Time OUT London Interview

THE PATIENT ENGLISHMAN

In 'The English Patient', Ralph Fiennes reinvented the romantic hero for a jaded age. Soon you'll see him as a gambling-addicted preacher in 'Oscar and Lucinda'. But did you know that he's scared stiff of Santa, and that he once got a stockingful of girlie gifts like hairbrushes? We thought not....

Interview: Sarah Lambert

Only five years ago, you'd have been hard pushed to find anyone who knew who Ralph Fiennes was. Then, in 1993, 'Schindler's List' happened. Fiennes' reptilian turn as a brutal Nazi commander in Spielberg's Holocaust epic sent his career stratospheric. Starring roles in 'Quiy Show' and 'Strange Days' followed, paving the way for this year's triumphant 'The English Patient'. As the eponymous wounded cartographer, Fiennes reinvented the romantic hero for the post-ironic age, securing not only another Oscar nomination (his first was for 'Schindler's List'), but also full-blown matinee-idol status into the bargain.

In person, it's his frailty you notice first. He's awkward-looking in a tight suit that emphasises his narrow shoulders, and quirky, bright-orange socks. His blond hair is swept back, his blue eyes deeply set in a bony, almost emaciated face. He's oddly like his character in his new film, Gillian Armstrong's adaptation of Peter Carey's Booker-winning novel 'Oscar and Lucinda'. He's Oscar, an English preacher addicted to gambling who travels to Australia, and becomes involved in a madcap scheme to transport a glass church across the Outback.

In our revealing interview, Fiennes touches on family, religion, 'The Avengers' (he's just finished filming the big-screen version of the cult '60s TV hit) and, most pertinently at this festive hour, his memories of Christmases past.....

SARAH LAMBERT: You come from an interesting family. Your mother was a writer, your great uncle was an explorer and your father is a photographer. Who is the most colourful character at family reunions?
RALPH FIENNES: Well, my mother's brother is a Greek Orthodox priest and he is very colourful and very amusing. He has travelled much and is an extremely learned man. Also my mother's uncle, who is a Benedictine monk. He's a fascinating man to talk to. I love sharing a bottle of whisky with him!

SL: Did you learn your love for acting in your family, from your parents?
RF: My mother introduced me to Shakespeare and the spoken word, to recordings of people like Laurence Olivier doing speeches from Hamlet, and other poets reading poems. We had a lot of old-fashioned LPs in our house, and I remember loving hearing these things being read and sung and being very intrigued by Shakespeare from an early age. I also loved being taken to see plays and theatre, and I've always loved acting, watching actors and the worlds that actors create. And my mother and father were always very encouraging and never said no, like I believe some parents do, when a child says, 'I want to be a writer' or 'I want to be an actor'.

SL: Did you read the book of 'Oscar and Lucinda' before making the movie?
RF: No, I think that I read the screenplay first before I read the book. It's purely a coincidence that I seem to have been in films that have been adapted from celebrated novels. I just loved the story and I loved the character of Oscar. I loved his vulnerability, the sort of poetic quality of his nature. I suppose the film is really about many things; about faith and love and the ability of the spirit of the individual to survive. In Oscar's case he's truly a deeply religious man, and his struggle is between his earthly passions and his true innocence, his inner self. He really is a man of God in the truest sense.

SL: Wasn't it easier for you to play a gentle soul like Oscar than a cruel Nazi in 'Schindler's List'?
RF: People say the villains' parts are somehow easier, because we always love a villain, but I think to really play someone who's psychologically so dark and destructive and psychopathic, then you have to unlock that side of yourself, and that's quite difficult. Whereas if you're unlocking bits of yourself that are like Oscar - someone who wants to celebrate life, though he's full of guilt and misgiving at times - that's a much more positive energy that you're embracing. And because it's more positive, I suppose you grow towards it quicker.

SL: Oscar is an obsessive gambler, do you have any experience with gambling?
RF: No, I'm not a gambler and I don't play cards much, but I had to learn to play rudimentary poker, and I went to the horse races to get a feeling of that. What I came away with was less of a fascination with different kinds of games; it was more a fascination of anything being revealed, like a hand of cards being revealed, or the moment where a horse is going to cross the finishing line.

SL: The director, Gillian Armstrong, said that you told her, 'I am Oscar.' Did your vision of the character coincide with hers?
RF: Well, I think it's very clear when you read the book who Oscar is, and his vulnerability; he's easily excitable and then he retreats into this terrible sort of torment and guilt and regret at what he's done. And I think Gillian was concerned that he wasn't so eccentric that he became sort of ridiculous, and at the same time he had to be an oddbod, a misfit; so we had to work together to finding the right level of sort of physical and emotional idiosyncrasy.

SL: Did you feel that Gillian Armstrong had a different sensibility than a male director would have?
RF: Well, the fact that Gillian is a woman director didn't really play into this, for me she's a very strong-willed person, and she will push you to get the scene in the way that she has envisioned it. I had a very good relationship with her. She's not the sort of director that goes into long psychological discourses and speeches about the character, I think she works off what she sees. Actually, she worked not unlike Steven Spielberg, who waits for you to start to give a performance, and then he will say, 'Well, that's great. Maybe do less of this, more of that.' And I quite like it when there's not a lot of intellectualising about the part, because you have been working on it, you thought about it, you've imagined yourself into the part.

SL: When you prepare for a role do you start from the inside out or from the outside in, with the look and the mannerisms?
RF: I think it's a bit of both really. I mean, Peter Carey gives such specific physical details about Oscar that I definitely wanted to get that right, the colour of the hair and his thinness and his physical awkwardness; but also there's something in Oscar that's like he's thinking and watching very fast, he's not someone who's ever relaxed, he has a kind of peculiar quirky internal energy. So then you put these things together, sometimes you put the right shoes on and the right jacket on and you think, 'Oh, that's how I see him,' and immediately you start to feel different inside. A big part for me is working on what a character wears and what they wear on their feet and how they look; it informs how they move and how they move is how they are, I think.

SL: What was it like for you to shoot the film in Australia? Did you feel like a stranger, coming from England just like Oscar?
RF: Yeah, I felt like a fish out of water. I mean, I loved Australia and I loved working with all the crew, I had the most wonderful time making the film, and I adore Gillian. I loved shooting the expedition sequences outside Sydney, especially where we took the glass church up into the river near Grafton in New South Wales. That was amazing. There are all these fantastic rivers around there and I just couldn't stop wanting to swim all the time.

SL: Were you recognised as a movie star in Australia?
RF: No, one or two kangaroos recognised me, but the humans were quite reticent, they were quite retiring. Actually, I was driven into the set every day and they have these signs warning that kangaroos may cross the road; and, of course, you think, 'Oh, it won't happen,' but one day I saw this kangaroo standing right at the side of the road; I think I saw it before my driver did, because he continued on and suddenly this kangaroo dropped right across in front of the car and we hit it, sadly, then we had to get a ranger to come and kill it.

SL: Are you worried that your celebrity will spoil you innocence as an actor?
RF: Oh, yes. It's bound to, isn't it? Maybe it has a bit already. But what can I do? We can't be innocent forever, can we?

SL: Does the press bother you in England, have you thought about moving to a city like New York where you can be more anonymous?
RF: No, I live in London and I don't find that I'm hassled too much. I mean, there was a brief period when the press were being particularly invasive, but they've stopped now, and I don't feel the need to move to get away from them. Also, it's about where you go; if you choose to go to certain places, certain hotels or bars or restaurants where people look out for celebrities, then I think you're asking for it a bit.

SL: You just finished playing John Steed, the gentleman spy in 'The Avengers', had you seen the TV show growing up? How different is the movie version going to be?
RF: Oh, yes, I saw it many times and I've looked at videos of the old shows. And this is a movie that's attempting to be very truthful to the feel and the comic, rather surreal atmosphere of the old series, I believe. I mean, the sets to me looked fantastic and what little I've seen of it looks very stylish and quite funny too.

SL: What was it like to work with Uma Thurman as Emma Peel and with Sean Connery as the villain?
RF: Oh, it was great. I mean, Uma is very cool; I had a great rapport with her. And of course it was a big kick for me to work with Sean Connery, because as a kid I went to see him play James Bond and I've loved him in other films too that he's done.

SL: Would you ever consider playing James Bond if you were asked?
RF: No, I don't think so really. I think that the Bond films have a particular thing that I'm not.

SL: Did you meet the original John Steed, Patrick Macnee?
RF: I did indeed. In fact at the time, just before we started shooting, he was publicising a book called 'The Avengers and Me,' and he was being asked about what he thought of the film. I think first of all, he had said that he had no reservations about me playing Steed and that he hoped perhaps I would not wear a bowler hat or use an umbrella, which, in fact, I have done; then subsequently my producer invited him to read the script and actually he admitted that it was as good as, if not better, than any of the scripts he and Diana Rigg had had to play. He visited the set, and in fact he's involved in the film in a way which I cannot reveal now; but he was around on the first days of filming and was extremely gracious and supportive to me personally; he was extremely encouraging.

SL: Your next film, 'Eugene Onegin', is being directed by your sister. Is that right?
RF: Yes, my sister Martha, who's a commercials director. For some time now I've been talking to her about working on a film and for the past five years we've been developing a screenplay of an adaptation of Alexander Pushkin's ' Eugene Onegin', which hasn't been filmed before as a straight drama; it has been filmed before as a straight drama; it has been filmed as Tchaikovsky's opera. So this is what we'll be filming this coming March, we'll start in St Petersburg for a short time and then come to England and shoot the rest of it there.

SL: Having been an Oscar or a Golden Globe nominee for 'Schindler's List' and 'The English Patient', but not having won, how did it feel?
RF: Well, I think at the last Golden Globes we were all on 'The English Patient' and, until the award for Best Film was announced, we didn't know it would happen. I mean, of course, I would love to have won the award, and I know that Juliette and Kristin and Anthony would have too; and in the end we could laugh at it, but the atmosphere is so charged, once you're in the room. And even at the Academy Awards, once the ceremony starts, however much you've gone in with a spirit of 'Well, it's fine. Whatever it is, it is', once you're there, you're kind of thinking: Oh, I hope it's me. But both times it's been a great reunion. Whether you come away with a prize or not, it's still a celebration of the work that you've done and acknowledgment of it, so I've enjoyed it both times.

SL: Now that you've worked with directors like Steven Spielberg and made well received movies, are you happy about being able to choose the projects that you want?
RF: Yeah, it's fun. I think I'm lucky in that, if you're prepared to take less money and do small-budget films, then people will be prepared to back them; it's only when you want more money that they get more concerned. I don't feel I have power, but I can help enable things to happen, which is what has happened with this film I'm doing with my sister, we have got financing and it is going ahead.

SL: You were born on December 22. Has it been a problem for you that your birthday comes only a few days before Christmas?
RF: When I was young I enjoyed it, because my mother made a real effort to say, 'This is the beginning of Christmas and it's Ralph's birthday'. So it was marked firmly on the calendar and I enjoyed it, but now I don't know, I'm lucky if I get a phone call.

SL: What were your Christmases with your family like before your mother died, and now?
RF: Well, we're not always together as a family at Christmas, because some of us go off into the sun, but we're going to be together this year. My father has a house outside London and most of us, I think, will be there. You know, funnily enough, my mother died just after Christmas in '93, and that was an extraordinary Christmas, because we were all very close then and all with her on Christmas Day; that will always be the Christmas that will stand out for me because she died about two days later.

SL: What do you remember as the best Christmas or birthday gift you were ever given?
RF: Oh, God. I think one of the best gifts I was ever given was a toy theatre. I really got a kick out of setting these scenes up and playing all the characters. My father helped me set up the lights.

SL: What was your biggest Christmas disappointment?
RF: Well, a big disappointment was when we went to bed waiting for Father Christmas to come and I couldn't get to sleep. I thought: 'I can't get to sleep', and I partly wanted to because I was scared to be awake to see this man with the white beard and red outfit. So I heard him coming up the stairs at 2am and I think part of me knew that it was probably my father, but I closed my eyes and squeezed up under the blankets. I heard these movements in the room and I felt this big weight at the end of the bed; then the footsteps went away again and after about five minutes I looked out and there was this big stocking full of things in it. I opened it and couldn't see in the light, but I pulled out something and it looked like a hair band and I thought: 'That's odd. That can't be a hair band. It must be something else.' Then, the next day the ritual was that we all took our stockings down to our parent's room, so we all got down there and I pulled out the things in the stocking and it _was_ a hair band, and there were all these things for girls. Father Christmas had mixed up the stockings and so my sister had, like, a water pistol and an Action Man or something.

SL: Can you explain the archaic pronunciation of your name?
RF: Well, I think a few generations ago the spelling of Ralph was always pronounced Raif, and then recently it became rarer and rarer; but in America it's always been Ralph and in England now it's mostly Ralph. I must say I've often regretted continuing spelling my name in this way because I have to explain it all the time, and I rather wish it wasn't so.

Cool Links

Music Links

Movie Links

Media Links

El Stepho Zone