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Steven Spielberg once said of my next guest "If he picks the right roles and doesn't forget the theatre, he could eventually be Alec Guinnes or Sir Laurence Olivier." Spielberg should know - he set him on the road to international stardom by casting him as the murderous Nazi camp commandant in Schindler's List. Since then, with films like The English Patient and Onegin, he's established a reputation as an actor as much admired by the critics as by the fans. His latest film is a version of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair. Ladies and gentlemen, Ralph Fiennes.
MP: Daft question to start with but first of all, why an actor? Why did you want to be an actor?
RF: Well I - I thought I wanted to be a painter first, and when I was at school doing O levels and A levels I only was - mainly in the art room drawing and painting. I did perform in school plays and was told I was quite good, but everyone - when you're at school and you say you want to be an actor, everyone is saying "Don't be an actor, don't be an actor, you'll never work" and, um, there were a few actors at school and they were quite theatrical and a bit actorish [audience laughter] and I sort of thought I'm not sure I want to be an actor if I have to be like that. Um, anyway, I went to - I did a foundation art course at Chelsea and I think the atmosphere of that course, which really was designed to take anyone who thought that they had any talent as any kind of artist was to take them by the scruff of the neck and say "Look, if you think that drawing a little glass with a sharp HB pencil is - makes you good, take this one inch paintbrush, dip it in black paint, now draw your glass of water." You were kind of roughened up in your visual sensibility and I think the atmosphere of that made me think um, well I can do lots of things. They're provoking me to think more broadly about painting and I thought actually - at first I thought I wanted to do theatre design and then I thought no, actually I want to be an actor, and it just came like a very clear thing.
MP: But, I mean, what about the - the process of acting. I mean - it's been said of you that you portray lost souls. One critic said that you portray them so well that he began to wonder if you were in fact a lost soul yourself, but that's probably too deep a question to ask you at present. But let's take Bendrix, the guy you play in TEOTA, the adaptation of the Graham Greene novel. I mean, how do you go about - what's the key to it? Is there a trick? Is it a moustache, is it a limp, is it a pair of shoes, what gives you the part?
RF: I think for me more and more the process of finding the clothes of a character's very helpful. I get - I really want to have a very close relationship with the costume designer, of course with the director, that goes without saying. I think the cloth of a jacket or the colour of a tie or how crumpled a shirt would be - you have these great sessions with costume designers where you go, for maybe two or three hours, and they will have selected suggestions, and you can try stuff on, and you look at it in a mirror and feel it, and say well, this jacket would be great if it was cut a bit differently, and I suppose that is the most practical way I can describe of a way in. Other things are - well, obvious things like looking at the dialogue, looking at a text and just saying why does that man say that, what's the thought process behind that line, what does it say about -
Mel Smith: Sorry to interrupt - have you ever tried a big ginger beard? [audience laughter] It's worked for Griff [Rhys Jones, Mel Smith's writing partner] [more laughter]
RF: [smiling] I shall try that next
MP: In Schinder's List of course, the uniform was part of that, of course.
RF: Yeah. Putting on that SS uniform was really quite peculiar because - I tried it on here in London, then, I mean, I flew out to Krakow in Poland. I think I was called for the first day of shooting - I don't even think in the end I was used. I remember I stepped out of the - because remember this was a city that hadn't been damaged by the Germans, unlike Warsaw, the buildings standing very much as they were and there were still people there who remember the buildings, and I stepped out of the caravan in what is - it has to be said, what was a very, very handsome uniform - the Germans, the Nazis got in theatre designers to design the cut of these clothes, and it feels, it's odd to say, but it felt good. It felt powerful. And then I felt embarrassed that I felt good. And then we were in a piazza in what was the old Jewish quarter, with Ben Kingsley, who was in it with me, and he was playing a Jewish prisoner and he had the Jewish armband with the star, and, um, there was a cafe there, and this very nice lady came out, and she said "Oh, you're from the film, welcome welcome, please, come into this old Jewish cafe," and I said "Um, I'm sorry, I can't, I can't go wearing this into a Jewish cafe" and she said "Oh well, no, I understand, never mind, fine." And then the irony is that about three weeks later we were shooting in this square and the production company had hired the cafe for the actors to sit in, so there were all these young actors wearing German uniforms and sub-machine guns sitting talking to actors playing Jewish prisoners in this cafe, which says something weird about film-making [audience laughter]
MP: Let's talk about TEOTA. Let's have a look at a clip. TEOTA is about an affair, and you play the part of a man who has an affair with the wife of an acquaintance of yours, played by Stephen Rea, marevellously played by him, and Julianne Moore is the girl you fall in love with, and you're a man with hate in your heart and it's a doomed affair. Let's have a look at it [cut to clip in a bedroom with RF visible in a mirror while JM is talking to him about sleeping with other people]
MP: Why do they always leave clips just when it's getting interesting? [audience laughter]. There's a lot of sexual action in this. Neil Jordan wanted it, didn't he, in the film, the director, that is?
RF: Yeah, he said, you know, this is, so much of the emotions in this revolve around passion and sexual desire and we have to show it. And I agreed with him. [slight pause, and then audience laughter at the double entendre, which I'm not sure Ralph even intended to make]
Mel Smith: You agreed you had to show it.
RF: Well, I show some of it [audience laughter]
Mel Smith: Did you have one of those strange pouches, you know, they have very strange pouches, don't they, for decency's sake - which is a sort of a black triangle blu-tacked to your tackle [uproarious laughter]
MP: Sounds horrible
Mel Smith: Oh, it's quite fun actually - bit painful to get off.
MP: You can see your bare bum on the thing occasionally.
RF: Yeah.
MP: But what's interesting about - my wife said Is it his own? The bum
RF: No, it's - computer graphic imaging [laughter]
MP: But what about the business of playing a sex scene? It's a very passionate relationship you have with this woman, and the love scenes are played in a very passionate manner. When you get a script like that, do you say "Oh my God" or Oh boy!"?
RF: I think when you first read it, it says "They make love" and you go "yeah, yeah, what's next?" And then Neil says "So, what about these love scenes? What are we going to do" [laughter] "I don't know Neil, what *are* we going to do?" And we did the screen tests, I remember, and he said "We're just going to try something, I just want to try something out - see how the camera might move when you're making love" and you're a bit embarrassed. I didn't know Julianne that well, I mean, we weren't naked, we were partially dressed - underpants, underwear - and he said "Maybe Ralph you could put your head - " and he sort of got my head and said "Put your head here" [gestures as if he has a head in his hands which he pushes onto Mel Smith's chest] and I said "Is that how you're going to direct me in scenes, Neil?" You have to - you tentatively say well, I could do that with my hand there, and then I could do this, and you could undo the button here, and it's all quite tentative and you giggle and laugh and then after a while you lose your self consciousness and it becomes mechanical - you want to find a realistic way of showing people making love, and you know, there has to be an element of trust with the cameraman, the lighting is very important, I mean, if the film sells the intensity of the lovemaking it's through the camera and the lighting, the camera moves in a certain way, and I think as an actor on film you are so reliant on the director and the cinematographer, because you can be doing a great performance and the camera can be behind your head.
MP: Another film of yours that I saw, that's doing the rounds at present, is Onegin, which is directed by your sister, Martha, and the music's by Magnus, and reading about you, you were an extraordinary family, weren't you, the Fiennes, bound together by this remarkable mother of yours, I mean, she had a profound influence on all of her children.
RF: She was, well, she loved us all unconditionally, as did my father, but she - one of the things she believed very much was that every child should be given room and encouragement to express themselves in whatever way that child - whether it was maths, or science, or tree doctoring or musician or whatever, she would say "Go on, do it, try it," and, um, and I think that has given us all a sort of confidence, I suppose. And also, my foster brother Mick who came to our family when he was 11, he had been to various homes and my mother and father took him on and I think he was someone who was lost. He hadn't had any real love at all, up until the age of 11. And I think the advertisement said "Boy who wants to read books" and my mother said "All right, we're going to have him." And he, outside of my immediate brothers and sisters is someone who had the full force of her attention and love and guidance, so I think we all - that has helped us, I suppose.
MP: In a sense now I suppose, that whatever you do in life after such a powerful influence you do it for that person.
RF: For my mother -
MP: Is there a sense of approval -
RF: Not for approval, no. I mean, I don't think any of us think that not a day goes by when we don't wish she could see what we're doing or participate in some way, and I suppose you tell yourself well, she's somewhere there [smiles] but she was - she could meet someone and within five minutes she could say "That person's got a problem - it's XYZ" or "I love that person because they - for this reason." She was very very sharp about people, and when you're an adolescent and you're in that sort of emergent phase, when you're sort of hiding little things, you know, a girl you're attracted to or a boy who bullied you, or - and she would always pick up on it. She'd say "What's wrong? Are you OK?" Even on the phone, if you were ringing up, if you had a problem, or if you maybe had something good to say and you didn't want to say it directly, she would just intuit that there was something else that you had to talk about.
MP: Did she live to see your success?
RF: She was very ill, but she did get to see the screening of Schindler's List.
MP: She died of breast cancer, was it just after -
RF: Yeah. End of 93.
MP: What else, then, is in the pipeline for you because you are, in technical terms, "hot"? [Ralph looks ambarrassed and bemused, the audience laughs] Because it's been a remarkable career you've had, and I suppose the problem you've got - it's not a problem, but it's something you've got to think about, is balancing the theatre and films.
RF: Well I'm about to start - I've had this partnership, if you like, with Jonathan Kent, who runs the Almeida Theatre in North London. We did a Hamlet together about five years ago, and then we did a Chekhov play about three years ago. Now we're taking on two Shakespeare plays, Richard II and Coriolanus, as a double bill. They're - Coriolanus is not often done. They're very different plays. Richard is very lyrical play and Coriolanus is a very charged, hard-edged political thriller, but there's, there's sort of cross-overs between the plays, especially to do with men in power, who are conditioned to have power, but through some fault in their soul or personality can't - well, they use their power badly. They abuse their power, if you like, and they're very different. One is - Richard is quite a self-dramatizing, lyrical figure and Coriolanus is a martial figure, but they have this connection.
MP: And movies?
RF: Movies, not, nothing planned. I've got - no, nothing planned [looks as if he might have been about to say something here, but thought better of it].
Mel Smith: You don't fancy playing a banana? [refers to a script he'd been offered to direct, in which a man wakes up and realises he's turned into a banana overnight]
RF: I do, yes.
Mel Smith: I think you'd be perfect. If I could have got you, I'd do the bloody picture
RF: We can talk about this later.
MP: Well, thank you very much for joining me, and all the best with TEOTA and also for Onegin. I enjoyed seeing the two of them, as I've enjoyed talking to you. Ralph Fiennes, thank you.
[Rapturous applause]
After Ralph, Mick Hucknall of Simply Red was interviewed, and the talk turned to adolescence. He said he'd hated it. Michael Parkinson said *he'd* hated it. The he asked Ralph:
RF: I hated it for all the reasons Mick's describing - uncertainty, awkwardness, and yeah -
MP: Were you bullied?
RF: I was bullied once, yeah, quite vindictively, by some guys. I used to go to school on a train and, you know, at that age when you wanted to be on the rugby team, I wasn't - I'm terrible at games, terrible at rugby, but I thought I would try and be good, and I guess - I was teased for being a poof [gay] [considerable audience laughter] and at the time - I can laugh about it now, but at the time, when you're that sensitive, and it went on and on and on and on. It never stopped. It really - I'll never forget it. It was humiliating.
MP: Yes, it must have been.
RF: At a time when - later on you can say "fine", you know, but at that time...
MP: Of course, looking at you now, you've got the consolation of knowing they've got it very wrong.
RF: [looking wistful] Well, I knew they had it wrong at the time [lots of
laughter]
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© EL STEPHO
Added to the RF Reading Room on February 11, 2000
EL STEPHO