Oscar's Wild: gambling with Ralph Fiennes



By PATRICIA BIBBY
Associated Press
Wednesday, December 31, 1997





 NEW YORK (AP) -- A soft afternoon white winter sun is settling over Central Park and filtering through the pale curtains of Ralph Fiennes' hotel room.

This gauzy sunlight just barely meets Fiennes' eyes and, like light splintering through a crystal, changes their color from charcoal grey to brilliant green and then something in between.

Like the late-day winter sun that surrounds him, there's a certain softness about the British actor, something gentle and otherworldly, almost ethereal.

It's fitting, this angelic air.

Fiennes is touting his latest film, Oscar and Lucinda, based on Peter Carey's Booker Prize-winning novel, in which he plays a 19th-century minister-in-training. Gawky and scrawny, he's uncomfortable in his own skin and, even as a man of God, truly a lost soul.

It's when he meets Lucinda, played by the porcelain beauty Cate Blanchett, that he is found. But theirs is a love that's doomed and Oscar and Lucinda ultimately is a tragic tale.

Coming on the heels of Fiennes' role in The English Patient, another story of epic love lost, does Fiennes consider lasting love impossible?

"I hope it's not, but I fear it sometimes is in the end," Fiennes says, himself newly divorced from actress Alex Kingston (known to ER viewers as the new top British doc). He left her two years ago for actress Francesca Annis, who is 18 years his senior and played his mother in a stage production of Hamlet.

"Death comes in the end if nothing else comes already," Fiennes says wearily.

Listening to Fiennes speak is like trying to hear cotton balls drop. He speaks so softly, it seems that he's purring his words in an exquisite, extended whisper.

"Downer this!" he suddenly pronounces with a light laugh after considering love's tragic side. "I must stop being serious. Let's not be so serious!"

Serious, however, could describe most of the roles he's chosen over the years. Serious and seriously complex.

Born the eldest of six children to a farmer-photographer father and a novelist-travel writer mother, Fiennes, 35, began his studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, England's premier school for acting.

In 1988, Fiennes began four seasons with the acclaimed Royal Shakespeare Company. His breakthrough came when Steven Spielberg cast him as the cruelly ruthless Amon Goeth in Schindler's List.

His performance in the film brought Fiennes -- whose name is pronounced Rafe Fines -- critical acclaim and an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. Two starring roles soon followed: Quiz Show, about the 1950s TV game show scandals, and Strange Days, a science-fiction thriller. In 1995, he won a Tony for his portrayal of Hamlet on Broadway.

But he's best known for The English Patient's swarthy adventurer Count Laszlo de Almasy.

As Oscar, he's a frail bird of a man with great clumps of dishevelled red hair. In fact, Fiennes said he shed so much weight from his 5-foot-11-inch frame that the studio "got worried and said 'Gain some more weight.' "

Still, he hardly seems robust now in his perfectly tailored Savile Row suit. He tips the scale somewhere between 160 and 170 pounds, he says.

Was the decision then to play Oscar a deliberate attempt to avoid The Hunk stereotype?

"I would love to play (the) so-called hunky hero, whatever that means," he says. Even an action hero?

"Yeah. I love Harrison Ford's heroes," Fiennes says. "I love that doubting side that they have. These are wonderful qualities -- not being sure."




 

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