Enormously Talented -- But Troubled Actor Ralph Fiennes Reveals to Jan Moir Why He Wants to Hibernate

by Jan Moir

19 October 1996

DAILY TELEGRAPH
 
 
 

(They meet in a restaurant in London. . .)

        . . .he tries his best with a welcoming smile, a firm handshake and a polite shuffling of chairs as we both assume positions. . .  He is dressed casually in chinos and a collarless shirt, with a leather overnight bag at his feet. He has the plucky air of a man forced to endure something nasty -- a visit to the dentist, a barium enema -- before the pleasure of a stiff drink or perhaps a good lunch. "I don't find this easy, I am afraid," he says. "Suddenly, I have had enough of talking about myself. More than that, I have developed a fear of public attention and not knowing what to say. I don't know why. I feel increasingly that I want to. . .hibernate." He stares at the tablecloth. "Perhaps," he adds, "you have caught me on a bad day."

        A bad hair day, at any rate. Filming has just begun on Gillian Armstrong's production of Peter Carey's book Oscar and Lucinda, with Fiennes in the lead role of Oscar Hopkins. For this, his hair has been dyed a lurid orange, throwing his white skin and ghostly eyes into peaky relief. However. . .even a carroty coiffure cannot diminish his lavish good looks. "I keep saying, go redder, go redder, but they say it will look too odd on me." He runs a hand through his hair. "I think it has worked quite well."

        He has spent the past few months researching the part of Carey's gambler by going to the races at Kempton and Epsom, visiting casinos and learning how to shuffle cards with dexterous ease. Typically, his homework did not stop with the practicalities. "I am trying to understand the mentality of the gambler, what is appealing about that moment of unknowingness before you find out if you have lost or won. Oscar takes a risk about belief and translates it into something bigger, his faith in God. That is the connection I have made, anyway."

         Fiennes does not gamble with money himself, but feels he takes risks in other ways. In terms of his career, he regards Strange Days as his biggest flutter. It was a "very American" movie; he worried if he could be credible in the part, if he could make that leap. "I make choices which have their own risks attached to them. The whole point of gambling is not knowing and I quite like that. It is quite scary. I'm talking about personal things. Moments in a day. Choices of roles because of where they take you in your life. And what they take you away from." He suddenly halts this mildly revealing reverie and flashes a wounded, betrayed look. "I shouldn't be talking about this. It is not finished yet. I really shouldn't be talking about it."

         Whatever is is that Fiennes holds so precious -- his soul, his talent, his research notes on Oscar Hopkins -- he obviously feels that discussion is somehow a precursor to theft, that whatever it is that has made him the outstanding actor of his generation will somehow be stolen away from him if exposed to -- forget analysis -- even a shaft of daylight. "I find this very intrusive," he pleads. "I feel that it is terribly private."

         He talks about the moment of committing to a part -- he is very big on moments -- when the camera is on him or the curtain goes up, and explains that there is no explanation, no sophisticated rationale, to investigate what happens next. "It must be the same with musicians and dancers. The moment of being, of existing in a part, is its own fine, pure moment. The actor's imagination and his whole body, heart and spirit just. . .exist. All the skill, all the sense of life and the sense of death run through him in that one moment. In one sense, it is as simple as throwing a stone and watching it bounce across the water." He stares down at the table once more. "That is acting at its best. At its worst, it can be horrendous."

         His mother. . .died of breast cancer three years ago. Her eldest son still grieves. "The levels at which you absorb the death of a parent with whom you are particularly close are endless. There is the initial trauma of grief and you think you are handling it -- but then there are just layers and layers of. . .stuff." The family moved around Britain and Ireland. . .Always being the new boy at school, he feels made him resourceful rather than shy. "I was self-contained, I never had that extrovert confidence. I would stay in the background until the people who were right for me came forward."

          It is quite an image this, the quiet, little boy targeting his choice of playground pals, then waiting and waiting until they came to him. He still has the same watchful stillness, the anxious smile that wonders whether you are approaching him with a brick or a gobstopper in your hand. He had no "real" friends until he went to RADA in 1982. "My closest friends have come through the theatre," he says. It was here that he met his wife, actress Alex Kingston. They married in 1993 but have recently parted. "There have been a few upheavals in my life recently and I need to find a way through them and make sense of whatever it is on the other side. I feel rootless. There have been changes. . .  I am now living somewhere that is not permanent." Is this to do with your marriage breaking up? "It has to do with that, yes." A difficult time? "It's all right, it is working, it will be fine," he says, although he looks utterly miserable. "There is a real sense of shifting sands beneath my feet. At the moment, my work is all I have to cling on to. It has become my security."

          Tomorrow he takes part -- alongside Juliet Stevenson and Judi Dench -- in the celebrations for Radio 3's 50th anniversary by appearing in Man and Superman, the epic Shaw play which will be broadcast in its entirety. He describes the week spent recording it as exhausting and difficult. "I am not that experienced on the radio. You have a very different relationship with the microphone. My arms were going all over the place," he demonstrates this, using a hammy actorish pose, "to help conduct me through the arguments, the dense text." Is a four-hour radio play something he would listen to himself?  "I would be intrigued to hear it, although I don't know if I would last the course."

           Following excellent screen portrayals in Schindler's List and Quiz Show there have been excited rumours of another superb performance by Fiennes in      The English Patient. He describes Anthony Minghella's screenplay of           Michael Ondaatje's Booker-winning novel as "brilliant, wonderful" and the whole experience as extraordinary. "I felt it was about the pain and ecstasy of relationships, looking for your inner mate and realizing that, ultimately, everyone is on their own." Given his circumstances, perhaps this has a particular resonance for him? "You can be supported by wonderful friends and lovers, but I have realized that you are born on your own and you die on your own." At moments like this -- another Ralph Fiennes moment -- his gloom seems bottomless.

         Since his early days at the RSC -- where he played, among others, Henry VI, Edmund and Troilus -- Fiennes has always been drawn to the escapism of acting. "I like the hideaway-ness of it. I like the fact that I can pretend in my head, imagine myself to be someone else. I have often thought that I feel more secure in a part than I do in everyday life."

         However, once he steps over the footlights and back into the real world, he frets constantly. When offstage, he worries about being onstage. "I am never happy with what I have done. Who knows what is good? Once I have finished a take, I can say, 'Well, that felt all right. I tried all the things in that moment with as much knowledge, adventure, spontaneity and, yes, love, that I could.'  "The next day I might think, 'I missed that. I could have done it better.' But what is better? My better might be someone else's worse." He pauses for a second, fingers the tablecloth, cornered by his own philosophical conundrum. "The thing I would most like to be able to do is not fret and worry about things afterwards. I keep trying to find the peace. I hanker for some peace."

         What can life be like for him, when the only quiescence he can find is through the eye of a lens, in the moment when his own personality vanishes and a Nazi commandant or a cheating quiz-show contestant takes its place? It can't be much fun, constantly seeking an armistice with your own soul, even for someone as given to self-absorption and insecurity as Fiennes obviously is. Much of what he says -- theatre as a "shared sacrament", an actor's heart "just existing" -- strays into the dangerous territory of the serial pseud, although he is heartfelt in his uncomfortable mission to try to explain. Everyone else knows he is a wonderful actor except, it seems, Fiennes himself. He must know!  He's had Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, the admiration and support of both the critics and his peers. "Awards have nothing to do with the making of a film, the creation of a story on celluloid," he says, piously. He doesn't even like being a star. "Being famous has not made me happy." He considers this for a second. "Although I have had moments when I have felt that things were good and that I am very lucky." And there are other moments, other times, as he mentioned before, when he is just having a bad day.