page_title: Ralph Fiennes
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Ralph Fiennes / Career
caption_attribution_description: The area of London where UK film premieres take place. With loads of cinemas. Various hand prints in Leicester Square of various film stars. This one is from 1996 probably during the 1996 premiere on Strange Days. Handprints of Ralph Fiennes
context_page_description: Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes is an English actor, film producer, and director. A Shakespeare interpreter, he first achieved success onstage at the Royal National Theatre.
  Fiennes's portrayal of Nazi war criminal Amon Göth in Schindler's List earned him nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor, and he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. His performance as Count Almásy in The English Patient garnered him a second Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Actor, as well as BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations.
  Fiennes has appeared in a number of notable films, including Quiz Show, Strange Days, The End of the Affair, Red Dragon, Maid in Manhattan, The Constant Gardener, In Bruges, The Reader, Clash of the Titans, Great Expectations and The Grand Budapest Hotel. He voiced Rameses in The Prince of Egypt, Lord Victor Quartermaine in Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Alfred Pennyworth in The Lego Batman Movie. Fiennes is also known for his role in the Harry Potter film series, in which he played the franchise's main antagonist, Lord Voldemort.
context_section_description: Fiennes trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art between 1983 and 1985. He began his career at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park and also at the National Theatre before achieving prominence at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Fiennes first worked on screen in 1990 and made his film debut in 1992 as Heathcliff in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights opposite Juliette Binoche.
  1993 was his "breakout year". He had a major role in Peter Greenaway's film The Baby of Mâcon with Julia Ormond, which provoked controversy and was poorly received. Later that year, he became known internationally for portraying the amoral Nazi concentration camp commandant Amon Göth in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List. For this, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He did not win the Oscar, but did win the Best Supporting Actor BAFTA Award for the role. His portrayal of Göth also saw him listed at number 15 on the AFI's list of the top 50 film villains. Fiennes gained weight to represent Göth, but shed it afterwards. Fiennes later stated that playing the role had a profoundly disturbing effect on him. In a subsequent interview, Fiennes recalled:
  Evil is cumulative. It happens. People believe that they've got to do a job, they've got to take on an ideology, that they've got a life to lead; they've got to survive, a job to do, it's every day inch by inch, little compromises, little ways of telling yourself this is how you should lead your life and suddenly then these things can happen. I mean, I could make a judgment myself privately, this is a terrible, evil, horrific man. But the job was to portray the man, the human being. There’s a sort of banality, that everydayness, that I think was important. And it was in the screenplay. In fact, one of the first scenes with Oskar Schindler, with Liam Neeson, was a scene where I'm saying, "You don't understand how hard it is, I have to order so many-so many meters of barbed wire and so many fencing posts and I have to get so many people from A to B." And, you know, he's sort of letting off steam about the difficulties of the job.
  In 1994, he portrayed American academic Charles Van Doren in Quiz Show. In 1996, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the epic World War II romance The English Patient, in which he starred with Kristin Scott-Thomas. Fiennes' film work has encompassed a variety of genres, including thrillers (Spider), an animated Biblical epic (The Prince of Egypt), camp nostalgia (The Avengers), romantic comedy (Maid in Manhattan), and historical drama (Sunshine).
  In 1999, Fiennes had the title role in Onegin, a film which he also helped produce. His sister Martha Fiennes directed, and brother Magnus composed the score. Fiennes portrayed Francis Dolarhyde in the 2002 film, Red Dragon, a prequel to The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. Fiennes’ performance as a sympathetic serial killer with a romantic relationship with a blind girl, played by Emily Watson, was praised, with film critic David Sterritt writing, “Ralph Fiennes is scarily good as [Hannibal Lecter's] fellow lunatic."
  The Constant Gardener was released in 2005, with Fiennes in the central role. The film is set in Kenya. It was filmed in part with the actual residents of the slums of Kibera and Loiyangalani. The situation affected the cast and crew to such an extent that they set up the Constant Gardener Trust to provide basic education for children of these villages. Fiennes is a patron of the charity. He is also a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, a charity that enables school children across the UK to perform Shakespeare in professional theatres. Fiennes voiced Lord Victor Quartermaine in the 2005 stop-motion animated comedy Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The role saw him play a cruel upper class bounder who courts Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter) and despises Wallace and Gromit.
  Fiennes portrayed Lord Voldemort in the 2005 fantasy film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He returned to the role for other films of the series: Harry Potter and the Order
caption: Fiennes handprints from 1996 at Leicester Square, London
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