Ralph Fiennes: His 9 Greatest Performances
Unlike some of the UK’s bigger towns and cities, we don’t have many celebrities to call our own in Ipswich. Of course, we’re proud that the mighty Ipswich Town FC provided Sir Alf Ramsey and Sir Bobby Robson, two of England’s most successful managers, and more recently Ed Sheeran has become the international superstar fan of the Tractor Boys. We can also claim Richard Ayoade and ‘80s pop sensation Nik Kershaw, who both grew up in the town. But none of those guys were born in Ipswich itself – unlike Ralph Fiennes.
I was tickled to discover that the acclaimed actor was a native Ipswich boy from birth, although his family relocated when he was very little. Indeed, the actor needed to employ a dialect coach to help him get beyond his trademark RADA accent and learn Suffolk dialect for his role as Basil Brown in The Dig.
But local pride aside, Fiennes has become one of my favourite British actors. Since coming to the wider public’s attention with his breakthrough role as Amon Goethe in Schindler’s List, he has barely put a foot wrong, building an impressive body of work in prestige pictures, smaller indie projects, and blockbuster fare. He’s one of those actors who brings a touch of class to just about any movie, and has become a regular name on voters’ ballots when awards season rolls around – although, perhaps surprisingly, actual victories are a little thin on the ground for a performer of his status. Out of the major award bodies to date, he has a BAFTA for Schindler’s List and joint Critics’ Choice Awards and SAG Awards as part of the ensemble in Conclave. So far, a Golden Globe and an Oscar win have eluded him, something that will surely be rectified in the future – the Academy Awards in particular have a tendency to reward actors for their past oversights.
Gongs aren’t everything, however, and there’s little doubt that Fiennes is one of Britain’s greatest actors. It is perhaps a measure of the respect he commands that he received almost no backlash for voicing his support for J.K. Rowling in the wake of her unsavoury comments about transgender people. Any potential controversy aside, Fiennes is now approaching National Treasure status, most recently adding his gravitas to Nicholas Hytner’s The Choral and lending some surprising warmth to 28 Days Later : The Bone Temple.
Amon Goeth - Schindler’s List
Fiennes was plucked from relative obscurity by Steven Spielberg for the key role of Amon Goeth, the decadent and cruel commandant who lords over the Plaszow work camp like a tinpot emperor from his hilltop villa. Fiennes brought a glowering intensity to a figure that could’ve easily been portrayed as a straight-up monster, adding fascinating wrinkles to a capricious character.
His magnetic performance pays off wonderfully, well-matched by Liam Neeson’s wily bonhomie as Oskar Schindler and Embeth Davidtz as the terrified Helen Hirsch, for whom Goeth harbours deep carnal desires despite her condemned status as a Jew. The fact that Fiennes lost out on the Best Supporting Actor Oscar to Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive was an inexplicable oversight by the Academy voters.
Lenny Nero - Strange Days
After lending his inscrutable quality to disgraced contestant Charles Van Doren in Quiz Show, Fiennes seemed like a peculiar fit for Kathryn Bigelow’s flashy techno noir Strange Days. He plays Lenny Nero, a sleazy peddler of “clips” – experiences recorded directly from a subject’s cerebral cortex – as a dystopian Los Angeles descends into chaos in the final days of 1999.
It was a role that almost fell to Andy Garcia, but Bigelow plumped for the English thesp instead. His wavering attempt at an American accent is a little off-putting at first, but Fiennes invested Nero with an intriguing blend of superficial charm, street smarts, and surprising vulnerability to what might have been a very one-note character. He’s a guy we should probably hate, but Fiennes keeps us rooting for him as he shucks and jives his way through the somewhat routine conspiracy thriller plot, gradually revealing a long-dormant conscience beneath the incorrigible, self-serving exterior.
Count Almasy - The English Patient
Fiennes’s brooding good looks and contemplative intelligence made him a great romantic lead for the complex role of Count Almasy in The English Patient, Anthony Minghella’s ravishing adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s supposedly unfilmable time-hopping novel. Almasy is the mysterious patient of the title, an amnesiac severely burned in a plane crash who recounts snippets of his past to his emotionally wounded nurse, played so sensitively by Juliette Binoche. As the story unfolds, we skip around in time as he recalls his tempestuous love affair with Katherine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas), the wife of a trusting acquaintance (Colin Firth).
Fiennes finds deep wells of burning passions deep within a character that is, by necessity of the narrative, something of an enigma. Both he and Thomas received Academy Award nods while Binoche deservedly took home Best Actress as the film soared to Best Picture winning glory. The English Patient receives some stick for being perceived as Oscar bait, perhaps due to its superficial similarity to Out of Africa, but it’s far more than that, a sweeping and deeply moving study of love, loss, and memory. Fiennes’s performance is key to its rewatchability, and it has me in tears every time!
Maurice Bendrix - The End of the Affair
On the surface, Neil Jordan’s wintry adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel seems like a replay of The English Patient’s greatest hits, only this time played out against the backdrop rainy old post-war London. Fiennes is Maurice Bendrix, a solitary novelist who once had a passionate fling with Sarah (Julianne Moore), the frustrated wife of a stuffy civil servant (Stephen Rea).
The End of the Affair is more of a tragic romantic mystery, however, as Bendrix reluctantly gets drawn back into the couple’s lives and tries to find out why Sarah suddenly broke off their tryst a few years earlier. The unexpected answer taps into Greene’s frequent ponderings on religious guilt, setting up a fatalistic yet very satisfying downbeat conclusion.
Bendrix himself is a closed book, but Fiennes expertly teases out spikes of jealousy even as he buries his wounded emotions behind self-deprecating humour and a typically British stiff-upper-lip facade. His onscreen chemistry with the ever-reliable Julianne Moore also really crackles in their scenes together. Overall, The End of the Affair is an understated but high quality adaptation of one of Greene’s finest novels.
Frances Dolarhyde - Red Dragon
Red Dragon didn’t really need to exist as Michael Mann had already adapted Thomas Harris’s novel very capably for the screen in 1986’s Manhunter. But Hannibal Lecter was still all the rage after Hannibal, so Brett Ratner’s glossy prequel did an agreeable enough job.
The best thing about the film is Fiennes as Frances Dolarhyde, a.k.a. the grisly Tooth Fairy. He threaded the needle superbly with his performance – Dolarhyde is a serial killer even more chillingly depraved than Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, butchering whole families by the light of the moon before having his necrophilic way with the mothers. Yet Harris also took great pains to explore the childhood trauma that turned him into such a monster, and his tentative would-be romance with a blind woman (Emily Watson) who can’t see his disfigured face.
This is where Fiennes excels, using all his experience to draw on those wells of pain and humiliation to make Dolarhyde a fully three-dimensional character, and one for whom we can feel some compassion despite his atrocities. On the flip side, he can also be terrifying and Fiennes worked out hard to make himself physically imposing for the role. The scenes with him and Watson are expertly acted, and we really see Dolarhyde’s inner turmoil as he fights his demons towards the end.
Voldemort - The Harry Potter Franchise
J.K. Rowling certainly didn’t hold back on the cliches when it came to penning her blockbusting series of Harry Potter novels, from our young protagonist’s neglected upbringing to his Gandalf-like mentor, Dumbledore. As such, Voldemort is very much the story’s Darth Vader to Harry’s Luke Skywalker, down to the tragic backstory and desire to turn his potential student to the dark side.
Overall, the Dark Lord doesn’t have quite as much depth as the Sith Lord, but the one whose name shall not be spoken avoids becoming a stock villain character in the film adaptations because you’ve got Ralph Fiennes playing the slithery final boss version. First appearing in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the actor brought all his usual nuance to the character despite the unsettling handicap of having a shaved head, deathly pale skin, and nose-erasing CGI obscuring his features. Although many fans of the books took issue with his appearance, that wasn’t Fiennes’ fault, and he managed to give a sense of loneliness and frustration behind Voldemort’s fits of rage and dark megalomaniacal mutterings.
M - The James Bond Franchise
007’s boss has been a fixture of the Bond movies since Dr. No back in 1962, with Bernard Lee providing the most famous iteration of M before Judi Dench assumed the codename in GoldenEye over 30 years later. It was a shrewd and modern casting choice that largely managed to swerve the usual gripes about a woman playing a traditionally male role, and it paid even greater dividends during the Daniel Craig era.
Dench invested the character with additional depth, becoming more integral to the stories and developing a prickly and rewarding chemistry with Craig. That meant that Ralph Fiennes had big shoes to fill when she bowed out in Skyfall, potentially running the risk of becoming just another stern, well-spoken man behind a desk.
Fiennes described M’s mind as “unfathomable,” but he’s found some interesting ways to make the head of MI6 stand out from his illustrious predecessors. More aloof and cynical than the others, he gives the impression of a devoted civil servant grown weary of the spy game who might’ve wandered in from a more low-key thriller from John Le Carre. That approach has worked well when balanced against the maverick secret agent stylings of Craig’s Bond, and it was great to see how the grudging respect built between them in their brief scenes together. Hopefully Fiennes will still be there to stiffly greet the next 007 incarnation when the role is finally cast.
Gustave H. - The Grand Budapest Hotel
Wes Anderson has become chiefly known for his distinctive visual style, but he should also be given credit for his ability to draw unexpected performances from seasoned actors. Back at the start of his career, he turned Bill Murray into the deadpan godfather of indie cinema with Rushmore, and elicited a last great performance from Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums.
Ralph Fiennes was regarded more as a gravely serious actor prior to his sparkling comedic turn in The Grand Budapest Hotel, where he managed to outshine both an excellent supporting cast and the eye-popping production design as Gustave H., the fastidious concierge of the titular lodgings.
Performances in Wes Anderson movies tend to veer between comically straight-faced and bursts of ironic mugging, but Fiennes pitches Gustave just right. He’s fussy, strict, dapper, immensely proud of his position, and he also has a taste for his more senior female guests – not to mention something of a potty mouth behind the scenes. But behind the well-groomed exterior and the flawless comic timing, Fiennes allows a certain forlorn world-weariness poke through at unexpected moments, and he really sells Gustave’s final heroic act to save his young protégé. In short, Gustave H. is the most layered and realistic character in Wes Anderson’s entire filmography, and Fiennes perhaps deserved an Oscar nod for the performance – it’s just a shame that the Academy doesn’t recognise comic turns all that regularly.
Cardinal Thomas Lawrence - Conclave
Gravitas is a word that often gets bandied about when a respected actor reaches a certain age, and that’s exactly what he brought to his unflashy but crucial role in Edward Berger’s Conclave.
Opening with the sudden death of the Pope, the twisty and intelligent potboiler keeps us guessing as the senior cardinals jostle for position in the hope of becoming the next pontiff. Fiennes’ Thomas Lawrence is the man in charge of finding a worthy successor while also receiving votes of his own. He’s a calm and watchful presence, using his years of experience to quietly soothe egos, defuse conflict, and keep the process moving in an orderly fashion as the intrigue unfolds.
On paper, it’s not a terribly exciting part and there are more colourful characters in the ensemble, played by superb veteran actors including Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow. But it is Fiennes who holds the whole story together, politely guiding us through the sequestered world of the Vatican before the film’s contentious final reveal. Fiennes received only his second Oscar nomination for Best Actor, but ultimately the role was probably a little too low-key to really trouble the eventual winner, Adrian Brody in The Brutalist. Nevertheless, Fiennes’ performance is a treat that showcases his consummate skill as an actor.
So there you have it, my nine favourite Ralph Fiennes performances. There are a few big ones missing from the list – would you substitute any of these picks for something else? Let us know!
