Ralph Fiennes: The Life Story Behind Voldemort's Star

The same actor played Amon Göth, the commandant who shot prisoners from his balcony, and Monsieur Gustave, the concierge who steals a painting and charms everyone he meets. The same actor played a Nazi, a wizard without a nose, the head of MI6, and a cardinal trying to elect a pope. That is the whole of Ralph Fiennes in one sentence, and it is the reason his career is hard to summarise and easy to admire. He is not a leading man in the simple sense. He is a classical actor who happens to be famous, a man trained at RADA and the Royal Shakespeare Company who took that training into films that range from the Holocaust to Harry Potter to a Wes Anderson comedy, and who made each of them feel like they belonged to the same performer. The range is the point. A career that can contain Göth and Gustave is a career that has room for everything, and Fiennes has spent thirty years proving that the room is real.

Ipswich, Six Children, and a House Full of Artists

Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes was born on 22 December 1962 in Ipswich, Suffolk, England, and he grew up as the eldest of six children in a family that was full of artists. His father, Mark Fiennes, was a photographer, and his mother, Jennifer Lash, was a novelist, and his siblings include the actor Joseph Fiennes, the director Martha Fiennes, the composer Magnus Fiennes, and the film-maker Sophie Fiennes, a family in which creativity was not a hobby but a way of life. The family moved several times during his childhood, living in Suffolk, Ireland, and Salisbury, and Fiennes was educated at St Kieran’s College in Kilkenny and at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury, and he studied art briefly before deciding to train as an actor.

Growing up as the eldest of six in a house where art was the daily reality gave Fiennes an early understanding of what a creative life costs and what it gives. He has spoken about the house as a place of books, of music, of photographs, and of conversation, and about the sense that making things was not a choice but a condition of life. He studied art at Chelsea School of Art before deciding that acting was the form he wanted, and the art training stayed with him, in the way he thinks about a character as a composition, as a set of lines and colours that have to balance. He applied to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and he studied there from 1983 to 1985, learning voice, movement, and text work in the classical tradition, and he graduated with a reputation as a talented young actor who was going places.

RADA in the early 1980s was a demanding place, and Fiennes took to it with the same seriousness he had brought to art school. He learned Shakespeare, he learned to project his voice without shouting, and he learned to make a long speech feel like a conversation. The training gave him a discipline that would shape his whole career, and it gave him a standing in British theatre that he has kept ever since. He joined the National Theatre after RADA, and he worked there for two years before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988, where he quickly became known as one of the finest classical actors of his generation.

RADA, the RSC, and Hamlet on Broadway

Fiennes joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988, after two years at the National Theatre, and he quickly became known as one of the finest classical actors of his generation, playing roles including Henry VI, Edmund in King Lear, and the title role in Coriolanus, a part that he would return to, as a director, more than twenty years later. His stage work was praised for its intelligence and its physicality, and for the way he could make Shakespeare feel immediate and dangerous, rather than polite and distant, a quality that casting directors noticed, and that led to his first film roles in the early 1990s, when he was still in his twenties.

In 1995 he made his Broadway debut playing Prince Hamlet in the revival of Hamlet, and he won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Play, a rare honour for a British actor on Broadway, and a confirmation that his stage work was of the highest order. He was later nominated for a Tony for his role as a travelling faith healer in the Brian Friel play Faith Healer in 2006, a play about a man who claims to heal the sick and who may or may not be a fraud, a part that required Fiennes to play a man who is both a liar and a believer, a combination that he played with a precision that critics praised. The stage has remained the centre of his working life, and he has returned to it repeatedly, in London and in New York, in Shakespeare and in modern plays, because the stage is where his craft is tested most honestly.

His film debut came playing Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights in 1992, a role that required him to play a man who is wild, passionate, and destructive, and who is destroyed by his own love. The film was not a major success, but the performance showed that Fiennes could carry a film, and that he had the screen presence to match his stage reputation. He was 29, and the film world was beginning to notice him, and the notice would become fame within a year.

Schindler’s List: Amon Göth and the Performance That Made Him Famous

His film breakthrough came in 1993, when he played Amon Göth, the commandant of the Plaszów concentration camp, in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, a film about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved more than a thousand Jews during the Holocaust. Göth was a monster, and Fiennes played him with a terrifying ordinariness, a man who could be charming at dinner and murderous in the morning, and the performance brought him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor, and it made him famous around the world. He has said that the role was one of the hardest he has ever played, because it required him to understand a man who was, in every sense, evil, and to play him without caricature.

The film was shot in black and white in Poland, in the actual locations where the events had taken place, and the shoot was physically and emotionally demanding. Fiennes gained weight for the role, and he played Göth as a man who is bored, who shoots prisoners from his balcony for sport, and who is, in his own mind, a cultured man who likes music and good company. The ordinariness is what makes the performance frightening, because the audience understands that Göth is not a monster from a horror film. He is a man, and the man is capable of murder, and the murder is casual. The BAFTA win and the Oscar nomination confirmed what the critics had seen: a young actor who could play evil without making it simple, and who could make a historical figure feel real rather than symbolic.

The role also gave him a lasting association with the Holocaust, and with the responsibility of playing a real person in a real place. He has spoken about the weight of that responsibility, and about the need to get it right, and the performance is still discussed as one of the great screen villains, a performance that is studied by actors and by historians alike. It is a role that could have defined him, and it did define him for a time, but the career that followed showed that he was not only Göth. He was also the romantic lead, the spy, the wizard, and the concierge, and the range is the reason the Göth performance is still admired: it was one note in a much larger song.

The English Patient, Quiz Show, and the Leading Man Years

In 1994 he played Charles Van Doren in Quiz Show, Robert Redford’s film about the rigged television quiz shows of the 1950s, a part that required him to play a young academic who is corrupted by fame, and that showed a different side of his talent, a vulnerable, intelligent man who makes a terrible mistake. In 1996 he played Count Laszlo de Almásy in The English Patient, Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s novel, a film about a Hungarian cartographer who is burned in a plane crash in the desert, and who tells his story to a nurse, played by Juliette Binoche, a performance that brought him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, and that confirmed him as a leading man, capable of carrying a film that was both romantic and tragic, and that won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

The English Patient is a film about memory, about a man who has lost his identity and who reconstructs it through the stories he tells, and Fiennes played Almásy as a man who is both a lover and a spy, a man who betrays his country for a woman and who pays for the betrayal with his body. The performance is built on stillness, on the way a burned man lies in a bed and tells a story, and the stillness is what makes it moving. The film was a critical and commercial success, and it gave Fiennes a second Oscar nomination, this time as a leading actor, and it established him as a romantic lead, a role that he would play again in films like Onegin in 1999, an adaptation of Pushkin’s novel, and The End of the Affair in 1999, Graham Greene’s novel about a love affair in wartime London.

He also appeared in Strange Days in 1995, Kathryn Bigelow’s science-fiction film about a man who sells memories, and in The Avengers in 1998, a film version of the British television series, which was a commercial failure, and in The Constant Gardener in 2005, Fernando Meirelles’s film about a diplomat who investigates his wife’s murder in Kenya, opposite Rachel Weisz, a performance that was praised for its quiet anger. The range of those years, from a Hungarian cartographer to a British diplomat to a man who sells memories, is the measure of what Schindler’s List had made possible: a career in which he could choose his roles, and in which the choices were interesting even when the films were not successful.

Voldemort, M, and the Grand Budapest Hotel

In 2005 he played Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the Dark Lord who returns to power and who becomes the central villain of the series, and he returned to the role in the films that followed, through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 in 2011. Voldemort is a character without a nose, with a pale, snake-like face, and Fiennes played him with a voice that was soft, precise, and terrifying, a voice that made the character’s evil feel intelligent rather than merely cruel. The role made him known to a generation of children who had never seen Schindler’s List, and it gave him a fame that was different from the fame he had known before, a fame that came from a franchise, and that he took in his stride.

In 2012 he became M, the head of MI6, in Skyfall, the James Bond film, taking over the role from Judi Dench, and he has played M in the Bond films that followed, including Spectre in 2015 and No Time to Die in 2021. M is a part that requires authority, and Fiennes plays it with a dry, tired authority, a man who has to manage a spy who does not follow orders, and who does it with a patience that is itself a form of power. The role gave him a long-running part in one of the most successful franchises in cinema, and it showed that he could play a bureaucrat as well as a villain, a man who sits behind a desk and makes decisions that send other men to their deaths.

In 2014 he played Monsieur Gustave H. in The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson’s comedy about a concierge at a grand hotel in a fictional European country, a performance that was praised for its speed, its wit, and its warmth, and that earned him a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor and a Golden Globe nomination. Gustave is a man who loves poetry, who seduces older women, who steals a painting, and who is loyal to his young protégé, Zero, and Fiennes played him with a lightness that no one had seen from him before, a performance that was funny without ever being silly, and that showed a side of him that the serious roles had hidden. The film was a critical and commercial success, and it gave Fiennes a new audience, viewers who met him as a comic actor for the first time, and who were surprised by how good he was at it.

Directing, Conclave, and a Second Act

Fiennes has also directed, and his directing work is a natural extension of his stage career. He directed Coriolanus in 2011, Shakespeare’s play about a Roman general who is banished and who joins his enemies, playing the title role himself, and he directed The Invisible Woman in 2013, a film about Charles Dickens and his mistress Nelly Ternan, and The White Crow in 2018, a film about the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, a story that drew on Fiennes’s own training as a physical performer. The directing work shows the same classical discipline as his acting, and it reflects a man who thinks about a story as a whole, not just as a part.

In 2024 he played Cardinal Thomas Lawrence in Conclave, Edward Berger’s film about the election of a new pope, a performance that brought him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, his third Oscar nomination, and a BAFTA Award for Best Actor, his second BAFTA win. Lawrence is a man who has to manage a conclave that is divided by politics, by ambition, and by secrets, and Fiennes played him as a man who is tired, decent, and uncertain, a performance that was praised for its restraint. The film was a critical success, and it confirmed that Fiennes, at 62, was still at the height of his powers, and that his best work was not behind him.

He has been nominated for three Academy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award, and he has won a BAFTA and a Tony, honours that reflect a career that has spanned stage, film, and television, and that has never been confined to one medium. The Conclave win, at an age when many actors are playing grandfathers, is a reminder that a classical training does not go out of fashion, and that a performer who has learned to listen, to breathe, and to think on stage can still surprise an audience in his sixties.

The Menu, The King’s Man, and the Later Character Roles

Fiennes has continued to take character roles that surprise audiences, and two of the most recent show how wide his range still is. In 2021 he played the Duke of Oxford in The King’s Man, Matthew Vaughn’s prequel to the Kingsman films, a man who loses his wife and his son and who builds a secret intelligence network to prevent a war, and he played the grief with a restraint that gave the action film an emotional centre it might not otherwise have had. In 2022 he played Chef Slowik in The Menu, Mark Mylod’s dark comedy about a chef who invites a group of wealthy diners to a remote island and serves them a meal that becomes a reckoning, and the performance was praised for its menace, its humour, and its precision. Slowik is a man who has lost his love of cooking, and who has decided to punish the people who made him lose it, and Fiennes played him with a calm that made the horror feel ordinary, which is what made it frightening.

The Menu is a film about class, about art, and about the way success can destroy the thing it rewards, and Slowik is the centre of that argument, a chef who is brilliant and broken, and who uses a dinner as a stage for his revenge. Fiennes played the role with a stillness that recalled his earliest work, and the stillness is what made the performance work: a man who speaks quietly, who moves slowly, and who is more dangerous than any shouting villain. The film was a commercial success, and it introduced Fiennes to a younger audience who met him as a chef rather than as a wizard or a Nazi, and the meeting is the point: a classical actor can play a chef, and the chef can be as serious as any Shakespearean role, because the acting is the same, and the seriousness is the same.

The White Crow, Nureyev, and the Ballet Film

In 2018 Fiennes directed The White Crow, a film about the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, one of the greatest dancers of the twentieth century, who defected from the Soviet Union to the West in 1961, at the age of twenty-three, at Le Bourget airport in Paris. The film follows Nureyev from his childhood in the Soviet Union to his training in Leningrad and to the moment of his defection, and it is a story about art, about freedom, and about a young man who refuses to be confined. Fiennes played Alexander Pushkin, Nureyev’s teacher at the Kirov Ballet, a man who recognised the boy’s talent and who protected him, and the performance is built on the same restraint as his best work, a teacher who watches a student grow beyond him and who lets him go.

The film drew on Fiennes’s own training as a physical performer, and on his understanding of what it costs to make art with the body. He has spoken about the discipline of ballet, and about the way a dancer’s life is shaped by practice, by pain, and by the need to be perfect, and the film shows that discipline without romanticising it. Nureyev, played by the dancer Oleg Ivenko, is a young man who is brilliant and difficult, and who will not be told what to do, and Fiennes’s Pushkin is the man who understands him, who sees the talent and who knows that the talent cannot be contained. The directing is classical, patient, and clear, and the film is a reminder that Fiennes, as a director, is interested in stories about artists, about people who make things, and about the price they pay for it.

My Take:

What I admire most about Ralph Fiennes is the range, and I mean that in a literal sense: the distance between Amon Göth and Monsieur Gustave is the distance between two different kinds of acting, and Fiennes covers it without seeming to strain. Göth is a man who shoots prisoners from a balcony. Gustave is a man who steals a painting and charms everyone he meets. The two characters have nothing in common except the actor who plays them, and the actor makes both of them feel real, which is a rare achievement. Most actors have a type, and Fiennes has refused to have one, and the refusal is the career. He has played villains and heroes, lovers and spies, wizards and cardinals, and each one feels like a person rather than a type, because he approaches each one as a classical role, with the same preparation and the same respect for the text.

Schindler’s List is the performance that will last, and I think it will last because it refuses to make Göth simple. Fiennes plays him as a man who could be charming at dinner and murderous in the morning, and the ordinariness is what makes the performance frightening. A monster from a horror film is easy to dismiss. A man who likes music and good company and who shoots prisoners for sport is harder to dismiss, because the audience understands that the man is real, and that real men did these things. Fiennes has said that the role was one of the hardest he has ever played, because it required him to understand a man who was evil, and to play him without caricature, and the understanding is visible in the performance. He does not play Göth as a caricature. He plays him as a man, and the man is terrifying because he is ordinary.

The English Patient is the performance I would point to as the proof of his range as a leading man, because Almásy is a character who is both a lover and a spy, a man who betrays his country for a woman and who pays for the betrayal with his body, and Fiennes plays the betrayal and the payment with a stillness that makes the film feel like a dream. The film is about memory, about a man who has lost his identity and who reconstructs it through stories, and Fiennes plays the reconstruction as a man lying in a bed, telling a story to a nurse, and the stillness is what makes it moving. A lesser actor would have played Almásy as a romantic hero, and the film would have been simpler and worse. Fiennes plays him as a man who is broken, and the brokenness is the point.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is the film that shows the other side, the lightness, and I think it is the most surprising performance of his career, because no one expected the man who played Göth to be funny. Gustave is a concierge who loves poetry, who seduces older women, who steals a painting, and who is loyal to his young protégé, and Fiennes plays him with a speed and a wit that are completely new, a performance that is funny without ever being silly. The film’s success gave him a new audience, viewers who met him as a comic actor for the first time, and the surprise is the point: a classical actor can be funny, and the funniness is not a departure from the serious work. It is a part of it, because a classical training teaches an actor to play the full range of human experience, and comedy is part of that range.

Conclave is the most recent evidence that he is still at the height of his powers, and I think the BAFTA win for the role is the right honour, because Lawrence is a performance built on restraint, on a man who is tired, decent, and uncertain, and who has to manage a conclave that is divided by politics and by secrets. Fiennes plays the tiredness without making it a complaint, and the decency without making it a sermon, and the uncertainty without making it a weakness. The performance is the work of an actor who has learned, over thirty years, that the most powerful thing an actor can do is very little, and that the audience will fill in the rest. That is a theatre lesson, and it is the reason his film work ages well.

If I had to recommend a starting point, I would start with Schindler’s List, because it is the performance that defines him, and because it is a film that everyone should see once. Then I would watch The English Patient, because it shows the romantic lead, and because it won nine Academy Awards. Then I would watch The Grand Budapest Hotel, because it shows the comedy, and because it is fun in a way that the other two are not. Those three films, spread across twenty-one years, are the arc: a monster, a lover, and a concierge. The monster is the most frightening. The lover is the most moving. The concierge is the most surprising. The actor who can play all three is an actor who has earned the right to be called one of Britain’s finest, and Fiennes has earned it.

The last thing I would note is the family, because it is a detail that explains a great deal. He is the eldest of six children in a house full of artists, a photographer father and a novelist mother, and siblings who became actors, directors, composers, and film-makers. Growing up in that house taught him that making things is not a choice but a condition of life, and the lesson stayed with him. He studied art before he studied acting, and the art training is visible in the way he thinks about a character as a composition, as a set of lines and colours that have to balance. The family is not a footnote. It is the foundation, and the career is the building that stands on it.

The Menu is the film I would point to as the proof that he is still surprising audiences in his sixties, because Chef Slowik is a man who has lost his love of cooking, and who has decided to punish the people who made him lose it, and Fiennes plays him with a calm that makes the horror feel ordinary. The film is about class, about art, and about the way success can destroy the thing it rewards, and Slowik is the centre of that argument, a chef who is brilliant and broken, and who uses a dinner as a stage for his revenge. The performance is built on stillness, on the way a man who speaks quietly and moves slowly can be more dangerous than any shouting villain, and the stillness is the reason the film works. A lesser actor would have played Slowik as a monster, and the film would have been simpler and worse. Fiennes plays him as a man, and the man is more frightening than the monster.

The brother is a detail worth naming, because Joseph Fiennes is also an actor, and the two brothers have built parallel careers in the same profession, a pair of siblings who took the same path and who both arrived. Joseph is best known for Shakespeare in Love, in which he played William Shakespeare, and for The Handmaid’s Tale, in which he played Commander Fred Waterford, and the two brothers are often compared, and the comparison is unfair to both, because they are different actors with different strengths. Ralph is the classical actor, trained at RADA and the RSC, who plays villains and heroes with the same precision. Joseph is the romantic lead, who plays lovers and fathers with a warmth that Ralph rarely shows. The family is not a competition. It is a foundation, and the two careers are the building that stands on it, a house full of artists, as their mother intended.

Conclave deserves one more thought, because it is a film about an institution, the Catholic Church, and about the politics of electing a pope, and Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence as a man who is tired, decent, and uncertain, a performance that won him a BAFTA and earned him his third Oscar nomination. The film’s power comes from the contrast between the grandeur of the setting, the Sistine Chapel, the red robes, the ceremony, and the smallness of the men inside it, who are ambitious, frightened, and human, and Fiennes plays the human scale with a restraint that makes the grandeur feel real. The performance is the work of an actor who has learned, over thirty years, that the most powerful thing an actor can do is very little, and that the audience will fill in the rest. That is a theatre lesson, and it is the reason his film work ages well, because a performance built on restraint does not go out of fashion.

His directing philosophy is the last thing I would note, because it shows how he thinks about a story as a whole, not just as a part. He directed Coriolanus in 2011, playing the title role himself, and he directed The White Crow in 2018, about the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, a story that drew on his own training as a physical performer, and the directing work shows the same classical discipline as his acting. A director who has acted understands what an actor needs, and Fiennes gives his actors the same freedom he was given at the RSC: rehearse quickly, trust the text, and let the audience feel the story. The directing is not a side interest. It is a natural extension of a career that has always been about the whole, about the play, the film, and the story, rather than about a single performance. The whole is the point, and Fiennes has spent his career serving it.

The White Crow is the directing work I would point to as the proof that Fiennes thinks about stories as a whole, because it is a film about a dancer, about art, and about freedom, and the directing is classical, patient, and clear. Nureyev defected at twenty-three, at Le Bourget airport in Paris, and the film follows him from his childhood in the Soviet Union to that moment, and Fiennes, playing Pushkin, the teacher who recognised the boy’s talent and who protected him, gives the film its emotional centre. A teacher who watches a student grow beyond him and who lets him go is a character that Fiennes understands from the inside, because he has been a student, at RADA and at the RSC, and he has been a teacher, in the sense that younger actors watch him and learn. The film is a reminder that Fiennes, as a director, is interested in artists, in people who make things, and in the price they pay for it, and the price is the story.

The King’s Man is a smaller film, and it deserves a thought, because the Duke of Oxford is a man who loses his wife and his son and who builds a secret intelligence network to prevent a war, and Fiennes plays the grief with a restraint that gives the action film an emotional centre it might not otherwise have had. The film is a prequel, a piece of franchise work, and Fiennes treats it with the same seriousness he brought to Schindler’s List, because acting is acting, whether the film is about the Holocaust or about a secret service, and the seriousness is the point. A classical actor can play a duke in a franchise film, and the duke can be as serious as any Shakespearean role, because the acting is the same, and the seriousness is the same, and the audience can feel the difference between an actor who cares and an actor who does not, and Fiennes has always been an actor who cares, in every role, in every medium, and at every age.

Frequently Asked Questions

What role brought Ralph Fiennes his first Academy Award nomination?

Fiennes was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing Amon Göth, the commandant of the Plaszów concentration camp, in Schindler’s List (1993), a performance that also won him a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor and made him famous around the world.

Who did Ralph Fiennes play in the Harry Potter films, and when did he first appear?

Fiennes played Lord Voldemort, the Dark Lord, first appearing in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) and returning through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011), playing the character with a soft, precise voice that made the evil feel intelligent.

What is Ralph Fiennes’s role in the James Bond films, and when did he start?

Fiennes plays M, the head of MI6, taking over from Judi Dench in Skyfall (2012) and continuing in Spectre (2015) and No Time to Die (2021), playing M with a dry, tired authority as the man who manages a spy who does not follow orders.

Did Ralph Fiennes win a BAFTA for Conclave, and what role did he play?

Yes, Fiennes won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor for playing Cardinal Thomas Lawrence in Conclave (2024), a man who must manage the election of a new pope, a performance that also earned him his third Academy Award nomination.

Has Ralph Fiennes directed any films, and which ones?

Yes, Fiennes has directed Coriolanus (2011), in which he also played the title role, The Invisible Woman (2013), about Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan, and The White Crow (2018), about the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev.

What did Ralph Fiennes win a Tony Award for, and when?

Fiennes won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Play for his Broadway debut as Prince Hamlet in Hamlet in 1995, and he was later nominated for a Tony for his role in Brian Friel’s Faith Healer in 2006.

Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Fiennes
• https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/ralph_fiennes
• https://www.biography.com/actors/ralph-fiennes