Ralph Fiennes

Ralph Fiennes, born in Ipswich, Suffolk, on 22 December 1962, became internationally known after playing Amon Göth in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993). His portrayal of the SS commandant, filmed opposite Liam Neeson’s Oskar Schindler, brought him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and a BAFTA Award. Before that breakthrough, he had trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked extensively onstage, including with the Royal Shakespeare Company. His early screen work included Peter Greenaway’s The Baby of Mâcon and a television adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, in which he played Heathcliff. In Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient (1996), Fiennes played the badly burned Count László de Almásy, whose memories structure the film adapted from Michael Ondaatje’s novel. The performance earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination, while the film won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture. He later took leading roles in films as different as John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love, Neil Jordan’s The End of the Affair, and Fernando Meirelles’s The Constant Gardener. In the latter, released in 2005, he played British diplomat Justin Quayle, investigating his wife’s death in Kenya; the role earned him another BAFTA nomination. Fiennes reached a vast younger audience as Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter film series. He first appeared as the resurrected antagonist in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), then returned in Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and both parts of Deathly Hallows. The character’s noseless, serpentine appearance was created with makeup and digital effects, but Fiennes supplied Voldemort’s controlled menace and high, cold voice. He also played M in Skyfall, Spectre, and No Time to Die, succeeding Judi Dench’s character as head of MI6. As a director, he made his feature debut with Coriolanus (2011), setting Shakespeare’s Roman tragedy in a contemporary war-torn environment and playing the title role himself. His second film, The Invisible Woman (2013), examined Charles Dickens’s relationship with actress Ellen Ternan; Fiennes portrayed Dickens. In 2018 he directed and starred in The White Crow, about ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev’s defection to the West. Theatre has remained central: his Hamlet at London’s Almeida Theatre and his Richard III at the Old Vic underline a career repeatedly returning to Shakespeare. His later screen performances include the concierge Monsieur Gustave H. in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, released in 2014, and the Duke of Oxford in The King’s Man, the 2021 prequel film.