ECHO Newspaper (Ireland)

April 14, 1999

Never a man can say a word agin' me . . .
By Eileen Murphy

Well, we told you a few weeks ago that actor Daniel Day Lewis found it strange that people considered him an Irishman when he, personally, thought of himself as English. Of course, he was flattered, etc., etc., but really he was brought up in London, he's only Irish on his father's side, blah, blah, blah (can you tell we're still not quite over it yet?). So imagine our delight when we heard that dreamy Ralph Fiennes, who seems the epitome of English patience, says he's proud to think of himself as Irish.

The English-born Fiennes spent a great deal of his childhood in Ireland. The family lived for a time in West Cork, in a place Fiennes describes as his "dream home."

"We lived in a chalet . . . on a bay adjacent to a shingle strand that separated the sea from a freshwater lake." he said. "Swans lived on that lake by the chalet and in the evening they would come flying in."

The Fiennes also lived in Kilkenny city, where Ralph, and we presume little brother, Joseph, star of "Shakespeare in Love," attended school. Fiennes is happy to be working with acclaimed Irish director Neil Jordan on a new movie, "The End of the Affair." The film, which will be shot on location in London, also stars Stephen Rea, Ian Hart and Julianne Moore.

"I suppose I took this film on because it is a great novel and it is set in London, but there's also some great people behind it who just happen to be Irish," Fiennes told the Sunday World. "I had several homes when I was growing up," he recalled, "but my favorite was in Ireland."

PS: we're assuming that it was in Ireland that Ralph had the impish inspiration to forever annoy English people by changing the pronunciation of his name. For the record, he says "Rafe Fines." Blimey!