Glasgow Herald Article

April 4, 1998

Now, bring me my Steed
By William Russell

RALPH Fiennes is slight, foxy looking, rather shiny, and totally unlike the mud-spattered sex symbol of Wuthering Heights, the paunchy, sadistic sex symbol of Schindler's List, or the burned-to-a-crisp sex symbol of The English Patient. He is terribly polite, but patently does not like journalists. They intrude on the actor's art. His sex-on-legs reputation is about to be shattered by his new film, Oscar and Lucinda - he plays a scrawny ginger -haired holy fool addicted to gambling who transports a glass church to the Australian outback for love of Lucinda, owner of a glass factory - or maybe not. Women may well want to mother his Oscar, although most men would cheerfully strangle him.

He says actors seem to be the first thing about a film that gets promoted, recalling a television film he made whose producer encouraged him to do an interview on the grounds that it would be great for the film and him. Then he read the article.

"What I distrust is the way the press field an actor's image," he says. "I don't believe that 30 or 40 years ago it was as invasive as it is today. If this is fame it is something quite unnerving and unbelievable."

He says he selects roles on the basis of his gut reaction to reading the script. That is what happened with The English Patient. With Schindler's List, the role of Amon Goth was clearly a fantastic one, but he had auditioned for it because at he time he was, like any actor, looking for a good break into films. "Since then I have been in the luxurious position of being able to choose," he adds. "I know what I am doing for the rest of this year, and, if I wanted to, I could fill 1999 as well."

He says he loved the character of Oscar, which he plays in Gillian Armstrong's film of the 1988 Booker prize-winning novel by Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda. It is by accident, not design, his third film of a Booker prize-winning novel.

"I liked his naivete, his sense of adventure," he says. "I saw him as a kind of holy fool, not unlike The Idiot. I liked Carey's descriptions of him. I read the script, then I read the book. I thought Laura Jones's adaptation was a pretty good example of how to cut down a book, which is pretty long, for the screen, because in film, less is more. I like the source material in a book to refer to. To some extent it was the same with The English Patient, although Anthony Minghella's screenplay was very different from the book, but one is always looking for little thoughts or moments which help one understand something better."

He says trying to play John Steed, which he does in his next film to be released, The Avengers, was a real challenge because, as the director said, for the first time he was going to have to walk into a room as himself. "I found that hard, and hard also trying not to mimic Patrick McNee, to copy that wonderful relaxation and nonchalance he had," he says. "It is a skill that generation of actors - people like Cary Grant or James Stewart - had, and a very difficult thing to act. It is something we are losing, that we cannot do now."

He says he is not an actor who takes his role home with him at night. "I know you hear about some who are the part 24 hours a day, but I cannot do that," he adds. "I think you have to say - 'Now I go home, have a beer or whatever'." There is a little psychological safety valve in doing that."

He is currently filming Eugene Onegin in Russia, with his sister, Martha, directing. As well as playing Onegin, he is executive producer, a role he is not sure he will ask for again.

"People know the opera more than Pushkin's poem," he says. "But it is a great story. Onegin is the first of the superfluous men. I like Russian literature, and we have been working on getting this film made for four or five years now. It has been exciting and scary at the same time.

"This is the first time I have been on this side of a production, although Minghella involved us a lot in the process of adaptation. I have thought of attempting to direct, but then I look at the stamina involved. You have to be so prepared for that path, and you have to have something you really want to do. I am developing a version of A Child in Time, which is being written by Andrew Davies."

How does he feel about being number 49 in the current list of the top 50 stars with box-office clout? "It is better than being the 51st," he says. "I suppose I am glad I am on a list."

Asked about the directors he has worked for, he says the Spielberg experience was very interesting. "I was told he works very fast and prepares every single shot," he says. "I thought I would have to be ready to go, and he would not have discussions. It was a bit like that on the first day, and I told myself 'This is what it is going to be like, go with it, this is someone who knows cinema inside out.' But as it went on we built up a relationship. As he saw the actors he had chosen develop, he relaxed. I suppose I surrendered to what he asked of me.

"With Robert Redford, for whom I did Quiz Show, it was very different. He was very cerebral, caring, and nurturing, and has a brilliant actor's understanding of what the camera can do. He took his actors along with him.

"But I have never, touch wood, felt squashed or totally constricted by a director. If they want to bully you then that is the game they have decided to play and you have to be alert to the possibility. If they want confrontation then maybe that is the way they work. Minghella has an extraordinary way with actors. He would encourage and push, and get you to push back."

Fiennes has returned to the stage in between films, with a notable Hamlet which he took to Broadway, and more recently Ivanov at the trendy Almeida in Islington. He's talking to director Jonathan Kent about working with him, again in the next 18 months to two years, although not necessarily at the Almeida.

"I have developed a strong collaboration with him which I want to sustain," he says.