10 Things You Never Knew About Ralph Fiennes | Anglophenia – Anglophenia

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Ralph Fiennes definitely has range. After winning Oscar nominations for his deeply serious early roles in Schindler's List and The English Patient, he's often subverted our expectations by playing everything from In Bruges' potty-mouthed mob boss to The Grand Budapest Hotel's camp concierge. And who can forget his villainous performance as Lord Voldermort in the Harry Potter movies?

In his latest film The Dig, which premieres on Netflix Friday (January 29), he plays Basil Brown, a self-taught British archaeologist who spearheaded one of the most important discoveries of all time. To whet your appetite, here are some things you might not know about the darn fine Ralph Fiennes.

1. His full name is Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes.

And Ralph is pronounced "Rafe" to rhyme with "safe."

2. He comes from an illustrious family.

His paternal grandfather Sir Maurice Fiennes was an industrialist who was knighted for services to British engineering, while his maternal grandfather Brigadier Henry Alleyne Lash was a prominent officer in the British Indian army.

He's also related to explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, his third cousin once-removed, who in 1993 became the first person to cross Antarctica completely on foot. Oh, and you surely know his brother Joseph Fiennes, a fellow actor famous for Shakespeare in Love and The Handmaid's Tale.

But, did you know that the actor who plays Tom Riddle a.k.a. young Voldemort in Harry and the Half-Blood Prince is actually Fiennes nephew Hero Fiennes-Tiffin?!

3. He's the eldest of six siblings and grew up between England and Ireland.

"We struggled financially and grew up with the refrain that we had a big overdraft," Fiennes told The Times in 2018. "We had food, but it was often packets of soup and mashed potato. My father was a farmer who became a photographer. My mother was a writer. I think my love of the theatre comes from her and my approach to work from him. He loved using his hands and was very gifted at building shelves and things. He trained me in painting and decorating, how to replace a sash window and so on."

4. He rarely discusses his private life and respect to him for that.

But we do know that he was married to Doctor Who favorite Alex Kingston from 1993 to 1997. The two actors met while studying at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and dated for around a decade before tying the knot.

5. He's had honorary Serbian citizenship since 2017.

His agent Simon Beresford told The Hollywood Reporter that year that Fiennes remains a British citizen, but has "gracefully accepted the honor bestowed on him by the Serbian people in gratitude and appreciation of the work he has done in Serbia over a number of years."

Fiennes shot both films he's directed, 2011's Coriolanus and 2018's The White Crow, in Serbia.

6. Long before he joined the Bond franchise as M, he was briefly in the running for the title role.

"There was a discussion, once, some years ago, about my playing 007," he told The Guardian in 2019. "I don't think I would have been very good, but I did feel that I could have had a crack at it if it had been set in the 1950s. I love the books and I always saw them in black and white, gritty, noirish and very dangerous. And probably very politically incorrect!"

7. The role he found the hardest to play was... J-Lo's love interest Maid in Manhattan.

"The truth is I found it really hard playing the young Republican senator in Maid in Manhattan," Fiennes told The Guardian. "I was flattered to be asked to play opposite J-Lo. But quickly realized that my Prince Charming role didnt have much grit. It amused me to read that in a recent Guardian breakdown of J-Los films it was considered that Id let down the film by coming across as a serial killer."

8. He suffers from "huge anxiety attacks."

"I'll wake up early in the morning with my brain anxious about something and I don't even know what it is, just a general sense of profound uncertainty," Fiennes told Esquire in 2014. "It's from the unconscious, I suppose, fears about existence. A weird twilight panic. We feel we can organize our lives and have an order that we can control but really we can't; it's always paper-thin and underneath there's this lurking chaos. You think, 'F**k! This could come at me at any moment.'"

9. He nearly turned down his iconic role as Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter.

"The truth is I was actually ignorant about the films and the books," Fiennes admitted during a 2019 interview on The Jonathan Ross Show. "I was approached by the production. Mike Newell was directing the film that they wanted me to be in... the first time Voldemort was going to appear physically. Out of ignorance I just sort of thought, this isnt for me. Quite stupidly I resisted, I was hesitant."

Fiennes then explained that he has his role as an uncle to thank for his eventual decision to accept the villainous part, saying: "I think the clincher was that my sister Martha who has three children who were then probably about 12, 10 and 8 she said, 'What do you mean? Youve got to do it!' So then I rewound my thinking."

10. Oh, and he wore a rather surprising garment under his robe when he played Voldemort.

Fiennes shared his sartorial secret during a 2016 appearance on The Graham Norton Show, which you can relive below.

Do you have a favorite Ralph Fiennes performance?

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10 Things You Never Knew About Ralph Fiennes | Anglophenia - Anglophenia