a terrible sportsman, but I think it's a physical activity. You can have lots of analyses of performance in rehearsal, but the moment of commitment to a part, whether it's in front of an audience of a camera, I think it's more physical, really, more sensual.

SL: And back on the desert island, um, you seem to me to say that an audience is important for you in the theatre in that interactive sense, but as far as public admiration is concerned you don't need it.

RF: Oh, I mean, I think everyone who wants to get up on a stage and be looked at wants to be liked somehow, but I think you have to sort of accept that and get beyond it and value the moment that you do it for what it is, I mean, I feel more and more that if in choosing any job, any character, any part to play, the process of - that's your life, so the process of making that work and bringing that together is what's important, and the odds are that if the process is thorough and enriching and inspiring and enabling than that will show in the finished result, in the final performance.

SL: As your mother used to say, you've got to get your guts into it.

RF: You've got to get your guts into it. That's right.

SL: Last record.

RF: Well, I had a wonderful collaboration with Anthony Minghella on The English Patient, and a wonderful gesture that he made was to give me some music, some of which is in the film, but this piece of music's not in the film and I know it's been one of his choices on the same programme and, co-incidentally, it's also mine.

[Record plays]

SL: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskar [phonetic spelling] singing part of the aria [German name] from Bach's St Matthew's Passion, with the Munich Bach Orchestra conducted by Karl Richeter. Now, if you could only take one of those, Ralph, which one would it be?

RF: Ultimately if I had to chose I'd take the Fidelio because the layering of those voices and the intensity of emotion I think it would raise my spirits.

SL: And what about your book, as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

RF: Well I've just, in fact, next week, I'm starting a - a very unusual BBC programme about Proust, based on a book I had not heard of until I was asked to do this, by Alain de Botton, called "How Proust Can Change Your Life" and, because I'm going to be in fact playing Proust in this, I think I would take "A la recherche de temps perdu" in English.

SL: What about your luxury?

RF: A pen, with I think it would have to be limited supplies of ink and paper because I think it would make me focus.

SL: Ralph Fiennes, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

RF: Thank you very much.