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Kommt mir so bekannt vor
Ralph Fiennes and I are to spend the morning in a suite at London's Dorchester Hotel; it is not his favourite way of spending time. He is a man who says he rarely reads what is written about him but who seems to have an unhealthily keen (and invariably unhappy) memory of those things he has read. When I mention a disparaging quote from a previous interviewer ("Would a little bit of charisma be too much to ask?"), he leaps in to correct me (it was "charm," not "charisma"). We have not been talking for long when he confesses, with painful politeness, "I came into the hotel today feeling, OK, this is fine, I'll just talk, but I'm finding myself feeling as I talk that I don't want to be here. And I feel this more and more in other interviews. I just feel really put on the spot in some way."
"I think there's a component there that is attracted to the dark," says Kathryn Bigelow, who directed Strange Days, "and that's why there is a kind of fierceness in Ralph. But at the same time, what makes it so engaging is that it's mitigated by vulnerability. I think that's why he's so surprising and singular."
"He does have that amazing face," says Kristin Scott Thomas, who plays the object of Fiennes' love in the film. "But there's a kind of sobriety and a dignity to him that other actors of his generation do not have." She laughs. "Ralph's a man. He appeals to women in the sort of manly way rather than an 'Isn't he cute, I want to take him home and give him soup' way. He does make you want to go weak in the knees so you can go, 'Ooh, catch me!'"
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Minghella describes Fiennes' screen presence like this: "whatever he's saying or doing, you suspect there is a counterpoint to it, a second agenda. That's very exciting because you feel like there's a mystery. There's a darkness in him."
"He's not given to glib kind of conversations," says Neeson, a close friend. "He really thinks about things you ask him. And I love that because it gets you to think about things. We all talk gibberish most of the time. Ralph doesn't waste words, and he doesn't waste emotions."
For three hours, barely a careless sentence or half-sentence slips from Fiennes' mouth, until we walk out of the hotel elevator. There, in front of us, is Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is in town to promote Eraser. We watch as he strides past, issuing instructions into the surrounding hubbub. "He looks slightly unreal," says Fiennes, "he looks likes he's had a face lift."
Which things you read about yourself make you feel the most uncomfortable?
Oh things like (reciting from memory), "He gazes for ages at his ankles. There is a long pause; he looks up." That kind of descriptive thing.
You were, of course, staring at the carpet as you said that.
(Laughs halfheartedly) I suppose all the things probably that I know I do, they suddenly become pinpointed. See how someone else can see you...you do a piece of work--a performance in a film or in a play--and I think that where I'm open to being written about or talked about or criticized or scrutinized. And I don't really want to be scrutinized as myself, particularly.
... "So, either by thy picture or my love,
Thyself away art present still with me;
For thou not farther than my thoughts canst
move, And I am still with them and they
with thee;"... Sonnet 47
