Ralph Fiennes

Born on December 22, 1962 in Suffolk, Great Britain, Ralph (pronounce something like “reif”) Nathaniel Fiennes was the eldest son of a photographer and a painter and novelist. Talent is not lacking in the family, since almost all of his siblings are dedicated to different artistic disciplines, although the best known are Joseph (the protagonist of Shakespeare in Love ) and Martha, a director who worked with Ralph himself on Onegin. The Fiennes are religious, as one of Ralph’s uncles is an Anglican priest and professor of theology at Cambridge, the actor has a great-uncle who is a Benedictine monk, and he himself studied at a prestigious religious school for boys called Wordsworth School. He first wanted to be a painter, so he enrolled at the Chelsea School of Art, but soon dropped out to study acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. As a good English actor, he soon joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988, and of course he played various characters of the brilliant playwright. “I wanted to become an actor because I liked the theater, more than the cinema. I love being in front of the public and each function is completely different. I couldn’t bear to leave the theater,” said Fiennes, a self-declared “Shakespeare fan.”Lawrence after Arabia .

Ralph Fiennes made his film debut playing the spiteful Heathcliff alongside Juliette Binoche in Wuthering Heights , a version of Emily Bronte’s novel that is more complete than William Wyler ‘s , but infinitely inferior. It went so unnoticed that in Spain it was only released when the name of Fiennes began to sound. Three quarters of the same thing happened with El niño de Macon (filmed in 1993 and released in Spain in 1998), a pretentious drama by Peter Greenaway , in which he was the son of an Anglican bishop, seduced by Julia Ormond . Thus, Ralph Fiennes was a complete stranger to the general public, when the demanding Steven Spielberghe chose him in a casting to play the sadistic Nazi Amon Goeth, in Schindler’s List . Fiennes seized the opportunity with his elaborate work, showing the complexity of a character who hates himself, triggering irrational outbursts of violence and madness. Now a star, Fiennes also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Role.

It seems that at that time, offers began to rain. He knew how to hit the mark again, choosing Quiz Show , a Robert Redford film that he warned of television manipulation, in which he played Charles Van Doren, a guy from a good family who participated in a rigged contest. Here, Fiennes’ ability to show with few gestures the complex moral dilemma faced by his character was surprising, which he also knew how to do in Anthony Minghella ‘s The English Patient.. There, he embodied Count Laszlo de Almassy, ​​unable to stop the love passion he felt for the wife of one of his assistants. Although he once again opted for the Oscar, this time as the lead actor, and the overrated film won an extremely exaggerated nine statuettes, Ralph Fiennes was one of the only film nominees to see them coming.

Not everything has gone well for Fiennes. Divorced from actress Alex Kingston , one of the doctors in the ER series , he has just broken up with Francesca Annis , also an actress, with whom he had been in a relationship for eleven years. She worked in a brief role with the actor in Onegin , an interesting adaptation of a novel by Russian Alexander Pushkin . She went unfairly under the radar, while the sci-fi thriller Strange Days , Oscars and Lucinda and Sunshine were minor disappointments, and the series adaptation The Avengers.it was the most resounding artistic failure of his entire career, and also of Uma Thurman and Sean Connery . Received with the same lack of enthusiasm, but much more interesting is The End of Romance , in which Neil Jordan took to the cinema a work by Graham Greene that had been previously adapted under the title Living a Great Love . Fiennes was once again shining as a novelist with numerous autobiographical elements by Greene himself, and again given over to an extramarital passion. Noteworthy are his complex portrayals of psychopaths in The Red Dragon and Spider , and his foray into romantic comedy withIt happened in Manhattan . Last year, Ralph Fiennes did not stop working. The tragicomedy The Chumscrubber , and the period drama The White Countess , by James Ivory , with a script by Kazuo Ishiguro , remain unpublished . “It is a film from another era. I think it will be criticized for being too literary, because it includes long dialogues from the main characters. But Yasujiro Ozu also includes long dialogues in Tales from Tokyo , considered a masterpiece of the Seventh Art”, comments the actor. Nor has Chromophobia , the second work of his sister Martha, been released in our country. He offered one of the best jobs of the year as a lovesick diplomat inThe faithful gardener . “My character, Justin, was a challenge for me. Because he is a diplomat forced to repress his emotions by his professional dedication, but his relationship with Tessa allows her to explore all of his qualities,” he explains. And he had time to voice the cocky hunter in Wallace and Gromit, The Curse of Vegetables . He also played the devilish Voldemor, the villain who ended the protagonist’s family, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire , a character he will return to in subsequent installments of the saga.