Ralph Fiennes: A Life In Pictures

let us start as we usually do with the childhood and the reasons for doing doing what you do and becoming an actor when I was young I didn't I never thought consciously of being an actor I was introduced to Shakespeare quite a young age by my mother and I think just narrative ly dramatically that interested me but it was really when I was that I acted at school well I went into a grammar school in Salisbury where I was in a couple of productions school productions which I enjoyed and one or two people said you have an ability here but that school people are I mean no one encourages you to be an actor that they flag up to you you know it's very tough life you'll never get work and probably from it their perspectives that it's the right thing to say but it was going to art school I did a foundation art course at Chelsea art school and I think it was that course it was the energy of that course it was there it was designed to challenge all these people coming from from school having done their a levels other levels to challenge their visual reaction response to life to everything really that was that to shake you up and so I think I was sort of shaken up in that I thought oh the world that's open everything's open and something in me shifted on that course that I I remember I did one of the teachers said to me why don't you break down this last mini aeneas by Velasquez which famously Picasso did a version of he said won't you do just have a go at messing around with the composition of this picture and I so broke it down and did cutouts of the various figures in the picture and arranged them in a way in in a way it was a sort of like a staged arrangement like a bit of stage blocking of these figures of the girl and the dog and the dwarf and the man at the back and I cut them out and then it reminded me of a the same thing I had done with a small toy theatre when I was a child and then I thought oh no I should like this stage design is what I thought and I went and visited a course at the Central School of Design they had a they had a stage design course and I went to it and suddenly all these things I'm looking at these designs the young students designs of plays and I remember thinking oh this from more of my little Pollux theater but actually I'd like to be on the stage not not designing it I remember it so went through a series of shifts and then I I owed I approached an amateur youth company and Fulham who was advertising a production of Cabaret rain in Fulham the lost theatre company and I went and joined them and I did that they did evening workshops improvised it was all amateur youth company run by a very inspirational highly energized man called Cecil hater who galvanized these young young people I did a production of Romeo and Juliet and I played Romeo it was all after-hours it was all quite chaotic but with great heart and then I think that gave me the confidence to then think of auditioning for drama school and you went to that you went to the National mean you went you were in rep for a while I think that and then you went to my dream my my my my big ambition was to play Shakespeare at the Stratford yeah and you did nearly three seasons I think I did too well I did two seasons which at that time meant two years because you would do a year virtually at Stratford in a year at London and then go back again so I did yet - - it was a total of just under four years there and along the way David Puttnam I think cast you in a television thing about Lawrence of Arabia later years yes in my last season that Stratford I auditioned for this David Puttnam was producing or executive producing this portrait of T Lawrence called Lawrence after Arabia it was it was really about TE Lawrence at the Paris the Versailles peace conference at Versailles in 1919 and 1920 one where he would have a so crisis of conscience about what he had done in terms of negotiating a British interests whilst pretend telling the Arabs that he was really you know fighting for their cause so that was that was my first leading role in front of a camera and then Peter kozminski costs you in Wuthering Heights yes something of that dangerous predictability was presumably what Steven Spielberg saw when he cast you in Schindler's List I'm told I'm told that he saw Heathcliff and was interested and then I I was asked to meet him in London he was doing just sort of loose conversational meetings with actors in Acton of all places I remember Steven Spielberg and then he talked he's very I remember my first meeting with him was incredibly he really engaged because so many film auditions that I had around that time are all quite sort of brief and succinct for quite so cursory and so brief yes hello nice to meet you there's three or four minutes and thank you very much and I remember Steven really engaged really asked me about the theater work I had done the Royal Shakespeare work I had done I know I'd liked it and I didn't I said thank you very much goodbye and then I got a a request would I put something on tape for the role of Arman Gert and I think that they did is they sent me a speech which was an amalgam of different bits of the dialogue written for him into a kind of monologue and I was asked again told to go to a recording video recording studio in Covent Garden and just there was a young technician there and just the camera and I just suppose that directed myself and so so but your approach to longer to as I mean he was obviously not going to be simply a monster I'm he's the camp commandant of that one of the death camps but he was a man who who was actually genuinely in his perception of it having a lot of problems of the job I suppose with the pack part like that I did feel that you've got to get right you got to get right inside it you clearly at face value this was a terrible man doing terrible things but if you but that doesn't help you if you've got to be him going to be inside his head and yeah I mean it didn't it's in the script he come he's moaning to Oskar Shindler about all these things he has to do there are deliveries of fence posts or wire or sacks of cement or you know you and people are just things commodities that have to be moved around that organization has to happen so that was I mean it was a very good script by Steven Zaillian and Steven Spielberg's very clear he didn't want he didn't want a demonstration of quote-unquote evil he wanted a man doing a job and what a pain in the ass it was that I have to move this number of people here and this number of people there and I I felt I was very well directed I mean a lot of a lot of things a lot of moments in the film and was very thrilling to be directed by Steven he's very inventive he was very on in the moment he would have ideas spontaneously about doing things he would let you do you know dialogue or speeches again without cutting so he would he understood that you got to kind of let go of your preparation he'd like to sort of slightly mess you up in a benign way but stop you know you've come prepared you've practiced the speech and I remember in one scene he just said do it again do it again do it again doing it don't pause there do it again until I was kind of slightly dizzy with the repetition and actually then it got actually got better it got sort of more real more spontaneous hath not a Jew eyes [Music] I've seen fire huh [Music] no I don't think so Jewish [ __ ] you never talked me into it didn't you [Applause] that must have changed everything in terms of you know thinking about cinema work I mean if you'd thought about initially it was theater and cinema I just happened to come along this surely changed everything yes yes it did suddenly I I was the film was very we had an extraordinary reception and I guess everyone involved was thrown into the you know into the limelight in a big way and I hadn't experienced that sort of thing that happens when in a film like that has that sort of reception we're moving towards the English Patient which is just three years indeed after Schindler's List and an extremely I mean arguably even more complex character from an extremely complex book itself and when you first came across the character of the [ __ ] and the man who is the Hungarian who was mapping the Sun all mushy yeah what did you feel about that character I loved that character I completely loved his flinty flinty recessive difficult not coming forward not easy persona and I loved I mean Anthony Minghella wrote the most extraordinary screenplay very different from the book is weird I'd given I'll actually picked up the book in the bookshop out of interest before I knew there was going to be a film and liked its writing and given it as a present to one of my sisters but then the word was out there was a film and then I was asked to meet with Anthony I love the screenplay and I love this character I like I like I liked his difficult miss of us makes sense how difficult he is and the the catalyst for the drama and indeed for taking him to a dangerous level of difficult this is the affair that he has this young married British woman Katherine played by Kristin Scott Thomas [Music] we're all here a toast to the International sand Club may it soon resurface the International sand Club misfits buggers fascists and fools god bless us everyone oops mustn't say international dirty word filthy word His Majesty der Fuehrer ile du jeu sorry what's your point and the people here don't want us you must be joking the Egyptians are desperate to get rid of the Colonials isn't that right for some of their best people getting down on their hands and knees begging to be spared a knighthood isn't that right hmm isn't that right sir Ronnie what's my point oh I've invented a new dance everybody up for it it's called it's called the Bosporus hug Maddox the Burman you'll dance with me tag come on daggers let's eat first sit down we obey the brighten the fish you're frightened when you're in your bathing suit so thin we'll make the shelter scream fin to fin they're playing it far too slowly but these were the words actually before they were cleaned up might be a song for you mrs. fish sit down absolutely right sorry I'm sorry I'm so something I can't think what came over me [Music] apologist [Music] Anthony's writing was wonderful it was wonderful gift to and the actor that we shot that into museum beautiful so Peter carries Oscar and Lucinda and with your sister Martha you did only again so there's a seems to be was it at the time that a lot of the best roles that were coming through were in period drama what do you think I don't know about the period thing I don't I mean I'd always having this company I'd like to do more stuff that's not but sometimes it they just people box it and say oh you do got a period drama well I can see that that's the case but it's not because it's in period I mean I think that I mean actually I remember discussing with Martha how you would do an egg in today you know you could set it today I mean you a cynical well-heeled young man it can inheritor a country estate and meet a young idealistic man who lives nearby was a budding writer in a cottage I mean you could you could transpose it absolutely I think we're not going to talk about another BAFTA nominated role which is for graham greene's the end of the affair directed by neil jordan so we've moved on just a few a handful years released from the english patience but very much i mean in some ways there are kind of parallel themes between the two in that there's there's betrayal and there's duty well no when i was having you know it when you to have to talk about these things after you've done them the question i was always being asked was the course it seems like you're retreading the same territory as the English Patient and maybe I was but I love that book and I thought Neil's adaptation at the end of the affair was stunning and I thought just I loved working with Naomi Julianne I know there's no question I thought I find these kind of rather caged it's difficult figures like like bendrix interesting so this is maurice bendrix who has an affair with sarah who is the wife of a friend he's angry this is a story of hate he says I thought so it's a great opening I mean I I like the anger in him you're alive you sound disappointed yeah hot just cut myself that's all what were you doing on the floor great - what - anything that might exist to be not practical to have come downstairs why didn't you wake me I knew that there wasn't much to pray for then was there a miracle and we don't believe in there's no siren means you go in some ways the challenge of asking people a contemporary audience to think about the entrance of God into a relationship like that is is almost greater than doing you know a 19th through an 18th century drama sometimes yeah yeah I agree I mean it's I think people wrestle with Graham Greene for that reason because God is always very present I like these God questions they're good but they also I mean it's also it's also a story of several views of one one love affair and in some ways you know that it's recalled and in different ways and that's something that whole question of I'm thinking about spider that you made with Cronenberg now here's a film about a man whose perception of reality is so refracted and broken that we don't really know exactly where the reality lies how much of a challenge is that for an actor a lot of its intuition about about something about a character you just you have to put your sort of analytical rational head you can see what it is but they're actually it's not in the end it can not be helpful you just have to sort of put on a an old coat and a pair of shoes and I just sort of followed a hunch about his physicality it was first a makeup test and it just sort of seemed to come together but I there was this sort of figure that emerged in the budget David said yes this feels right and I felt right it felt whatever way it was I was growing towards felt good but I remember once he was very observant David he doesn't say much he's a director that's quite calm he's economic very very charming very sweet but doesn't doesn't talk unless he has something to say he needs to have two takes that are prints but he had two good takes from any one shot and then he moves on but I remember that I had this physicality that I that we were used to know him I know that for some sometimes that mentally afflicted people can sometimes you know limb can go very fast or something like and and in one scene I kind of rather rather self-consciously I started to do that in a scene and he said stop you've never done that before don't do that I don't believe that I raised all that time he really absolutely was on it all the time so he could find that he could find a continuity I tried something in the scene and he picked up on it immediately that it was obviously discordant and I mean like I think sometimes you try things and but it's usually best that they come from some inner instinctive impulse sometimes if you think oh this is a good idea I think if I come in the door I turn around I do that that'll be interesting some often it's you can pull it off but often it you just feel as it's like contrivance in it and again like talking about Stephen early about making me do the takes repeatedly repeatedly it's good if you can sort of lose yourself to the point of an accident happening in terms of a moment that you haven't you know it's your loosened up and it's great when the director can sort of prod you or wrong-foot you even sometimes if they can push you to the point where you're feeling slightly frustrated or what's wrong what's wrong it can because I think certainly for myself I like to feel that I'm prepared but sometimes the preparation needs to be sort of shaken up a bit and I like it when it's it's well you just because I think film likes spontaneous energy it likes the thing that's not prepared it likes the thing that goes just spurts off between the actors and sparks maybe the redemption is in the struggle God has your head the devil has your balls and so which particular devil had yours you don't want to know about that prophet what's your paper really interested in in the big pharmaceutical companies African guinea pigs cheap trials for unsound drugs uninformed consent explore threats against children crushed payoffs cover up with in Nairobi graves I knew I'd seen you sir day four you're the husband that's right dr. Lorbeer something's going on out there why did my wife come here she they had written this report sixteen pages of inspired guesswork I was supposed to provide the missing clinical doctor testify on Titan did you this could be a raid do you think that a film like that can raise consciousness about an issue yes up to a point oh yes it can I mean I think it then has for the issue to be provoked and pushed further it has to have a real campaign behind it I think it did I mean I think there were questions it irritated I think pharmaceutical lobbying groups in Washington I believe so and of course rumbling um under all of this is Harry Potter we've not mentioned so far and of course now the last one is there but you had been there right from the beginning and if you wish to know until we got to the end that actually the whole story had really been not about Harry Potter but about Voldemort for psychological complexes to know it's all that's it it was his story that was the we really wanted to know about him at the end well that was um I was actually that the this came through a lot was to do with Mary Solway who costume director who I had a huge regard for and was produced to Wuthering Heights that we talked about earlier and she was an amazing force as a casting director she was a brilliant sorry if you know this you may know this but she was very caring about actors she was very tough and honest but wonderfully wonderfully sensitive to to actors and the nature of casting actors and well and perceiving what they might do and she's very she's very persistent I have to say that the proposal of being the Harry Potter I was totally ignorant of Harry Potter I didn't know the books I didn't hadn't seen the earlier films but then this approach was made about playing the key villain and it was really a one my math that my sister said oh you must understand this is huge you know all the children had children are into Harry Potter you really have to take this seriously but actually it was Mary and Mike Newell the director who have been working with now again and and that and the David's day David Heyman David Barron but principally Mary who pursued me the Mary was ad said she wasn't well she she wasn't well and she died shortly afterwards very tragically but I was very affected by her can tenacious approach right into the sort of when she was really not in a good way and that really moved me and I something about the flame of Mary being determined to get me to play Voldemort sort of pressed a trigger in me alongside actually seeing designs for the look of Voldemort which I thought were fantastically striking sort of shaven the bald head and the no nose and the whole look was attractive and in a sense I mean I was partly joking but in a sense when you get to the final film since Harry never has huge distance to go psychologically you know he's a good guy forgive me he's a good guy at the end pretty much it's it's Voldemort you want to know about it isn't it yes I mean III think that Voldemort's probably rightly used quite economically that you know he's so high definition he mister evil that you don't want too much whatever way you cut it there's a sort of and it's larger than life quality to it we're gonna go now to to talk about in Bruges and your character in Bruges and show bit from that now in some ways people were quite surprised when you began to take on these slightly it's like comedy roles the great thing about very serious the thing about Harry bosses who is a very grumpy boss really in in Bruges to these two hapless hitmen is that I suppose it's Martin McDonagh writing is he's always so great and so precise isn't it and it's partly expose about language it's about the way that words are used sometimes in a quite odd way yeah it's always slightly Pinterest do you think yeah I'm sure that's I mean I haven't yeah I mean I like the script is fantastic that I mean it's those you think it's an interesting thing in film when can really witty clever sparky intelligent dialogue you know it's interesting test of when it can work in a film and when it can not quite work so III have this sort of interest in what especially having done Coriolanus weird what is that how dialogue can work in film this but this is fantastic dialogue I mean it the film the Martins the film embraces it it really likes it I mean I think he's directed it really well but now I'm sure there's a sort of well I think it's to my ear a lot of the the rhythms between Brendon and Colin the very Irish that that feels right intrinsically Irish in the way they communicate that very precise uses sometimes slightly it's like serious were off-center words yeah well oh you're suicidal he's a walking dead man keeps going on about he'll target when I found you yesterday did I ask you can you do me a favor and become R a psychiatrist please no well I think I asked you was could you go blow his head off for me he's suicidal I'm suicidal you're suicidal everybody's suicidal we don't all keep going on about it as he killed himself yet no so he's not suicidal is he but a load of gun to his head this morning I stopped him eat it's getting worse subsequent to that the reader with Stephen Daldry Hurt Locker with Kathryn Bigelow also the Duchess which nominated for a Golden Globe but by now because you work with a wide range of directors were you at every stage taking note of what they were doing because you thought you might direct one day yourself yes more more in the last three or four years I was really really cure I say they were curious I felt this deep curiosity to want to get behind the other side of the camera because obviously you'd play coral anus on stage but it's it's Shakespeare and it's not an easy to expiry so very much a challenge for a first film surely yes but I suppose it I got to a point where I thought you know I'm heading towards 50 life's you know they've got one life and you and I they're gonna oh they're gonna go out there and I mean it was I really thought think it's a story of coral anus is really always relevant I mean I just think it's got its got this it's so textually dense that I think it's sort of occluded or stopped it the story that it could be being it's not an easy play it's not it's difficult and I think will always be difficult but it's as a story as a parable of politics of a crisis of leadership of the of a continual a continual perennial state of the nation expose of the the continual dysfunction is how we as tribes party his family's never can get it together I mean I think it's I think it's brilliant in essence if you and so that and I wouldn't leave me so the fact that it would never leave my head ever so I got to a point - well I'm gonna try and try and do it and anyway and you decided to sort of organize its in the sense that it is you actually filmed in Belgrade and around so I mean was there did you want to make explicit connection with the Balkan confidence no I know that what happened was I was lucky enough to be introduced to John Logan who wrote an amazing screenplay based on a pitch I gave him about a contemporary version of Coriolanus and then for a moment there was a financier interested who then was prepared to fund location scouts to Eastern Europe we chose I mean I in it crudely in my head I had two places where you could film it would be either Latin America or Eastern Europe I think it was always going to be a film that was going to be budgetarily challenged so where can you you know where can you film it to give it scale to have the streets to have the parliaments to have the marketplaces and where you could afford it and in a country that has a strong or reliable film infrastructure the idea was that that the roam of the story is any City today is Rome is a place it's an idea of a city it's not Rome Italy so but I knew I needed a city that we could afford to shoot in Caius Martius Coriolanus there the addition nobly ever no more of this it doesn't fit in my heart pain our normal your mother you have ina petitioned all the gods for my prosperity me my good soldier up like gentle marshes where they Caius and by deed achieving on a newly named what is it Coriolanus must I call thee thy wife my gracious silence hey what's that have laughed had I come coughing down that weeps to see me triumph I my dear such eyes the widows in Kerala is where and mothers the black sons that was very much something that John Logan consolidated in and brought to the port of the table was there really to use unapologetically yet that the presence of tel-aviv television and news reports particularly to answer the question of how you deal with messengers in the player you have messengers coming on but I guess the lesson the modern messenger is the television report Johnson oh it becomes John Snow is our modern messenger yes I think it's a very odd experience watching yourself back repeatedly in rushes you go through all kinds will you go through a whole kind of range of things from deep embarrassment and revulsion so other moment ago yes and then you go back to revulsion and neurosis again I had a wonderful itical Nick Gaston who was there as a sort of distilled point the calm Center to go you know I'd say I think that's a good take no I don't think so yeah I think that's better but in the end it was a great it was it was I mean I learned a lot in editing and I understand now about when people say performances are made in in editing I mean like I understand because the slightest shift or where you where you cut and where you leave the camera on someone and you go to the other person and all those things just that anything that can affect you as an actor there do you think knowing that because you can't think yeah I think even even film actors who haven't been through that process over just out through experience no they just know about they just see their work cut they just know about what the options are and that's why you know some actors are very they want to give different different readings almost purposely you know I can do soft hard funny angry I mean they will they can know there's a whole range of like I can't do that myself but I know that some actors do you know one of the great moments in British cinema history is in the 1940s David Lean version of Great Expectations when Magwitch pounces on pip in the in the graveyard well ladies and gentlemen you see before you the next Magwitch they say I mean this is a role that does in itself come with expectations doesn't it I mean I think I mean I think these Dickens characters are like Shakespeare characters you know they're they're huge they occupy our collective imagination this very very strong rich way and everyone who is who's in love you know who's read the Dickens books or weave like Shakespeare's plays you know they we we had we hugged them to us as they make a mark on us when were young when we first experienced them and of course there's a sort of possessive quality about this is so but this this is the one this is the muck people always say the Magwitch gravy I've seen the David Lean is you know rightfully one of the great cinematic moments and when people have washed it in and they're very young is very frightening so clearly there's there's a lot to live up to but I think in the same way that you know we're going to go we're going as long as Shakespeare's plays have traction or Dickens or any of these writers um and they think they do however much we might go oh and other Shakespeare and other Dickens they still have there's still something in there essential humanity that makes us want to read them we'll see them but I don't know what what it will be but I I couldn't resist it it's not in my slightly out of my comfort zone in casting but that's good well we look forward to seeing that in about a year's time and we'll certainly look forward to the next directing and indeed I'm sure many others but in the meantime thank you very much indeed [Applause] [Music]

Channel: BAFTA Guru

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Keywords: BAFTA, BAFTA Guru, British Academy Of Film And Television Arts (Award Presenting Organization), creative, career, film making, TV, gaming, actor, advice, movie, movies, movie making, harry potter, interview, voldemort, the grande budapest hotel, Ralph Fiennes

Id: wzB1tQecvAU

Length: 36min 0sec (2160 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 29 2017