Newhouse News Service Interview

Actor Ralph Fiennes Forges an Eclectic Career on His Own Terms
By Stephen Whitty  

Ask him about his art, though, and the strength uncoils.

"My strongest compass is my gut," Ralph Fiennes declares, sitting in the Manhattan offices of Sony Pictures. "Sometimes 'The English Patient,' 'The End of the Affair,' 'Sunshine' the glove just fits. Sometimes it doesn't, and it's a challenge that I want, a steeper slope I want to climb. ... But always, always, it's about following my instincts."

His instincts have led him to some interesting places over the last 12 months, and his loyal fans along with him.

First, audiences saw him in "Red Dragon," as the tattooed terror Francis Dolarhyde, a madman even Hannibal Lecter couldn't love. Then they saw him as Jennifer Lopez's love object in "Maid in Manhattan," playing Prince Charming to her from-the-block Cinderella.

And now Fiennes is back again, in David Cronenberg's "Spider" giving life to an inarticulate schizophrenic with a fearsome secret, and plumbing depths of madness that make Dolarhyde look like a day- patient.

"On a superficial level, Dolarhyde can get on the real world," Fiennes says, contrasting the two psychopaths. "He's shy and contained, but he's holding down a job and on some level he's battling the demons. But Spider can't at all. Spider's lost. ... He's an existential figure really."

Fiennes doesn't use the word loosely. An articulate and well-read man, he knows his classics. And he sees Spider as fitting in perfectly among them, a doomed creature wandering the sort of blasted city only Beckett could have dreamed.

"I'd seen a lot of movies that he'd done, and he hadn't done anything quite like this," says Cronenberg. "But I just imagined him in the role as I was reading the script, and after about two pages I could just see him and I thought he'd be great."

It's a dark, dense story, and although the psychodrama doesn't have the visual nightmares of "Naked Lunch" or "Dead Ringers," the director doesn't think his core audience will be disappointed. "Ralph," says Cronenberg, "is my special effect."

Mad and mumbling, stained by food and nicotine, Spider's a strange part for a romantic leading man. But Fiennes as you might guess from today's cropped hair and "Son of Frankenstein" jacket doesn't think of himself as a romantic leading man. He thinks of himself as an actor and the glossy "Maid in Manhattan" as the out-of-character choice.

He chose it, he says, because he had actually filmed "Spider" first and after making "Red Dragon" and "Spider," back to back, he was desperate for any sort of comic role. "I would have put on a dress," he says, laughing.

Instead he put on a smile and played J Lo's wan, WASP love object.

"It was a sweet film, and I'm glad it was successful, but I wished it'd pushed the envelope a bit, been a bit naughtier or risque," he says now, philosophically. "I think it sold my character a bit short. ... But it is what it is. And I always knew what it was."

That knowledge was achieved at a price some time ago, though, and for a long time it left Fiennes wary of Hollywood.

'"Strange Days' was a disappointment, but when 'The Avengers' failed, that was sort of a slap in the face," he says, recalling his two high- profile flops. "Because if you're making something whose sole purpose is to be a big popular entertainment, and it's not that, then what is it? ... I got a little nervous of commercial films after that. I wondered if it was something I fit into at all."

He's never doubted that he fit somewhere in the arts. Born to a professional photographer, Mark Fiennes, and his novelist wife, Jennifer Lash, Fiennes grew up the eldest of six bright, eclectic children. (His sister, Martha, is now a director; younger brother Joseph, a brief rival in the British hunk category, starred in "Shakespeare in Love.")

Their literary mother introduced them to the Bard. Drama, literature and the fine arts were playroom mainstays.

"I remember I had a toy replica of a Victorian theater that I loved, this fantasy world of flats and false perspectives," Fiennes says. "And I had a facility with art early on, and I always enjoyed the visual aspect of theater, so I thought, well, maybe I'll design stage sets."

Yet after an unsatisfying year at a Chelsea art school, Fiennes dropped out and joined a theater group. He quickly moved from backstage to the center spotlight, and began taking classes at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. At 26, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company.

And soon thousands of theatergoers were happily learning it was pronounced "Rafe," actually.

Fiennes made his movie debut in a 1992 version of "Wuthering Heights," playing Heathcliff, and it was perfect casting. Typecasting, too. Since then he's specialized in playing tragic, tortured lovers Laszlo in "The English Patient," Maurice in "The End of the Affair," Evgeny in "Onegin," even Hamlet, in a Tony-winning appearance on Broadway.

Fiennes sees the emotional connection between the parts "these complicated, screwed-up people," he calls them but thinks the bond runs deeper than that. Born into an intensely spiritual family one great-uncle is a Benedictine monk, and another uncle a professor of theology at Cambridge the actor finds himself seeking out parts that embody moral complexities.

"I was raised Catholic, although I chucked it in at 19," he admits with a wry smile. "Yet I've always been fascinated by the paradox of faith and the messiness of being a human being, that spiritual instinct that can go hand-in-hand with your own personal duplicity. ... Graham Greene understood that, which is why I always felt very close to his work, and was so eager to be in 'The End of the Affair.'"

The mention of Greene leads to a discussion of Jung, whom he's reading now Fiennes is one of the few actors who sounds like he actually has something on his nightstand besides a cellphone and on to a scatological vision the analyst once had of a desecrated cathedral. Which leads the ever-intense Fiennes back to the endless duality of man, and his interest in playing conflicted characters.

"I find that sort of dilemma very moving," he says. "Even Amon Goeth (in 'Schindler's List'), when he talks to the girl in the cellar, when he starts to see her as a human being and then he beats her up. It doesn't make us like him, and shouldn't, but it shows us that conflict in him. That question of, 'Who should I be, should I be this person, or this person?' and realizing 'Well, maybe I'm both' I'm always drawn to that in characters."

His performance as that indolent sadist in "Schindler's List" drew audiences to him, and Fiennes followed it up with "Quiz Show," playing another one of his complicated, confused intellectuals. And then, after the commercial failure of the dark, ambitious "Strange Days," came "The English Patient," and genuine stardom.

"A lot of people were nervous about 'The English Patient' before it was made," Fiennes says now. "Fox pulled out of it, they didn't want to do it. (The film was later financed by Miramax.) And some people looked askance at me after it was released 'What are you doing playing this skinny guy with red hair, flapping his arms about?' ... But that film was exploring a territory I was comfortable in. It was following an instinct."

Ignoring that instinct led him to sign on to "The Avengers," to shake an umbrella at archvillain Sean Connery and raise an elegant eyebrow at Uma Thurman's Mrs. Peel. Audiences raised their own eyebrows at the film's strangely sexless feel, and the movie lost millions.

"After 'Strange Days' and 'The Avengers' I felt rather burned," he says now. "Those are two big studio movies that I did and they didn't do that well and so a bit of me thought, 'I don't want to expose myself in this way, again.' Yes, 'Thank you for the big paycheck,' you know, but it was after that I did Hamlet and made 'Onegin' with my sister."

Since then Fiennes has grown a little less wary. "Red Dragon" was another big Hollywood project "a franchise picture, Tony Hopkins playing Hannibal again" but the actor says he really responded to "a page-turner of a script and a great part." "Maid in Manhattan" was frankly less intriguing, but it was a relief, and a clear change of pace.

"I mean, I really feel that there's a whole range of other stuff that I can do, or attempt to do," he says. "I've got to try and break the backbone of being thought of in that (one) way."

Still, it's how Fiennes thinks of himself that matters most to him. Once married to actress Alex Kingston, he lives quietly now with actress Francesca Annis in London. Although he turned 40 in December, he swears he felt no urge to buy a red Jag or go middle-age crazy. "I think I'm meant to be 40," he says. "I feel like someone who's been waiting to grow into this age all along."

After working nonstop in films for almost a year now, he's taking a breather to go back to the stage and do Ibsen's "The Brand" in London. It will be a welcome relief.

"When you're in London on stage or touring with a play, you're a million miles away from 'How's your movie doing?'," he says. "You know, 'It's in the Top 10,' 'The tracking is great' all that language that they talk which for me is kind of mad. I want to just go in and play the part. I just want to play the part and do the best I can."

Sometimes, these days, that part will be in a huge Hollywood picture, like "Maid in Manhattan." Sometimes it will be in an art film that like "Spider" begins shooting without the money to pay its crew. But that's all right. As Fiennes himself would say, it's all about the duality of man and a duality in himself he's finally grown to accept.

El Stepho Zone