Ralph Fiennes News Archives 2003

Articles listed from newest to oldest....

12/11/03 Fiennes joins book prize judges (from BBC News Website,tip contributed by Anastasia on Forum)

Actor Ralph Fiennes is to be a judge for the prestigious Whitbread Book Prize, it has been announced.
Fiennes will join broadcaster Joan Bakewell who will chair the judging panel to find the book of the year.

A shortlist of books in five categories was recently announced, with authors including Mark Haddon and Rachel Cusk competing in the novel section.

Category winners will be named on 7 January, with an overall winner chosen on 27 January, winning £25,000.

Booker Prize winner DBC Pierre is on the shortlist of first novel authors, alongside Anne Donovan for Buddha Da, Paul Murray for An Evening of Long Goodbyes and Talitha Stevenson for An Empty Room.

Poet laureate Andrew Motion will be lending his expertise to the poetry judging panel, while actress Jenny Agutter will sit on the children's book prize panel.

The category winners will receive £5,000 in prize money each.

The overall winner will be chosen by a panel of 10 people, including travel writer Bill Bryson, writer and actress Meera Syal, actress and TV presenter Liza Tarbuck and author Philip Hensher.

Last year, the Whitbread Prize was won by Claire Tomalin for her biography of Samuel Pepys.

She found herself competing for the overall prize with husband Michael Frayn, whose novel Spies topped the novel category.

11/03/03 Vapor in Holding Pattern

According to a quote on www.empireonline.com from Ralph at the Irish Film and Television Awards, he says,

"I'm waiting for the hard cash to come through. It's a quirkly dark love story - surreal, fantastic!"

Here's a pic:

Also, the Sunday Times Magazine had a piece on RF and his father..thanks to the NEWSFAIRY on the forum for the text, and Ian for contributing the photos:

Relative values: Mark Fiennes and his son Ralph
Mark Fiennes, photographer, and his son Ralph, actor. Interview: Danny Danziger.

Mark Fiennes, 70, and his late wife, the writer and artist Jennifer Lash, who died of cancer 10 years ago, had six children: Ralph, 40; Martha, 39, a film director; Magnus, 37, a composer; Sophie, 36, a film-maker; Jake, 33, a conservation manager and gamekeeper; and his twin, Joseph, an actor. Mark has an exhibition of his work at London's Menier gallery. He is now married to Caroline, and lives in Suffolk.

Ralph has starred in many films, including The English Patient and Schindler's List, and performed in many stage plays. Formerly married to the actress Alex Kingston, he now lives in London with the actress Francesca Annis.

MARK: I didn't stay at the hospital to see Ralph being born, like I did with the other five. It was taking a long time, and I had animals to feed — simple as that — so I went back to the farm. But I was immensely proud to be a father and have a son. Ralph was an extremely friendly child, very trusting with people, responding to parental love enormously.

There was one occasion which gave a clue as to where his future would lie. It was at a children's party where the conjuror asked: "Would any little boy or girl come up onto the stage and help me do this trick?" Ralph came up and helped him. Then he said, "Now I want someone to sing a song," and Ralph, without any embarrassment, sang a song. But he wouldn't stop — until the conjuror was tearing his hair out. It was quite funny; we used to tease him about that.

He was fantastically into model-making — knights on horseback, soldiers on their chargers — and I've always loved making models, so we made them together. Also, he was interested in military history — another of my interests. For a while he thought about becoming a soldier; every night he would do those marine push-ups with one hand — and the whole house used to shake. Ralph also wanted to be an artist; he had scarcely got into art college before he had auditioned and was offered a place at Rada. His mother, Jinney, encouraged him hugely, because she felt there was no higher calling than the arts, and she was mad about the theatre, particularly Shakespeare.

All the children had access to paintings, poetry, literature and music. There was never any shortage of books and paints, so she was very responsible for encouraging all of them to do what they're now doing.

It was a huge, decimating loss when Jinney died from cancer, 10 years ago this Christmas. The children had been prepared for it — as much as anyone ever is. After all, they saw her going downhill over several months, although when the end came everybody was dŽchirŽ. She died in the middle of the night and everyone hastened back to the hospital, and we all sat around the table drinking neat whisky and blubbing our hearts out.

Ralph did the usual spear-carrying jobs in the provinces, and had a small part in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Regent's Park open-air theatre, then the next summer he was Romeo in Romeo and Juliet.

Probably his great breakthrough was as Henry VI in The Plantagenets, a splendid production. He gave a very strong performance, which was a defining moment for me, in that it showed me his greatness and his ability: he had the whole of the auditorium absolutely in the palm of his hand; you could have heard a pin drop. I've seen every play and film Ralph's been in, and I still feel very emotional watching him.

Ralph gets a lot of attention these days. People are always wanting him to sign autographs — I cannot understand why anyone would want to do this. But if you're in the public eye you can't be rude, and Ralph is invariably polite and charming to everybody. Celebrity hasn't changed him at all: he's always absolutely delightful and very generous.

Ralph is said to be aloof and difficult, but he's not: he just doesn't like inane questions, particularly if they border on his private life. All the world knows he's had a divorce, and these moments churn you up, but you don't want to share them with the media. Your family, that's the fortress, and we are all very close.

RALPH: We had a nursery, where we would watch children's television until six o'clock, when there was a transition, a shift from the children and mother. The news would go on, and I can remember Mark coming in, this big man who had been outside all day; I could smell the outside on him. I remember him playing with the dogs, tactile and at ease with them, and the cracks in the skin of his fingers which were seamed with dirt.

I was always very aware of my father's skills with his hands. I remember watching a calf being born, and my father sticking his arm right inside the cow to get the calf out. He's brilliant at decorating and gardening, and as a teenager I'd earn pocket money by helping him do decorating jobs. When he became a photographer, I spent a lot of time in the darkroom with him when he was developing contact sheets, and would see how deft he was. Looking at his photographs now, there's a delicacy in many of the images. Alongside this physical man is a deeply sensitive man.

One of the things that connected us was my boyish interest in soldiers and aeroplanes, and my father's love of history. I remember my father telling me in detail about the battle of Agincourt on long car journeys. He'd be wonderfully descriptive, and I realise how much of that I still have inside my head. In fact, I thought I wanted to be a soldier because of him. I went off to the barracks of a regiment, and they were so dreary: it was a grey, rainy day, and nothing caught my imagination. I met no one who inspired me. I knew immediately it wasn't for me.

Farming didn't work out financially, and my father had to find something else to do. He decided to be a photographer, and we moved to Dorset and bought a house, which he converted. While we were doing it up we were living in a small, ugly house, and with six children there was a sense of claustrophobia. That was the first time I felt tension, and I remember sensing the strain, not between my parents, but their shared anxiety about money and supporting us.

When Mark went to Ireland on a photographic job, he fell in love with the country and decided we should move there. Both my parents shared the idea of life as an odyssey. They sold the house in Dorset and bought a plot of land on the west coast of Ireland, onto which we built a house. But trying to sustain that lifestyle became too much financially, and there was a slow acceptance of having to go back to an urban world in England.

There were times when my father didn't know where his next pay cheque would come from, but with his incredible strength of character he never lost heart. I've seen him downhearted, exhausted, frustrated, with a bad back, but always balanced by a very healthy, generous sense of humour.

I see my father getting older physically, but in spirit not at all. If I have one image of him, it is of a man working with amazing vigour and enthusiasm, asking us to come and help him, full of the enjoyment of working alongside me or Magnus, or Jacob or Joseph, or any of his children. He still carves the air when he comes into a room.

Even when he's sleeping in front of the television, you can feel the presence of this man, full of dignity and authority. I admire him enormously, and love him completely.

09/16/03 Warner Brothers buys North American Rights to Vapor

Here is some more info about Vapor, being produced by Renaissance Films. Thanks to Mishacat on the forum for this tip and link:
http://www.renaissance-films.com/vapor.html

WARNER BROS PICKS UP NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS ON VAPOR directed by Neil LaBute and starring Sandra Bullock and Ralph Fiennes. VAPOR is an unconventional fairy tale, set in contemporary New York, which concerns the exploits of a young actress who rescues a complete stranger, and thereby sets in motion a beguiling story of love and pain and humour and suspense. Renaissance Films developed the project with La Bute and Gail Mutrux, and is handling worldwide sales with Angus Finney executive producing.

Director: Neil LaBute
(Nurse Betty, In The Company Of Men)

Producer:
Gail Mutrux
(Donnie Brasco, Quiz Show)

"Water has the ability through its influence for pronounced but reversible change without ever ceasing to be itself"
ANNA GRAHAM is cute; when she smiles one of her "Anna" smiles, everything becomes just a little bit brighter. As an actress, she is constantly out of work, thereby forcing her to hold a variety of low-paying, menial jobs-at the moment, photocopy attendant and part time ear-piercer. As a person, however, Anna is genuine to a fault. "You are too much yourself," her acting teacher tells her one day. "You simply can't or won't become someone else." When Anna saves DAMON WETLEY from an attack in a New York subway (utilizing her fencing skills), an unlikely courtship ensues. Would-be actress becomes real-life savior.

Anna is on cloud nine; she has not had much luck with men recently, except for NATHANIEL POWERS, a handsome New Yorker who rescues her from muggers on her way home through Central Park. Anna suddenly finds herself in the enviable position of juggling two suitors. Nathaniel drives a sports car and is a man of many occupations. He works at Waist Watchers, has an etiquette hotline and dabbles part-time as a pole dancer. Mrs. Graham, Anna's mother and a former Olympic fencing champion, would approve. In fact, she does. A lot. But it is to Damon that Anna is more powerfully drawn. Drawn to his beautiful person, his cryptic language and sensitive soul.

Damon is a real gentleman. He is not British, just speaks well, designs his own clothing and makes clouds-including the pygmy variety that he offers Anna as a present. One evening, he invites Anna to dinner at his sumptuous mansion where she is struck by his haunting eyes and his uncommon demeanor. Wandering through his magical country estate, Anna feels as if she has walked into a fairy tale; as she puts it, "This is wow cubed." But to grant Anna her greatest wish, Damon must imprison her and impose upon her a training regime that will transform Anna into the amazing actress she has always dreamed of being.

During her captivity, Damon falls in love and even Anna concedes that the training has done its work. After a while, though, the imprisonment wears her down and Anna escapes. Back in New York City, Anna finally realizes her hopes of television stardom; she lands a role on a popular show where her co-star is PHILLIP TWEELY, a handsome man who carries great sadness in his eyes. The kind of haunted sadness she has seen somewhere before…

Damon, however, cannot live without Anna and tracks her down. Anna, too, has been craving Damon. They must be together. But now the police and Nathaniel and Anna's parents are after them…

Sounds like one of those crazy New Yorker stories? Hey, we're just getting started.

09/01/03 Brand is Over and Vapor Filming Begins and Forum Relocated

Ralph's next project Vapor, will be filmed in Canda in September and October. Though there are reports that he might bring either Brand or the Talking Cure to the USA, nothing is yet confirmed. An article did run saying that The Talking Cure would be in Los Angeles beginning in April, but there was no mention of whether Ralph will be the lead character. For more info, watch it at
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367198/

Forum members Stella, Sugarpaste, and Gigi H, among many others attended the last performance of Brand. The performance was excellent, but there was some disappointment over the stage door. Ralph was swamped with people and autograph hounds, so he was less than enthusiastic his last night with the fans. See the forum for photos and encounters. They will eventually be added to the Brand Encounter Site.

The forum has moved to its new location. Please visit the new location and register with Ezboard.com. We don't want to lose anyone, so come visit and be sure to bookmark the location.

http://pub60.ezboard.com/bfiennesforum

05/19/03 New Brand Fan Encounter site is up
Pop on over and check out photos, interviews, encounter reports, etc...on our new part of the site.
Brand Encounter

http://www.fiennesforum.com/ralphencounters/brandencounters/brand2.htm

05/19/03 Ralph to Possibly Star in Film with Sandra Bullock
Thanks to Mickey for breaking this on the forum. RF's reps have not confirmed this project is a go.

Sandra Bullock and Ralph Fiennes will star in Neil LaBute's Vapor for London-based Renaissance Films, reports Variety.

The pic, budgeted just below $30 million, is based on Amanda Filipacchi's novel about a struggling actress who saves the life of a stranger. He turns out to be an eccentric scientist who, in a surreal variation of the Pygmalion myth, offers to use his bizarre techniques to transform her into a star.

Warner Bros., where Bullock has a production deal, is a favorite to pick up North American rights, although three other U.S. distributors are also said to be chasing the project. The film is set to shoot in September.

More info by Linda:
Vapor
Genre: Romance
Writer: Neil LaBute
Author: Amanda Filipacchi
Buyer: Catch 23 Ent./Renaissance Films
Producer: Gail Mutrux
Logline: Set in modern day New York, an artist/scientist, who makes
clouds in buildings, trains an aspiring actress to be a success.
Side Note: Announcement that Catch 23 and Renaissance Films will co-develop and finance this project. Shooting will begin this fall in New York. LaBute will write and direct the film, and it is being set up as a starring vehicle for his NURSE BETTY actress Renee Zellweger. Gail Mutrux will produce for Renaissance through her and Neil LaBute's company, Pretty Pictures. Stephen Evans, Angus Finney
and Jeremy Barber will Executive Produce.

Review of the Novel contributed by Hal9000, from Amazon:
From Kirkus Reviews
A surreal and often frenetic trip through makeover land as a bizarre young man helps an aspiring New York actress become a star by imprisoning her in his cloud-filled home. Filipacchi (Nude Men, 1993) crafts an intriguing diversion thats as much a lighthearted meditation on the excesses of ambition as it is an unusual love story. When an acting professor tells narrator Anna Graham that she will never be an actress because shes too much herself, she is determined to prove him wrong. As it happens, while shes waiting for the subway, Anna rescues a young man whos being attacked; in gratitude, Damon Wetly asks her out to dinner, and, after she tells him about her acting ambitions, lures her to his country house, where he closes her up in a specially designed prison. Damon, a scientist working to create solid clouds, is exquisitely sensitive to moisture and weight. Anna initially tries to resist the program of education hes devised for her, but, worn out by a regimen that is as much physical as mental, gives in and follows his orders. Soon after she manages to escape and get back to New York, she becomes a major star. She hasn't forgiven Damon, though, so when the opportunity presents itself she tricks him into visiting her apartment, where she imprisons him in a cage shes had built. Nonetheless, the two soon become lovers, even though evil forcesincluding Damon's plastic-surgeon brotherare determined to thwart their passion. The bad guys are routed, but Damon, whos been experimenting with weightlessness, suddenly evaporates after being released from his cage. A grieving and Oscar-winning Anna has intimations of his possible return. An original and beguiling interpretation of old myths and contemporary preoccupations, despite a plot that often goes into overdrive. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

05/19/03 Brand Interviews and Reviews
Thanks to Freya and Mickledore for contributing both text and images.

May 11, 2003 Sunday Times- Thanks to Mickledore for contributing text and image.

THERE'S JUST NO STOPPING HIM
Ralph Fiennes devotes everything to his work — which makes him perfect for the role of the fanatical Brand, says Aleks Sirez

Ralph Fiennes has taken on the title role of Henrik Ibsen’s Brand. For anyone who hasn’t seen the play, it’s hard to convey the epic quality of this undertaking. Fiennes is onstage for almost three hours, talking all the time, and he has to make a religious fanatic, who sacrifices mother, wife and child to his mission, not only compelling but moving too. Yes, Brand’s up there with Hamlet, Lear and Peer Gynt. It is a role only the best actor of his generation is asked to perform.

After a short run in Stratford- upon-Avon, 40-year-old Fiennes is bringing Brand to the West End. In the play’s last scene, the outcast priest is mistaken for Jesus Christ by a deluded madwoman. Here, Fiennes’s Brand radiates holiness. You can almost see the halo. Maybe his next role should be Jesus. “Oh, I’ve already played the voice of Jesus,” he smiles. “I had this funny year in which I did two animated films: in one, I was the voice of Pharaoh, in the other, called The Miracle Maker, I was the son of God.”

Playing Jesus must be an ego boost, but when I meet him in Stratford, he is surprisingly diffident. The heart-throb Hollywood star doesn’t strut, preen or pose. He sits slightly hunched, a bit tense, the famous tiger eyes darting around the room. Only his expensive clothes signal his stardom: classy black shirt, slightly flared trousers and some fancy shoes.

Fiennes maintains that while Brand is “not an easy play, it is an extraordinary experience”. But surely the character is as chilly as a Norwegian fjord? “Yes, I suppose so,” he says, “but I find that when he’s inspired at the very end, he senses that God is in everything — that’s him at his best.” To illustrate his point, Fiennes mentions Wordsworth’s poem Tintern Abbey. Then he adds: “I also think that Brand’s ruthlessness comes from how he grew up: ‘I grew up alone, like one of the stones on the shore.’ He’s been dominated by his mother and his sense of love is completely upside down. He distrusts love. He is a damaged child who has this mission.”

Although audiences have warmed to him, Fiennes has worried about the show. “It’s a very dangerous role; you can easily slip into melodrama.” Watching his Brand, the puritan preacher is less in evidence than the modernist outsider. His body language reminds me of the angular figures in Van Gogh’s early paintings; his attitude is more Kafka and Dostoevsky than Scandinavian cleric. “Oh, good,” he says. “Brand is a religious existentialist. He’s an outsider finding his way.” Fiennes goes on to talk about Dostoevsky’s Memoirs from the House of the Dead. “There’s a wonderful bit when the prisoners put on a play, and they are all transformed, which is a powerful validation of the theatre.” But his enthusiasm suddenly stalls: “The last time I talked overearnestly about what theatre at its best can do, I was called pretentious.”

His interest in religion is not confined to Brand. “I was brought up,” he says, “by a pretty devout Catholic mother (the novelist Jennifer Lash, who died in 1993). My family — particularly on her side — is full of religious people.” A professor of theology rubs shoulders with a Benedictine monk and a Greek patriarch. “God was being discussed all the time, in a very unembarrassed way.”

The eldest of her six children, Ralph was born in Suffolk. At 13, he stopped going to church. “My mother was very upset,” he says. “She’d tried to make going to church a constructive and celebratory experience. But I didn’t buy into it.” As a teenager, Fiennes went through a phase of wanting to join the army, but settled on the Chelsea School of Art. “The foundation course was designed to throw ideas at you, mess up your preconceptions — that gave me the confidence to recognise that I really wanted to be an actor. I joined an amateur company and auditioned for Rada.” His parents encouraged him.

His mother was less proud of his success than of his complete integrity and depth of commitment. Fiennes has said, “I do judge other women by her”, pointing out that her emotional intensity could be both overpowering and exciting. In 1988, he joined the RSC, where Adrian Noble (who directs Brand as his last act as company supremo) recalls him giving “one of the three best auditions I’ve ever seen”. It was for Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost, a role he went on to play, as did his brother Joseph recently at the National.

After his big-screen debut, a brooding Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1992), came films full of moody introspection, tortured soul-searching and enigmatic loneliness. As well as Schindler’s List and The English Patient, he starred in Quiz Show, Onegin and The End of the Affair. Recently, he has played a schizophrenic in Spider and a serial killer in Red Dragon. Beneath the perfect smile lies a world of pain. His attempts to play light comedy — in The Avengers and in Maid in Manhattan, with J.Lo — have been unconvincing. Onstage, his most memorable parts have been Shakespeare’s Richard II and Coriolanus, while his baleful Hamlet won a Tony on Broadway in 1995.

His reputation for aloofness and arrogance is not borne out when you meet him — just as long as you talk about his work. Yes, he’s serious, but he’s also warm and willing to grapple with big subjects such as spirituality. Clearly, he likes roles that stretch him. “As an actor, your challenge is to get your mind around the psychology of another human being — and the more complex and contradictory the character, the more dramatic that is.”

He continues: “There’s a bit of Brand in repellent characters like Hitler, and there’s a bit of him in Blake and Wordsworth.” Talking of his role as a Nazi in Schindler’s List, he says quietly: “The human capacity to do evil is very disturbing. You have to confront certain things; the bit of you that might go there.” We talk about Michael Meyer’s biography of Ibsen: “Ibsen clearly felt some of the anger Brand feels. He loathed compromise, while being a loyal husband and affectionate father.”

Fiennes is attracted by the notion of sacrifice, “about having to go through something to get somewhere”. “You have to lose something to gain something. You have to go down before you can go up. Brand is too extreme for me, but I do think that being prepared to give up things is an issue.”

He’s never had any children, and I wonder whether he’s alluding to that. “Brand makes me ask: have I given up enough? What am I doing this for? Is what I do going to make things better or not?” He gives me a haunted glance before wrestling with “that Catholic bit that asks: what is the account at the end of the day? In your daily life, where’s your ounce of courage to face things truthfully?”.

We’re getting on well, then I ask about his private life. He gives me a hangdog look. “I’m very reluctant to say anything, I really am.” Since 1995, he’s been living with Francesca Annis, who played Gertrude to his Hamlet, which encouraged gossips to say he’s sleeping with his mother — she’s 18 years older than him. “I so know I didn’t marry my mother,” he once told an interviewer. “I started off finding it insulting, but now I find it stupid.”

In fact, what’s interesting is not Annis’s age but her job. Like Alex Kingston — whom Fiennes met at Rada, then married in 1993, before they broke up a year later — Annis is an actress. What Fiennes needs is not a mother but a loyal partner who understands what acting’s all about. Annis has seen his Brand and given him some suggestions.

“There is an understanding,” he says, “that if you’re going in front of an audience, you have to have your confidence intact. As an actor, you only give support. Once, I had a taste of losing confidence, and there’s nothing worse. It was when I was very young — suddenly, during a production, my confidence about my talent, my sense of cohesion, suddenly all went. It’s very fragile. More fragile than you might think.” The haunted look returns and reminds me that, like other great actors, Fiennes is doing us a favour. He puts himself through hell so that the audience can get an insight into being human. Like Brand, he is a man with a mission.

Brand opens at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, SW1, on June 4

The Independent- Thanks to Freya for contributing the text, Mickledore for the photos
`I like to play tortured souls'.
By BRIAN VINER.
12 May 2003

In person, Ralph Fiennes is charming, easy-going and every inch the perfect English gentleman. But put him on stage and it's all hellfire,

The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon. Row F. It is 7.32pm on a balmy evening in May. Ralph Fiennes is making his entrance in the Ibsen play, Brand, and a middle-aged woman, who has previously been relaxedly chatting to her neighbour, sits forward and visibly stiffens. She remains like this until the interval, when she becomes sufficiently limp to consume a tub of strawberry ice cream. But when the lights go down for Act II, she stiffens again, as though electrified.
There are several possible explanations for this.

One: she is a fan of the comedian Jo Brand, and thought that a show called Brand would be a one-woman performance of jokes about premenstrual tension and what bastards men are.

Two: she is an Ibsen devotee.

Three: she is a Ralph Fiennes devotee. As keen as I am to entertain the first possibility, the second or third, or a combination of the two, seem more likely. Not that Fiennes is at his dishiest as Brand, the fiercely moralistic Lutheran pastor. It is not a dishy part. But he is very, very good in it.

Across the road from the Swan Theatre, in the Royal Shakespeare Company press office. It is 5.30pm several days later, and Fiennes, slighter than he appears on stage and screen, is sitting opposite me in a small room. Having interviewed lots of actors, I, of course, know better than to confuse the frankly terrifying Brand with Fiennes himself, but, all the same, it comes as a surprise, especially knowing that the metamorphosis is just a couple of hours away, to find an engagingly gentle, genial sort of chap.

I tell him that I have read him quoted in a previous interview as saying that unlike some actors, he does not "take his characters home".

As he has recently played a schizophrenic in the David Cronenberg film Spider, and a cannibalistic serial killer in the film Red Dragon, to say nothing of Brand, this, I venture, is just as well.

He smiles. "Well, no, I'm not Brand 24 hours a day. But I do think a lot about the parts I play while I'm scrambling eggs. And I am preoccupied with this one, which is a huge part. The danger of it is that he could become a ranting, finger-wagging pedagogue. I have tried to find a sense of vulnerability."

We'll come back to Brand, a little-performed but intriguing play, written in 1865 and provoked, in part, by Ibsen's anger at the failure of Norway and Sweden to support Denmark in its 1864 war with Germany over Schleswig-Holstein. But first things first. Biting the face of a tabloid journalist, as his character did in Red Dragon... was it satisfying?

After all, the tabloids took a prurient delight in his affair with the actress Francesca Annis, which finished off his marriage to the actress Alex Kingston, their interest further inflamed by the fact that Annis is 18 years his senior and that they met when she played his mother - Gertrude to his Hamlet. Moreover, tabloid speculation has dogged him since, most recently when he was seen dining with Jennifer Lopez, his co-star in Maid in Manhattan. He must have sometimes felt like, if not biting their faces off, at least punching their lights out?

"Well, actually no, I didn't find it satisfying. It was an unpleasant scene, and Philip Seymour Hoffman [who played the luckless hack] was so brilliant at being terrified. But I do despise the tabloid press, I really do, both here and in New York, although the British tabloids were particularly unpleasant when my relationship with Francesca became public six or seven years ago.

"But, of course, I don't get nearly as much attention as some, the Beckhams, for example. And these things pass. Really, the worst thing to do is get defensive or self-justifying, because it only serves their purposes. The thing to do is to treat them with contempt and move on, because there are more important things... and it's only one's vanity and ego that's been affected. I might read something I don't like, but then I find that other people haven't even read it. I pick up the phone to one of my brothers or sisters and say, `I'm really upset about this', and they say, `What's that? I haven't read it'."

Fiennes, 40, is the eldest of six. Martha is a film and video director, Magnus a composer, Sophie a photographer, Joseph an actor (best known for playing the title role in Shakespeare In Love), and Jacob a gamekeeper. Their father Mark is a photographer, and their late mother Jini was a painter, novelist and travel writer. A cousin, Sir Ranulph, is an explorer. They are quite a bunch, and yet frightfully English and middle class about it all, at least if Ralph - pronounced in the old English way, of course, to rhyme with "chafe" - is anything to go by.

The sheer Englishness of him is ironic when you consider that his most celebrated performances, on screen at any rate, have been as foreigners: the Hungarian Count Laszlo de Almasy in The English Patient; the American patrician Charles Van Doren in Quiz Show; and the monstrous commandant Amon Goeth in Schindler's List, the 1993 film that propelled him to an Oscar nomination and stardom.

I ask him whether he was worried, when Schindler's List was released, that his life was about to change.

"I was actually very naive about it. I knew that a Spielberg film would have an enormous public profile, but it was a very strange time, because the success of the film coincided with the death of my mother. It was a time of distress and grief, and then there was this other thing happening, the Oscar buzz. Quite disorienting."
Although very ill, Jini Fiennes lived to see Schindler's List, and perhaps died knowing that her eldest child, already a whizz with the RSC, was on the verge of becoming a movie star. Not that it would have mattered to her. By all accounts, it was effort rather than achievement that she tried to foster in her children: "Put your guts into it," was her constant refrain, however trivial the exercise.

She would be proud of his performance in Brand, to which he commits both his guts and his soul. I ask him whether he is religious. "No, no, I'm not a practising anything. But my mother's side of the family includes priests and professors of theology, so I grew up with God being a subject that no one was frightened to talk about, even if they didn't believe in him.

"My mother's uncle is a Benedictine monk, actually, and a theologian and a poet. He's called Sebastian Moore, and is quite well known, and gives wonderful sermons at christenings, weddings and funerals. He's unpredictable, cutting-edge. I'm dying for him to see this."

During the rehearsals for Brand, another theologian was drafted in to talk Lutheranism to the cast. But Fiennes used the biography of Ibsen by Michael Meyer (whose translation this production uses) as his main source of reference.

"And I came to realise that Brand really is a version of Ibsen, repressed, but with huge compassion under this taut, not instinctively generous nature. Brand gives these big speeches, and Ibsen did that, too, but in his cups, late at night. He certainly felt great anger over Schleswig-Holstein."

Can he relate to that, I wonder. I can't imagine that he was gung-ho for the invasion of Iraq. Does he perhaps feel betrayed by the leader of his country, as Ibsen did?

A long pause. "I have never," he says, "felt so unnerved by anything as I did by this war. I found it very unsettling. I don't trust President Bush, and I'm very disappointed in Tony Blair. But I'm very wary about exploiting my public profile for political reasons. I vote - I have voted twice for Labour - but I'm not an overtly political animal."

Another pause. "I was making Spider on September 11, shooting in Toronto, and my immediate response was, yes, it's appalling, yes, something must be done, but why are these people this angry? Why are people suicide bombers? We must stop them, of course, but why do they do it?"

Maybe, I suggest, this is the actor in him, needing to find the deep-seated motivation for a character's terrible actions?

"Yes, in Schindler's List, I had to know why men were like this." Here, Fiennes grits his lovely white teeth and narrows his lovely blue eyes. It's a fleeting but slightly scary change of demeanour. "Why did they join the SS in the 1930s? Because of their anger, their huge anger at their country's emasculation, their huge sense of humiliation... not that I'm justifying or condoning it, of course not."

Of course not. In the meantime, we have reached one of The Questions. There are two questions contained in virtually all interviews with Fiennes, and he doesn't like either of them, and one of them I'm not going to bother with. That's the one about the age difference between him and Annis and whether it ever gives him pause for thought (it doesn't).

The other is the one about tortured souls. So, here goes: so many of his characters exhibit signs of inner torment... is he particularly drawn to those parts, and if so, why? He sighs. "This terrible label, `tortured souls'. I think most people are wrestling with something... it's really about dramatising the choices we're all making, but pushed to a greater level to make them drama. I like to play tortured souls with a sense of purpose, like Oscar in Oscar and Lucinda, this quirky priest with a peculiar inner conviction. That's why I was drawn to Brand, because he has this extraordinary vision that, at its best, inspires people."

The actor Simon Russell Beale once said of Fiennes that, more than most in their profession, he seems to sense the importance of acting. I don't want to back him into Pseud's Corner, but does he think that there is some truth in that?

"Well, I like to feel the energy behind what people do, whether they are architects, painters, or other actors. What inspired me to act was seeing Paul Scofield playing Salieri in the play Amadeus. I felt that thing of the goose bumps, you know. And it happened again when I saw Judi Dench as Cleopatra.

"As a punter, I love it when one's imagination is deeply affected, and in Brand, it's wonderful to feel on some nights that we have taken the audience on a journey. I don't know how important that is, but it's wonderful that some people come out feeling terribly moved... and I guess some people come out feeling nothing."

It must have been gratifying, I add, that his youthful inspiration, Paul Scofield, wound up playing his father in Quiz Show. "Oh, I couldn't believe it. He was cast quite late on, after we had started filming, and I couldn't believe it. My mother had gone to the theatre a lot, and spoken to me a lot about Scofield, and I had seen him as King Lear, and in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the National Theatre." Did he tell the great man of his admiration? "I think I did, actually, rather sheepishly."

It is not hard to think of Fiennes being sheepish; a slight reticence is part of his considerable charm. He admits as much when I ask how much direction matters to him. "I am not good at confrontation," he says, "so I have to feel there is a common view. I had a huge sense of collaboration with [director] Adrian Noble on this... but at other times, I have felt frustration with directors. Music is one of my bugbears, the overlaying of too much music. I felt that slightly in [the 1999 Neil Jordan film] The End of the Affair. It was very exciting music by Michael Nyman, but sometimes overly insistent."

As we part, and he wanders across the road to get into character as Brand, I recall that The End of the Affair was also the film that fell foul of the censor on account of the Fiennes bottom doing some overly insistent pumping. I wonder what Henrik Ibsen would have made of that. But I think I can guess the response of the woman from Row F.

`Brand' continues at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, to 24 May (0870 609 1110), and transfers to the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London on 30 May.

From the RSC website:
Ralph Fiennes on Brand

Can you say a bit about why you wanted to play what is often seen as a very difficult and unsympathetic character?

Ralph Fiennes:
He is at face value quite unsympathetic but that's too simple a judgement. Brand is a tough nut to crack as a character because Ibsen has written a very extreme man who has a hard and often really tough and merciless commitment to his Christian faith but I found that there was a poetry and an epic quality in the play that I liked. The ideas really appealed to me - just to do with life and faith and the way you live your life. Brand's brand of faith is very tough but there are moments in the play when you can be inspired by how he expresses his belief. At other times you could be repelled by it.

He is a man who is trying to articulate his beliefs not just through language but through the way he lives his life. When I read the play, I thought that Brand had similarities to Coriolanus who is often thought of as a difficult, unlikeable and unsympathetic protagonist.

I think that Ibsen deliberately confronted us with this very extreme intellect and spirit but, as his wife says about him, "a deep well of love exists in this man" and you do see moments of huge compassion in him. Ibsen sets up his psychological background very astutely because it is clear that Brand was unloved by his parents and is distrustful of the world. He says: "What the world calls love I neither know nor want" but just before saying that he has admitted that the love of his wife is one of the best things that has come into his life. So he is suppressing his own compassion and humanity all the time and for me that makes him tragic.

When was your last season at the RSC and what did you take away from it?

Ralph Fiennes:
1990-91 when I played Troilus, Edmund the Bastard in King Lear and Berowne in Love's Labour's Lost. In my first season (1988-9), when I played Henry VI in the Plantagenets series, I felt very connected to the character of Henry.

When did you last work with Adrian Noble and why do you like working with him as a director?

Ralph Fiennes:
I met Adrian when we worked together on The Plantagenets. He cast me as Henry VI, also a very devout man but completely different from Brand, lacking any of his anger. Brand has a warlike temperament. His wife says "Your god is a warrior god" and Brand talks about waging war - not a war in which he is killing people but a war of idealism, of belief.

Adrian and I connected very well on The Plantaganets and I remember that I felt that he allows you the space in which to make mistakes, to experiment, to get your hands dirty. He gives you a lot of rope which can sometimes be quite scary because he leaves it up to you to find your way. Other directors can be much more on top of you. Adrian seems very laid back but then suddenly he is there, shaping and tailoring. So you feel in safe hands and that the production is supporting you and then you can take risks. And although not everything you try works, something good can come out of it.

Did you take away anything useful from your research trip to Norway with Adrian Noble last year?

Ralph Fiennes:
I really wanted to go to Norway to see the landscape. Ibsen describes the mountains, fjords and valleys. I wanted to look down a fjord and see what Ibsen describes. We went on a long hike up a mountain, above a fjord, and suddenly had that sense of elation that a mountain can bring out of you. It is easy to be inspired by the height of the mountains in Norway but also humbled. At the same time as you are lifted and exalted, you are made to feel that you are nothing. Edmund Hillary said something similar when talking about why he climbed mountains - he said that he felt "called" up a mountain It gives you a sense of perspective about the world which is one of the first things that struck me when I read the play.

We recognised Ibsen's description of walking up to the heavens and of looking down to the houses below and seeing human habitation and ordinary, everyday life. We had wonderful weather, clear blue skies and we could see for miles. Brand talks about being up in the mountain or of going down to the valley, which he is reluctant to do, and he also talks about valleys that don't get any sun and you could certainly see sides of mountains that probably got very little light at all because they were completely north facing. Brand chooses to live in a house that gets no sun, no light. And when you can imagine where that sort of house can be, it's very daunting. It's also very useful to be able to carry a physical memory of what it is like to have walked those very long distances. Things which one could have imagined but since we had the time to visit, we went and I do feel it made a difference. I feel that I hold those images in my head. There is no scenery as such in our play - the mountains are in the imaginations of the actors so to have seen it so that the image is really strong in my mind is very helpful.

Are you doing any other preparation, physical or mental, for the role?

Ralph Fiennes:
Keep fit - learn the lines.

What memories will it bring back, spending time in Stratford?

Ralph Fiennes:
Being tired, being exhilarated by the work, sometimes frustrated if you felt you weren't giving of your best or hadn't cracked the part.

One of the things I always liked was the thrill of hearing an audience respond at the end of a performance of a Shakespeare play. Everyone is always questioning Shakespeare's place in our lives - should he be on school syllabuses, is he any use, is he redundant, what's the point of him today? But in performance, suddenly there is a connection to a modern audience. They have gone on a journey. They won't have understood all the words but they will have understood the fundamental drama and characters will have come through. Shakespeare is contemporary - not always linguistically but in the things he addresses and I do remember feeling the thrill that this great language was still connecting to audiences in a contemporary context.

How do you think a serious, classic play like BRAND will go down with the West End audiences?

Ralph Fiennes:
For many people, I suppose, Ibsen is demanding drama but a lot of people are hungry for that. I have faith in the audiences that want to be challenged, to engage in ideas. BRAND has no song and dance numbers but it is not a dry, intellectual piece. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think it has huge dramatic power and I think it's the production's job to unlock that. Certainly the part of Brand, on the page, is a very dramatic figure. And the text is very accessible. It deals with issues of faith and I do think that you cannot fail to be affected by the Christ story. Ibsen said that Brand could have been an architect or a politician. It's simply about a man of vision, a passionate, burning vision which takes no prisoners but is also inspiring and I think that if that visionary quality of Brand can come through and the audience takes that journey with him then the play will connect.

They have to be alert to Brand's faults and to the resistible things that he says and does but he is a human being struggling to make people .... better, I suppose. What Ibsen couldn't bear in his countrymen was any sense of slothfulness or lack of commitment to a vision or a way of life. In one of Brand's speeches he says "It isn't love of pleasure that is destroying us, it would be better if it were. Enjoy yourself if you will, but be consistent, do it all the time. Not one thing one day and another the next". Brand loathes what he calls compromise - a little bit of this, a little bit of that. He thinks it neuters you and apparently Ibsen was a quiet self-contained man who, when he had had a bit to drink, would suddenly come out with these very strong, very hard points of view. He apparently said "Brand is me in my best moments" and I think that Ibsen thought that his best moments were when he was being an angry man at the dinner table late at night with a couple of bottles of wine inside him. But people did say he was mesmeric. He would suddenly come through with great passion.

There's a bit of Brand in repellent characters like Hitler and then there is a bit of him in William Blake or Wordsworth - this vision of the total unity of man and his world and an ecstasy which is joyful, the going towards the light. I hope that audiences will respond to those visionary and inspirational qualities in Brand. But then there is the other side of Brand which pushes people to risk their lives and demands extreme things of people. One of the key things in the play is the notion of sacrifice. Brand says: "If you give all you have but not your life, you give nothing".

Brand runs in the Swan Theatre in Stratford upon Avon from 18 April - 24 May, transferring into the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London from 29 May - 30 August 2003.

First Review from Coventry News- Thanks Mickledore

Review: Brand.
May 2 2003

By Marion McMullen

A rare chance to see Ralph Fiennes at his tortured best on the Warwickshire stage is not to be missed.

Audiences have been heading to Stratford and happily sitting through nearly three hours of Ibsen to see Fiennes in fine form as restless and driven priest Brand.

Few actors could do justice to the part of the man of God who is prepared to sacrifice everything for his calling.

His mother, his wife and his son all take second place in his drive to save souls and find spiritual peace.

Fiennes is a real firebrand as Brand. He is intense and passionate as a man who refuses to compromise his beliefs and demands that others around him follow his example.

Brand is a hard act to follow, however, and his neighbours often fail to meet his high standards.

Fiennes finds the conflict at the heart of Brand and presents a restless soul instead of merely a religious monster. Claire Price is deeply moving as Brand’s wife, Agnes, while Susan Engel cuts an understanding figure as the other woman in his life, his money-loving mum.

But there’s little chance to Rest In Peace with Brand around.

BRAND - Swan Theatre, Stratford, running time 2hr 45min, until May 24.

Ralph's Brand new role May 2 2003

By Marion McMullen

The eyes that sent Jennifer Lopez weak at the knees in Hollywood movie Maid in Manhattan are alight with passion.

But it’s not J-Lo’s famous backside that is the cause of the spark. British leading man Ralph Fiennes is back on the Warwickshire stage after more than 13 years and he is consumed by the acting challenge of playing the title role in Ibsen’s Brand.

“I had a gut instinct to the role when I read the play,” he explains. “I don’t take a part thinking ‘will this show how versatile I am?’ It’s a gut response, an instinctive thing.”

Ralph was not familiar initially with the play about a devout and driven priest, but it has given him a taste to do more Ibsen and he describes Brand as a “powerful and complex man” who is prepared to sacrifice everything for his vocation to God.

Fiennes, the oldest of six children, says he is not religious himself, but his novelist mother Jini was a devout Catholic at one point and the family went to mass on a Sunday.

“I remember when I was 13 saying ‘I didn’t want to go to church, I think it’s boring,’ ” he recalls with a wry grin. “My mother got very upset, but I grew up in a family that talked about God and was at ease about religious matters.”

Brand reunites director Adrian Noble and Ralph Fiennes for the first time since their work on the groundbreaking cycle of history plays, The Plantaganets, in 1988.

Fiennes has taken a break from filming to concentrate on the stage production and says returning to Stratford has been a bit like stepping through a time-warp.

“I had a memorable season when I was back here in 1988 and keep expecting to see actors I worked with then. I walk down the corridors and I remember conversations I had.

“Everything is still here - the river, the swans, the tourists. It’s like time has collapsed and I’m back.”

Adrian Noble and Ralph went to Norway to help research the production and the director graciously says it takes an actor of Ralph Fiennes’s stature to make a drama like Brand work.

“He won’t say it,” says Adrian gesturing to Ralph, “but there are not many actors who can do a play like Brand. The demands on the actor are not far off from those performing King Lear. You’ve got to have an extraordinary talent.”

Theatre-trained Fiennes has always returned to the stage in between film work and has enjoyed success with Hamlet, Ivanov and Richard II and Coriolanus.

It’s almost 10 years since he shot to fame and gained his first Oscar nomination for Schindler’s List. His portrayal of Nazi Amon Goeth took him on to the Hollywood A-list, a position cemented the following year with his sympathetic performance as Charles Van Doren in Quiz Show.

Since then he’s been the doomed lover in The English Patient and the psychotic serial killer in Red Dragon and turned to romantic comedy this year with Maid in Manhattan.

The 40-year-old says he is looking at future film scripts, but all his attention at the moment is on Brand.

His long-term partner, actress Francesca Annis, has already been to see the production at Swan Theatre in Stratford. “She gave me a few notes afterwards,” he laughs, “but I’m not revealing what she said.”

02/24/03 News Round Up

Now that the Talking Cure is done, and Ralph is hopefully on a well-deserved vacation...there are some new interviews floating about regarding Spider, which is due to release February 28 in New York and LA, and hopefully go wide in March. Here are a couple interviews. One, translated by a German fan, Simone, on the forum..much appreciated...Don't forget to buy your tickets to Brand, running from April 17-May 24 in Stratford, June 4-August 30 Royal Haymarket, London. Also, save your pennys...both Red Dragon and Maid in Manhattan release on DVD in March... Oh and for those of you who haven't heard the shriek go round the world..Ralph shaved his head bald...yes bald before doing a bunch of pr appearances in New York. If you missed him on Charlie Rose..you can order the tape at charlierose.com.

TV Alerts: Tuesday, Feb 25 Early Show CBS and Wednesday Feb 26, Live with Regis and Kelly

From New York Magazine

An Interview With Ralph Fiennes
“I wasn’t always in character,” says Ralph Fiennes of his titular turn in Spider, in
which he plays a psychotic schizophrenic with an Oedipal complex to shame
Norman Bates. “The crew wasn’t calling me Spider off-set, but on some days, it was very hard to leave that world behind.” The bleakness of that world—think Cast Away in an institution—created by director David Cronenberg from the novel by Patrick McGrath, is what drew Fiennes to the part. “I was attracted to this figure, alone and cut off. This is a man who’s physically cautious, linguistically cautious. It’s a huge effort for him to put a sentence together. He’s watchful, but he’s not stupid; he’s alert, but he’s not letting anything out. I thought this would be a great challenge to play.” Fiennes had been committed to the project for nearly ten years. “I’m attracted to playing tragic figures, I suppose. I certainly play more tragic roles than comedic ones,” he says, launching into a riff about Maid in Manhattan, the film that the two-time Oscar-nominated, Tony Award–winning Englishman took next. “When I got the script for this uncomplicated comedy where Jennifer Lopez wears a nice dress and we fall in love, I thought, Yes, this is very good,” he says. “I’m so used to looking for the odd sharp angles and dark hidden corners that it took me a while to buy into, but after Spider, I thought, This is just what I need.”

From German Vogue (Thanks a million Simone) 2/24/03

To find yourself and untie yourself

Late morning in an apartment at the London hotel “The Hempel”. Miranda Richardson goes to a corner in the room, bend down and take a ‘pirate-trouser’ out of her suitcase. Angellook. The visagist puts pouder on her face and she is talking with the shooting-team.
Finally after thirty minutes Ralph Fiennes arrives. He is dressed in black, the hair is short and he is having a moustache. He needs it for his theatre role as C. G. Jung. With a mysterious look he goes to Miranda and lays his hand gently on her shoulder. Miranda press it. Both sit very close to each other and order the meal. While there are waiting for the food, they starting to talk.

Miranda Richardson: I was here, when the hotel was dedicated. I think it very stylish.
Ralph Fiennes: The ceilings are low, but I feel good in this plain japanese ambience. You know, I have a very puristic taste.
MR: Only the best ! (They’re laughing. The drinks are served).
RF: You only drinking water ?
MR: Last month I made a purification; I was drinking to much alcohol. I even drink only decaffeinated coffee. I would go up the wall, if I would drink normal coffee.
RF: Good wine, some Parma ham and cheese – it’s paradise for me. I love simple food. A good pasta is a ‘poem’.
MR: Do you know, that I quit smoking with the help of hypnotic trance ?
RF: Back at the 50’s it was a popular method, apparently it’s coming again. I only smoke if it’s needed for a role and when I’m alone to concentrate.
(A Japanese soup is served, subsequent a tray with four meals for both).
MR: It looks delicious, but it’s enough to feed a whole regiment.
RF: I’m starving. Let’s eat. – Yesterday I was on my way wit a friend. He saw you on stage in “The play what I wrote”, he thought you’re wonderful.
MR: I understood the part after the last performance. I’m convinced that, who is good in comedy is good in any role.
RF: You have to make a difference. Some actors, like Kim Carrey, are always funny. On the other hand, they’re actors which are funny only in the right moment. I don’t think that I’m funny, but I have a sense of humour.
MR: I saw you laughing quit a few times – that’s what I love most about you – you smile like a child.
RF: And you has an unbelievable humour - a quality, I really appreciate.
MR: I decided to be an actress to make people laugh.
RF: Do you remember, when we made ‘Spider’ ? Though there’re happening awful things, we were relaxed - a wonderful slack atmosphere.
MR: Complete uncomplicated. I can’t handle with suffer and sad things. Whenever I have a bad phase,I try to get a part in a comedy. Because there I can do something, that let me forget my own condition. I t has to be the opposite of me. Why did you become an actor ?
RF:I think, I only can be myself in this profession.
MR: For me it’s the other way round. I wanted to escape for myself. I wanted to be someone else, maybe because I never accepted myself. But the most important for me was, to make people laugh. I was eccentric at home. My family were very conventional - my mother a housewife, my father a marketing-manager. We lived in the country near to a golf course.

Now they are talking about his mother, nothing new, we all read this before…

MR: What would you never say to a woman ?
RF: Even when I’m criticize I try to be constructive. You have to support, to strengthen the self-confidence. I believe that all the clichés are true. A woman wants to hear, that she looks great. Nevertheless she will ask “Are you honest?”
MR: Figure and weight – a tricky subject. I never felt comfortable in my body. As a young girl, I was a little bit fat. I lost weight, but I still think about, if I should change something about my body or not. Do they give me a role, because of my look… But I know that it’s more important what’s in your head. Only when I’m on stage I feel better.
RF: I never was a good sportsman, actually I don’t like sport. But I always did something to keep in shape. Exercise purify body and spirit. I go to the gym and do a lot of yoga. You can’t split body and spirit. They’re quasi permanent dancing together.
MR: I’m not a yoga-type. I like to walk and exercise according to the ‘Pilates-methode’.
What do you think, when you read that you’re the most erotic men in the world ?
RF: Sure I can be attractive, like other men. Though at last attractiveness and sex-appeal has a lot to do with the inner life. As an actor I’m conscious of my appearance. I spend a lot of time in the dressing room; I get make-up and observe my face. Thereby I learn to discover myself. That has nothing to do with vanity – I think it’s okay to have a feeling how you effect on the others.
MR: Your fashion-style ?
RF: I like to wear comfortable clothes, but I’m attentive, to me it has to do with dignity and self-love.
MR: I like the unusual Belgian designer Dries Van Noten or Marin Margiela. I stardet to design fasion by myself.
RF: In fact you wanted to be a veterinarian…
MR: I love animals. My cats are called Ines and Emile and the dog is called Liv.
RF: But most amazing is your love to falconry. Where does it comes from ?
MR: A falcon crashed at my manor. I let him sat on my shoulder the whole day. It was a crucial experience to have a wild animal so close to me. I began to think about it, how I could connect it with my studies. I started to study veterinary medicine, read a lot and add the falconry – not the hunting, just the occupation with these animals. I’m fascinated by the flight, the training and to let them go back to the future an to their loneliness. It would be no pleasure to tame them. Between man and falcon it’s like in an relationship, that you untie, if it’s the right moment.
RF: Do you enjoy loneliness ?
MR: I have the best ideas, when I’m in the country. But a lot of times, I’m thinking , that it’s about time to get married. But first, I have to meet the right man.
RF: I’m mostly happy to be by myself.
MR: What means romantic for you ?
RF: It’s the byword of romantic if you, just out of the blue, decide to abduct someone, just buy the tickets and fly away together. For me romantic is the synonym for real spontaneity.
MR: The other one has to wake that spontaneity in you. If the fire is still burning, this action is normal. It also needs subtle planning. During my last relationship, many things were planned, a few almost silly. Once we spend our vacation on an island, and I had the idea to put a lot of small hearts at the ventilator.
RF: Did it succeed ?
MR: No, because he turned on the ventilator to early; it was a heart-salad. Very funny ! – You played with J. Lo in MiM…
RF: That was very funny, too, a new experience. Jennifer is charming, a very spontaneous actress, she improvise her dialogues. It was unrepressed to play with her. Amazing, how easy she handles the press and the photographers. We were shooting at the NY Central Park, there you can’t escape from the paparazzis. Jennifer let them took photographs, afterward she told them only to use the best pictures. But she was very concentrate, so she looked good on any picture.
MR: I saw a pic from her birthday-party, where she put a piece of cake in your mouth…
RF: That was terrible, because they made a love-affair out of it. We’re just used by the gossip, they broadcast false suggestive remarks and tasteless painful scenes.
MR: It’s about, to destroy the myth of an artist at any price. It’s like a big conspiracy. –Do you believe in luck, or is anything predetermination ?
RF: I believe, that nothing in live happens in chance, everything is connected. There are powers, that withdraw itself our influence and take care so that some things work or don’t.
MR: But if you try with your will power, doesn’t it work ?
RF: Sometimes a strong will is essential, to move on, but often you find out, even you work very hard, it don’t work. It exists a kink of collective energy that control anything.
MR: Maybe that’s because I’ve never met Mr. Right ! I’m impressed by you, because it seems, that you always has the upper hand. Whatever you do is brilliant and considered. I sometimes feel so unprepared and wish I had a method – for my work and to make my live more comfortable. Do you have something like that ?
RF: I sit and wait. Like Picasso said, when someone asked him about his method ? “First of all I ‘feel’ myself.” I let my instinct, my feelings lead me, like my mother would say, from the emotional intelligence . A steady method would work.
MR: Sounds good.
RF: Thing about acting. It’s amazing simple and practical. To make a love-scene I need the same technical and practical feeling as for a scene in a restaurant….
MR: Well, it’s not always that easy. Sometimes your partner is an idiot. A kiss is not like a real kiss, like a kiss in real-life, because you have so much things going through your mind and your are surrounded by the director, spotlights and technicians. It has to do, how I feel on this day. Maybe as a woman it feels different. Even when you are naked, you are relaxed.
RF: On a film I feel free. It’s a question of trust, and I’m trusting. Films are less dangerous. The real horror is in real life, that’s certain. In film the tension is false. You’re doing your scene, then you have to wait. I like to go back to my dressing room and watch videos. So I make a distance from it.
MR: I’d read…
RF: Yes, I organize orgies with drugs and so on… Complete rubbish !
MR: What do you thing, when fans start to scream when they see you ?
RF: I’m part of the audience. I’ve seen great actors, singers, pop-stars and I’m fascinated by them, like anybody else.
MR: I find this star-cult bloodcurdling. – I’m only envy at dancers and musicians; because I thing that music and ballet are perfect art. I would like to be a dancer.
RF: Who looks at you, and sees how you move and your manners could think that you are really a ballet-dancer.
MR: If you’re doing something so complex, you has to ask yourself: “Can I add something new?”
RF: Don’t be to demanding ! It makes no sense to force yourself. At the moment they’re at least six books waiting for me, which I have to read. But I don’t have the time.
MR: I like to read biographies. I would say, the typical reading for older people. Maybe it’s an over-reaction on that boring youth-culture.
RF: We’ve to change that. We’ve have to go out and bring the culture of the older people to the world.
(They’re laughing).
MR: Yes, we have to respect an to honour it. I don’t want to be twenty again.
RF: Older people are calm , relaxed. They don’t ask themselves always in despair: “How do I look?” – “ Am I going to make it?” – “What kind of life is waiting for my?” I love practised actors, which already had been given, done and seen everything.
MR: Which prejudices did you give up, during the years ?
RF: Uff ! I think, they’re getting more and more. I don’t know, if they’re real prejudices, but at least something similar. Since my youth, I have the same fears. I always ask, how it’s going to be, was afraid how other people look at me and to fail. I suppose, I was afraid of anything. But since I’m getting older, it’s easier to get rid of this fears. At the moment I’m playing C. G. Jung and I see parallels to myself – I react very impatient to uncommunicative people, and if in the play somebody tells me his worry, I think: “ If you could be in my shoes !” Do you understand ? You are impatient opposite those people which are similar to you.
MR: What are you afraid of ?
RF: My own intolerance and anger. I repress it, and that’s not good. But in me there is so much anger, that I’m afraid to let it out. To me you look like to be more free and independent.
MR: That is just the front: I have the same delusions like other people. That includes the subject marriage: Everybody is getting married, but I’m not ready for it. Maybe I’m just afraid that anything turns to routine.
RF: Like Jung says “ The magic scent of the house get lost” – or something like this. It’s a very difficult decision, you can’t coerce it.
MR: Next Saturday I’m invited to a party in the country. You wanna come with me ?
RF: Unfortunately I can’t. Please ask me next time again.
MR: It’s a bargain !
RF: I’ m waiting for you at the theatre.

I'm really surprised, to read, that he has so much anger in him....

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