With a career spanning three decades, actor Ralph Fiennes has just received his third Oscar nomination. His role in Edward Berger’s ecclesiastical hit Conclave has impressed critics and audiences, and the nominations have been quick to follow. We may still think of Fiennes’ career high point as being the late 1990’s: Schindler’s List in 1994 and The English Patient in 1997 are still the films he is best known for, if we don’t count the recurring role of Voldemort in a certain franchise. But if we are going by Oscar nominations as the standard, it would suggest that Fiennes’ filmography has only a few highlights. But on a closer look, the sheer diversity of characters Fiennes has played reveal not only a versatile actor, but one who is not afraid to fail.
This willingness to take chances, creatively, can be traced back to Fiennes’ early career pivot. While we associate him with film and theatre, he is also a talented artist, and studied at the Chelsea College of Art and Design as a teenager. Trivia fans might like to know that the hand sketching cave paintings in the opening credits of The English Patient, is Fiennes.
Deciding to explore his interest in acting, Fiennes graduated from RADA in 1985 and started working in theatre. Fiennes’ era at the Royal Shakespeare Company remains the stuff of theatre legend: plays such as Love’s Labour Lost had to be paused while audiences applauded Fiennes’ delivery of Shakespeare’s poetry. Those who got to see him pre-Schindler’s List still retain the bragging rights. His early film work, including a spectacularly misfired Wuthering Heights directed by Peter Kosminsky, is what ended up catching the eye of Steven Spielberg.
There is still a debate as to whether Fiennes should have won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Schindler’s List. Losing out to Tommy Lee Jones for his role in The Fugitive, it is Fiennes’ chilling portrayal of Amon Goth that has stood the test of time. Whether a win that early in his film career would have weighed Fiennes down, and limited the range of potential roles (imagine playing nothing but carbon copies of Goth for the next 20 years), is the flip side of this argument. Determined not to be typecast, Fiennes went with the first of many left-field choices. Quiz Show, directed by Robert Redford, is a fascinating ensemble piece that doesn’t get nearly enough attention. Telling the real-life story of a quiz show scandal in 1950’s America, Fiennes plays the clean-cut Charles Van Doren (son of literary academic, Mark Van Doren, played by Paul Scofield) who is offered the chance of money and fame, answering questions on a quiz show watched by millions. Van Doren is an immediate ratings winner, and to keep audiences, hooked, he is given the answers in advance.
Following on from a high point in the late 1990’s (we don’t talk about The Avengers, but under-the-radar gems like Gillian Armstrong’s Oscar and Lucinda; a high-stakes gamble with Liv Tyler in an adaptation of Alexander Pushkin’s epic poem, Onegin, are well worth seeking out), Fiennes’ career hit a snag in the early 2000’s. This period contains some of Fiennes’ lowest rated films on IMDB. While Fiennes has a gift for comedy, Maid in Manhattan did expose a weak point: Fiennes can’t do corporate rom com. It’s a problem when you have more chemistry with your co-star Stanley Tucci than your leading lady, Jennifer Lopez.
The Harry Potter era of the mid 2000’s was interspersed with passion projects: an excellent adaptation of John Le Carre’s The Constant Gardener and a barrow-boy accent put on for the superb crime comedy, In Bruges, reminded cinema audiences that there was more to Fiennes than his (other) villainous star turn.
Emerging from a franchise as far-reaching as Harry Potter, you might expect an actor to take smaller parts, seek out indie films. A year after Deathly Hallows Part 2 was released, Fiennes re-emerged as Gareth Mallory in Skyfall. Leaning into the acerbic notes of the screenplay written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan, Fiennes’ ability to work in elements of dry humour highlights his most underused skill. With heavy hitting dramas forming an early template for engaging with, and understanding, the actor, we don’t tend to think of the comedic with Fiennes. But in the next few years, Fiennes sought out roles that reversed that way of thinking: he rewrote his own script.
The Grand Budapest Hotel and A Bigger Splash demonstrate not only Fiennes’ ability to make us laugh, but he insists that the joke can also be on him. While director Luca Guadagnino is giving a post-Bond Daniel Craig a career rejuvenation in Queer, in 2015, he did the same for Ralph. Playing ageing record producer, Harry, in A Bigger Splash, Fiennes subverts our expectations. He is joyously exuberant and his paunchy dad-dancing around Tilda Swinton’s swimming pool is a must-watch scene. His delight in playing the bon vivant is infectious. It’s a complete 180, but Fiennes throws himself into the fun with complete abandon. Paired with his leading role in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, it lead Times film critic Robbie Collin to dub this period a “Fiennes Renaissance”.
In the film, the pastel-coloured Anderson universe we are familiar with, sits uncomfortably alongside the rapidly-evolving political upheaval of 1930’s Europe. Fiennes turns the charm all the way up to 11 as he plays M. Gustave, the hotel’s legendary concierge. Enclosed by the quirky hotel’s cosseted grandeur, Gustave attempts to school lobby boy, Moustafa (Tony Revolori), in the ways of luxury hospitality. It isn’t until the real world comes crashing through the hotel doors, that Anderson’s film reveals how much we should revere Gustave.
The next few years see Fiennes rise to new challenges: his directorial debut, The White Crow, charts ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev’s defection to the West in 1961. Fiennes shows us Nureyev (played by Oleg Ivenko) caught in a high-stakes cat and mouse game with the KGB. The film received mixed reviews, but what is clear when watching this, is how Fiennes’ years of experience on the stage and in front of the camera has served him. As a director, Fiennes is able to delineate the oppressive atmosphere of 1950’s Leningrad as Nureyev began to make waves. The filmic notes of espionage thriller intersect with Fiennes’ knowledge of what looks good on stage. His awareness of different levels of performance mean that while The White Crow did not translate into box office success, it did succeed on the screen.
While it remains to be seen if Fiennes will secure his first Oscar win on 2 March, what remains consistent through his career is a blend of perspectives that colour his acting. The years at Chelsea, RADA and then Hollywood, connected through regular stints on Broadway and the West End, give Fiennes a multi-dimensional view on what cinema can be. Whatever happens on Oscar night, what Ralph Fiennes decides to do next will certainly be worth watching.
Written by Helen Tope
