Empire Mag (UK) Sunshine Interview

April 2000

By Catherine Hanly

If there's one thing you can be sure about Ralph Fiennes it's that he relishes a good challenge. A quick look at his CV reveals roles that only the bravest of actors would want to take on - the monstrous Amon Goeth in Schindler's List, the voice of Jesus in The Miracle Maker and now a trio of characters from three generations of the same family in Istvan Szabo's Sunshine. Empire Online caught up with the actor at the London premiere for Sunshine - a day off for Fiennes who is currently appearing in the Almeida theatre production of Richard II at the old Gainsborough studios in North London.

Empire: Was it the chance to play 3 different characters in a single film that attracted you to this movie?

Ralph Fiennes: 'That and working with Istvan Szabo whose films I've been a fan of for a very long while.'

E: Wasn't it all a bit schizophrenic?

RF: 'People keep asking me that, but in the theatre if you're in a repertory company you're often in more than one play. I've been in the National Theatre and the RSC in three plays at the same time…you're holding lines for different characters in your head. It's a challenge, absolutely, it's hard, but it's possible especially if you have a director like Istvan who knows exactly what he wants and knows the characters inside out. Istvan could give me very precise instructions or suggestions for each character so, after a number of meetings with him, I had a very strong sense of the personas of the three different men.'

E: You always seem to intersperse your film roles with appearances on the stage. What does theatre give you that film can't?

RF: Theatre gives you this charge'

E: What's next for you?

RF: 'Well we're going to New York to the Brooklyn Academy of Music and then on to Tokyo and after that I don't know'

E: Any new films in the pipeline?

RF: 'I was actually thinking of doing more plays. The filmmaking process [isn't attractive] unless you're working with people like Istvan or Neil Jordan - people who can really lead a film. And good film scripts are very rare. Anyway I really look for things that I have an instinctive reaction to wanting to do. I don't have this plan of wanting to do a type of film next. I wait for fate to somehow come up with a film that I feel in my gut that I want to do, whatever other people might think about it or whether it's commercially viable or not.'