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The whole world's talking about Ralph Fiennes - and he doesn't like it one bit. It's bad enough that no one can pronounce his name. But then there's the things they say... To one smitten Hollywood scribe, he's the man whose lips have the "sheen of rolled silk stockings". To London luvvies, in awe of his piercing gaze and haunting tones, he's the guy with the "burning gimlet eyes" or the "voice beautiful" - the most mesmerizing actor of his day. To breathless British tabloids, he's simply "the sexiest man alive".
And what about the panting American writer who rhapsodised about his "fine bones, tapered nose, delicate almond-shaped nostrils, long eyelashes and dark-rimmed green-grey irises that look as soft off-screen as rabbit's fur under glass"? Blimey. No wonder Barbra Streisand reportedly begged to sit next to him at a pre-Oscars dinner. And no wonder Kristen Scott Thomas, his co-star in The English Patient and fellow Oscar nominee, gushes with tributes to him.
"He does have that amazing face," she says. "But there's a kind of sobriety and a dignity to him that other actors of his generation don't have. Ralph's a man. He appeals to women in a sort of manly way. He makes you want to go weak at the knees so you can go, 'Ooh, catch me'."
The buzz surrounding 34-year-old Fiennes would be deafening were he merely the star of a surprise hit movie that went on to dominate the Oscar nominations. But add a loud murmur of off-screen intrigue, and the volume of the chatter goes off the scale.
He split from his wife Alex Kingston, who played cleavage queen Moll Flanders in the recent ITV bodice-ripper, and has been linked ever since with 52-year-old Francesca Annis, star of the steamy drama series Reckless, who also played his mother in a Broadway production of Hamlet. She had lived with Patrick Wiseman, father of her three children, for more than 20 years.
It's not surprising that Fiennes cringes at the ever-brighter spotlight that succes has turned on him. "I've had moments when I've felt that things were good and that I'm very lucky," he says. "But being famous hasn't made me happy. My instant reaction to it all is that I want to hibernate. I find the media increasingly invasive, and I really want to firmly close the door on my private life and whatever partnerships I'm in."
He's also underwhelmed by showbiz accolades and the hoop-la surrounding them. "Awards have nothing to do with the making of a film, the creation of a story on celluloid," he says sternly.
But life hasn't quite been the same for Fiennes ever since Schindler's List pulled in the Oscars in 1993. He took Hollywood by storm with his portrayal of evil Nazi Amon Goeth, and America went mad for what appeared to be yet another sensitive Shakespearean Brit. No one was ever more surprised than Fiennes when the film made him not only a star, but a sex symbol to rival Daniel Day-Lewis as the thinking woman's British crumpet.
Fiennes is anxious to debunk this image, however. "I have days where I don't really care if I feel a bit unwashed and rumply and sweaty," is his shock-horror confession. "And people who know me, especially my family, know how unpleasant and monosyllabic I can be when I want to."
Make a big deal about his name and you're likely to hear some very choice monosyllables indeed. It's pronounced in Old English tradition, and 'Rafe Fines'. "People think I'm being willfully perverse or affected," the actor complains. "I hate it being made an issue of."
He seems so reserved and introverted in the flesh, it's hard to imagine where he gets the courage to perform on stage and in films. "It has a lot to do with fantasy," he explains. "I like the hideaway-ness of acting. I really like the fact that I can pretend in my head, imagine myself to be someone else. I have often thought that I feel more secure in a part than I do in everyday life".
Perhaps Fiennes' sense of dislocation comes partly from his unusual childhood. Born in Suffolk, the eldest of 6 children, he grew up "rather bohemian". His father, Mark Fiennes, a farmer-turned-photographer, ofetn moved the family around the country. And his mother, Jennifer, a novelist and travel writer, who died in 1993, helped educate Ralph and his three brothers and two sisters.
"We had no money," he recalls. "I remember lots of times when it was very fraught and emotionally flawed and my mother was very distressed and my father very burdened by anxieties about work".
But Ralph learned to escape by going to the cinema. "In the early Seventies, Dad took me to a James Bond movie and I was completely overwhelmed. You know, there were these gorgeous women and he came out of every situation remaining so cool, and making those laconic remarks".
"Then Dad read me 'The Man with the Golden Gun', but when he reached the part where it dealt with this killer, Scaramanga, who needs sex before he goes and kills somebody, my mum told my dad: "You can't read that to an 8-year-old child.' So Dad tore the book into pieces and threw it in the nettle patch behind the house."
Later Ralph became a punk, wearing army surplus clothes and cutting his hair in a skinhead style in order to look mean. He hated adolescence, which he dismisses as "that period of inadequacy and all the sexual awakening stuff".
He also hated school - especially having to play team sports like rugby where "some instructor yells at you get in line so you can kick a ball".
But he loved the arts, and at first studied painting at the Chelsea School of Art. After dropping out - "I didn't feel I could be original" - he moved to the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to study acting. After graduating in 1988 he immediately joined the evenmore prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company, but after three years cutting his teeth on the classics and repertory theatre he left to pursue a film career.
His first two big-screen roles were disappointing. He played Heathcliff opposite Juliette Binoche in a disasterous remake of 'Whuthering Heights' (1992) that one critic describing his performance as reminicent of a man with "permanent indigestion". Then came Peter Greenaway's highly controversial religious parable 'The Baby of Macon' (1993) , which even Fiennes describes as "odd" and also introduced Julia Ormond to the world.
Since then, of course, his career's taken off. 'Schindler's List' was followed by the Robert Redford's critcally-acclaimed 'Quiz Show' (1994) and the less successful futuristic thriller 'Strange Days'(1996). Now 'The English Patient' is set to make him a superstar, even though he spends half the movie on his back, charred and horribly disfigured.
Whether he likes it or not, Fiennes has also become hot stuff. That great source of box-office dolars, the all-American girl, has taken him to her bosom. "Women go for him in droves," says his 'Quiz Show' co-star Christopher McDonald. "He doesn't say a hell of a lot, but when he opens his mouth he has this beautiful accent - and then he's got 'em."
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© EL STEPHO
Added to the RF Reading Room on June 8, 1997
EL STEPHO