FIENNES ROMANCE FOR RALPH'S SERIAL KILLER




By Alison Jones
Birmingham Post
ROP p4-5
October 12, 2002.




RALPH FIENNES IS PLAYING ANOTHER CHILLING VILLAIN IN RED DRAGON BUT UNLIKE THE KILLER IN SCHINDLER'S LIST THIS ONE STILL HAS A SOUL HE TELLS ALISON JONES




Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) faces his captor FBI Agent Will; Graham (Ed Norton) Dolarhyde turns to violence as the dragon inside him takes over Dolarhyde (Ralph Fiennes) embarks on a fragile relationship with a blind colleague Reba (Emily Watson)




'There was a lot of tension when they brought him in. The amount of people in the room was completely minimal. You could sense the energy and danger. It was quite thrilling. I thought it was fantastic to be that close'

Ralph Fiennes isn't talking about a close encounter with Hannibal 'The Cannibal' Lecter, the man who came top in a list of the top 100 most wicked movie villains of all time - but a man-eater of a different sort.

It was one of two tigers brought onto the set of Red Dragon for a scene where Emily Watson, playing the unwitting girlfriend of serial killer Francis Dolarhyde (Fiennes) was allowed to pet one of the beasts. In the story the tiger is drugged ready for an operation, but it is against the law to sedate animals just to film a scene meaning Emily and Ralph has to rely on it obeying its owner instruction to lie still as Emily stroked it.

'It was a female tiger and very beautiful. It had such fantastic power about it. I found it very exciting but I wasn't as close to it as Emily was, maybe if I had been I would have been a bit more nervous,' tells Fiennes.

If security was tight with the one big cat - 'even the trainer respected it enormously' - it grew even tighter when they brought in a male tiger.

'Everybody who wasn't needed had already been asked to leave but when they brought him in it was completely minimal.'

How this compared with meeting Lecter in full liver chewing, fava bean eating flow, Fiennes was unable to discover as the two fictional psychopaths only share a poisonous pen friendship.

Instead FBI agent Will Graham (Ed Norton), the man who captured Lecter, acts as a reluctant go-between, appealing to the demented psychiatrist's ego to help him capture the killer dubbed the Tooth Fairy after murdering two families as they slept.

Fiennes did get to meet the Welsh knight off-set but they didn't compare notes on playing serial killers.

'I asked him to do his impressions of famous British actors, he did John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier for me,' he says revealing a grin, all the more appealing because of its rarity.

The choice of Fiennes to play the physically-disfigured Dolarhyde in the prequel to Silence of the Lambs surprised many, at one point Sean Penn was being considered.

However, the RADA-trained two time Oscar nominee's chilling breakthrough performance as SS Commandant Armand Goeth in Schindler's List proved that he could bring the right mental attitude to the table.

'I couldn't say how they compare in terms of malevolence. Armand Goeth thinks he is doing a job but they are both pretty reprehensible. I couldn't tell you which one was a B+ or a B- (villain).

' I thought Dolarhyde had an interesting arc in that you get to see him struggling with his demons, trying to find his way through a relationship with someone.'

To prepare for the role, Fiennes read case histories and also met with real murderers.

'Their writings are very interesting as they are often quite normal and very articulate. They write about how they didn't mean to do what they did and how sorry they are.

'But then there are others who are quite terrifying. They are cold and hard and narcissistic with a sense of achievement about what they have done. It's a very murky world.

'Meeting the murderers was something that was set up for me. They were quite reluctant to talk and had been carefully selected so they weren't dangerous.

'Nothing about any of them suggested demonic, psychopathic evil, evil. They were just men who were in different states of depression or acceptance.'

'Thomas Harris gives a lot of information about Dolarhyde. This is someone who has been very badly wounded and has created this fantasy as a way of empowering himself which involves killing innocent females.

'It is about feeling strong and God-like, dragon-like.'

The Red Dragon refers to the murderous persona within Dolarhyde who is obsessed with the works of the British artist William Blake and whose painting of a dragon he has had tattooed on his back.

The process of painting this onto Fiennes' skin took seven to eight hours, during which time he had to lie flat on a massage table or sit with his arms outstretched and supported on stands.

'I had the earliest pick-up time ever, two o'clock in the morning. I went to bed at 6pm. I spent the time listening to music and doing breathing exercises. The tattoo lasted about two days and withstood the odd shower before wearing off.'

Fiennes, a former art student, was so impressed by the result that he fleetingly considered succumbing to the needle himself.

'I flirted with the idea of it but I don't think I'm a tattoo guy really.

'I liked the design of this one and I think Japanese designs are impressive, but there are a lot that I think don't work at all, like little blobs or a fish or cross or something. To really work they have to be very well done.'

The most dramatic transformation was to Fiennes' physical shape as in the book Dolarhyde, to make up for his other deformities, is a body builder.

'It was written into the part that the director (Brett Ratner) wanted me to bulk up as much as I could because the guy is meant to look very strong and I am quite slight, sometimes called skinny,' he admits plucking at a shirt that already hangs loosely from his slim frame.

'That was a challenge because I had to do it in a very short time and I didn't really know the physics of those sort of things - but I couldn't get into that Schwarzenegger league in two months..

'You have to really concentratedly put on muscle. You have to eat a lot more and and push heavy weights and have someone demand of you that you do that.

'It is really quite a strain if your body is not used to it and I would find myself on the edge of tearing a ligament or something. But I was very happy with the results.

'They built a mannequin of me in the beginning to design the tattoo on and when it got to the point when they were going to use the tattoo they measured its back and my back I had gotten much bigger,' he says with a small smile of pride.

He has slimmed back down to his normal size, now relying on yoga as his only form of exercise.

'I have been doing it for a while now as it benefits both the mind and body. I go to the gym occasionally just to fell that I have worked my muscles but body building demands so much time. Those guys who really do it spend two or three hours in the gym every day and I think there is more to life than that.'

There is ample opportunity to admire his hard-won, if temporary, physique as Fiennes spends several scenes running round Dolarhyde's house completely naked, a state he is strangely at ease with.

'It's never really an issue with me. I was shot mostly from the back and anything from the front was done very discreetly so I felt very protected. The nudity arose because I am getting out of bed having spent the night with a girl. I cannot bear it when actors get out of bed when you know they have been sleeping with someone and they are wearing shorts. That's why I said to Brett if you can shoot me discreetly then I would prefer to be naked.

'I end up feeling a strange sense of power over the other people in the room because they are usually quite shy and don't want to look.

'It's all a bit silly, the coyness that goes with nudity is really misplaced. It's been in films for three to four decades and yet it is still a talking point.'

He will be following Red Dragon with another exploration of mental illness, playing a man who has been released from an institution in David Cronenberg's Spider.

But he maintains two dark roles in a row are not signs of an emerging pattern.

'I've actually just finished a romantic comedy with Jennifer Lopez (Maid in Manhattan) so I think my dark phase is behind me.

'I found it quite challenging because I've never done romantic comedy before but I liked it. I kept thinking should my character be more disturbed or trying to hide something and then I thought no, he is just a regular guy, decent and likeable.'

So does this mean he could be jumping the script queue which usually has Hugh Grant's name at the top of the list?

'No, I think Hugh has got that market nailed down. I'm happy just to be on the periphery.'




 

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