HIS DARK MATERIALS
He is, after all, the actor who has menaced us all for years as slithery sorcerer Voldemort — not to mention as Schindler’s List’s Amon Goeth, one of theatre’s best Richard IIIs and, er, Holmes & Watson’s Moriarty. So much so, in fact, that when he arrives for his Empire photoshoot and I stand up to shake hands, I manage to awkwardly drop my voice recorder. Bending down while still shaking my hand, he retrieves the fallen object and passes it back. Considerately, he doesn’t even laugh. It turns out that the real Ralph Fiennes is not quite so scary.
THE PROSPECT OF MEETING RALPH FIENNES IS AN INTIMIDATING ONE.
Empire meets Fiennes near the National Theatre in London, where he’s currently appearing opposite Sophie Okonedo in an acclaimed version of Antony & Cleopatra. At the same time he’s promoting his third film as director, The White Crow, a biopic covering the turbulent early years of ballet legend Rudolf Nureyev (played by Oleg Ivenko). As you might expect if you’ve seen his previous two directorial outings, Coriolanus and The Invisible Woman, it’s not the story of a clean-cut hero. That’s not to say Nureyev is evil, but he is someone who could, as Fiennes puts it, “be extraordinarily rude”.
Whether in front of the camera or behind it, Fiennes is an expert at building psychologically complex characters. As an actor, though his usual manner is quiet and deliberate, he has a chilling capacity for sudden, unpredictable outbursts of action. And as a director, he works to make sure that even small characters have depth. This
