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My only quibble with him before our meeting was his gloomy choice of roles. His characters, from the psychotic Nazi Amon Goeth, to the angst-ridden Oscar in Oscar And Lucinda have all been so serious. After one brief foray into comedy with the blockbuster flop The Avengers, he scuttled back to brooding with Onegin and now, with his new film, The End Of The Affair, an adaptation of Graham Greene's novel. My sneaking feeling was, "why can't he just lighten up?"
After having met him, I wanted to storm up to him and roar "Why don't you lighten up?" in his face. A tortured soul is all very well on screen, but it's exhausting to interview.
Ask him a question like, "What's your favourite colour?", and the blood will drain from his face, then it will flush to beetroot, his lower lip will tremble and he'll look down at his fidgeting hands and say, miserably, "Blue." I thought he was going to burst into tears any minute. It's not like I was asking any particularly tricky questions. I suspect that, if I had, the interview would have ended prematurely. There is, after all, scandal to explore. In 1997, aged 34, Ralph divorced his actress wife, Alex Kingston, whom he'd left two years previously for another actress, Francesca Annis. He now lives with her in a house in west London. Break-ups happen all the time, though, don't they, particularly among actors?
Well, not exactly like this: Ralph and Francesca, 18 years his senior, got together while playing Hamlet and his mother, Gertrude, very shortly after
Ralph's own mother, with whom he was very close, had died. There are arguably Freudian implications involved here. No wonder the man's so serious.
That seriousness is coupled, when you meet him, with this painful, tongue-tied anguish, and then he says, "But I've never met you before, and now I have to suddenly talk about things that maybe I reflect on quite deeply, but I have to do it like that (with a snap of the fingers) and it's quite difficult. You're making me do a certain amount of awkward self-analysis that I don't normally do." But surely a man of his fame is used to being interviewed all the time? "It's the explaining I find really hard. I want to give clear answers, but I get very bamboozled by some questions because I think "I don't know the answer to that." Oh well, maybe it's good to be questioned."
It's inevitable that Ralph will continue to be questioned while people are interested in what he thinks, and our interest in him shows no signs of abating.
The Fiennes clan is on the march, with Ralph at its head. His film Onegin, also starring Liv Tyler, was directed by his sister, Martha, and his brother Magnus wrote the music. Other brother, Joe, is the ascendant star of last year's huge hit Shakespeare in Love. Only Jacob, Joe's twin brother, has ducked out and become a gamekeeper. Does Ralph feel threatened by all the young talent coming up from behind?
"Joseph and I have never gone for the same part," he smiles. "If we did, I suppose I'd feel very nervous that he'd get the role and I wouldn't."
Ralph's closeness to his family is one of the most endearing things about him. His mother, Jini, was a novelist who encouraged all her children artistically, and his father, Mark, was a farmer turned photographer. There were six children born in seven years and the family moved around England 15 times during Ralph's childhood. It was not what you might call a conventional upbringing.
"There was never a pecking order in the family. I never felt "I'm the older brother, so I can boss you around." I never felt in authority," he explains. Indeed, he took directions from his sister like a lamb. "I really wanted her to assert herself as the director. I wanted to be directed. I had to allow her to make the decisions."
A film's director and its script are both key to the professional choices Ralph makes. The End Of The Affair is directed by Neil Jordan, who made The Crying Game, Michael Collins and Interview With The Vampire. "I respond with a gut instinct to scripts," Ralph explains of the process of choosing a role. "And it is very important to feel a rapport with the director. Not that he or she has to flatter me, I just have to understand the ideas and the way they want to shoot it. I felt that immediately with Neil, and it was a brilliant adaptation of the book."
The Greene film itself is a sad love story set in wartime London. Ralph plays the jealous lover, Bendrix, to Julianne Moore's Sarah. Of course, the film ends tragically. What else could you expect of Ralph? "But I don't want to do broad comedy," he protests, resonably enough. "Trying to be different for the sake of it doesn't interest me. People say "why do you do only period films?" but I don't think about it like that."
The challenge in The End Of The Affair was showing the jealousy the character suffers while still making him sympathetic. It's a challenge Fiennes rose to and it's a very good film. "I have felt jealousy," he admits. "But I try to get away from it. I don't wallow in it. I go and work out or see a friend or read a book. Being lost in your own head is a dead end."
Fiennes seems to be in a constant dilemma. He wants to be spontaneous and relaxed, but he's got a mind that picks everything to pieces. "Actors don't respond intellectually, They respond to the emotions of the script," he explains. "I hate the fact that I analyse and rationalise when I want to be instinctive and open." Physical evidence of this internal struggle is provided, perhaps, by an odd personal habit. His feet slide out from his clogs, and his toes twiddle furiously as he talks.
It's anguishing to watch. When he does make an effort to prove he's natural and easy-going, it falls down flat. "I absolutely believe in instantaneous desire that can become love," he says. Is this what he felt with Francesca? He is evasive. "I have felt it but I haven't always acted upon it."
Even other actors find his seriousness a bit much. "At RADA (his drama school) I was the butt of jokes for being Mr Classical Actor," he says, "but all I wanted was to be in the RSC. I was turned on by those great plays, and I still am.
All the details in The End Of The Affair are in place to make it a hit: a great story, a fantastic castt and a lot of very sexy love scenes. "Why is it such a talking point that there's sex and nudity?" Asks Ralph indignantly when I bring the subject up. "Why is it so interesting when it's a fact of life?" It's partly interesting because it's hard to believe Ralph can film a revealing sex scene when he finds it so hard to expose himself to questions.
"You have to make a joke of it," he explains.
"Lovemaking is magnified on screen and it often feels mechanical to do those scenes,. You adjust your body so it looks better on the camera angle. Your bottom is naked for a bit and then it's covered. That's it."
He treats taking off his clothes like a job, but can't do the same with an interview. He left the room looking visibly relieved and I saw him later on in a bar apparently chatting away happily to a friend. I just felt frustrated that he couldn't have been a little more relaxed with me. On screen he's a talented performer. In the flesh - what a performance!
The End Of The Affair is released on February 4 and goes on nationwide
release on February 11.
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© EL STEPHO
Added to the RF Reading Room on February 11, 2000
EL STEPHO