Ralph Fiennes
Ralph Fiennes was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, England, into an aristocratic family, the son of Mark Fiennes (1933-2004), a farmer and photographer (and son of industrialist Sir Maurice Fiennes (1907-1994)), and Jennifer Lash (1938-1993), a writer. His surname is of Norman origin. He is an eighth cousin of HRH the Prince of Wales, and a third cousin of the adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes. The eldest of seven children, his siblings are actor Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare in Love, Luther, FlashForward); Martha Fiennes, a director (in her film Onegin, he acted the title role); Magnus Fiennes, a composer; Sophie Fienne, a filmmaker; Jacob Fiennes, a conservationist; and his foster brother Michael Emery, an archaeologist. His nephew Hero Fiennes-Tiffin has also played a role as young Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.
The Fiennes family moved to Ireland in 1973, living in West Cork and County Kilkenny for some years, where Fiennes was educated at St Kieran’s College for one year, followed by Newtown School, a Quaker independent scholl in Waterford. They moved to Salisbury in England, where Fiennes finished his schooling at Bishop Wordsworth’s School before attending Chelsea College of Art.
1993 was his “breakout year”. He had a major role in the very controversial Peter Greenaway film The Baby of Mâcon with Julia Ormond. Though the film was poorly received, Fiennes’ career suffered no lasting consequences, and later that year he became known internationally for portraying the amoral Nazi concentration camp commandant Amon Goeth 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 as Göth also earned him a spot on the American Film Institu’s list of top 50 movie villains.
In 1994, he portrayed American academic Charles Van Doren in Quiz Show, and in 1996 was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the World War II epic romance The English Patient. Fiennes’ work has ranged from thrillers (Red Dragon) to animated Biblicl i epic (The Prince of Egypt) to campy nostalgia (The Avengers) to romantic comedy (Maid in Manhattan) and offbeat dramedy (Oscar and Lucinda).
Fiennes was cast as Lord Voldemort in the 2005 fantasy film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and has retained this role for both Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which will be released in two parts in 2010 and 2011. However, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, as Voldemort appeared as an 11 year-old, he was played by Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, Fiennes’ nephew.
Fiennes met actress Alex Kingston while both were students at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After dating for ten years, they married in 1993. However, they divorced in 1997. In 1995, Fiennes started dating Francesca Annis, an actress 18 years his senior, who played his mother in Hamlet. In February 2006 the couple separated after tabloid reports revealed that Fiennes had had an affair with Romanian singer Cornelia Crisan.
In February 2007, staff aboard a Qantas airline flight from Sydney, Australia to Mumbai, India caught the actor leaving the same aeroplane lavatory as 38-year-old flight attendant Lisa Robertson. At first denying any allegations of a mid-air tryst, Robertson later confessed to having unprotected sexual intercourse in the lavatory with Fiennes, whom she had met just hours before. Fiennes was en route to Mumbai, as a participant in AIDS awareness efforts for UNICEF. The organisation retained Fiennes as an ambassador, but Qantas relieved Robertson of her duties who, allegedly, had intercourse with him again in the hotel where he was booked which, incidentally, was the Qantas crew’s layover hotel in Mumbai.
