Ralph did a great interview with The Guardian about Coriolanus and more.
With six children, his parents struggled to make ends meet. Now Ralph Fiennes is the toast of Hollywood – and making his directorial debut with Coriolanus. He tells Xan Brooks his story
Ralph Fiennes: ‘My mother introduced me to Shakespeare at a very young age.’ Photograph: Kalpesh Lathigra
Ralph Fiennes’s trailer sits on a patch of wasteland beside the river and near the airport, in a neck of east London that’s barely London. The cabbie can’t find it and keeps driving in circles, his irritation rising as the planes rumble overhead. Either the satnav is scrambled or the address does not exist. “It’s meant to be here but there’s nothing there,” he grumbles. “It’s not a place, it’s off the map.”
It’s only later, safely arrived, that it strikes me that the non-place may well be the best place to meet Ralph Fiennes, an actor who does not so much inhabit his roles as hide out in them and a man who approaches press interviews with the carefree air of someone about to undergo extensive root-canal surgery. If it has to be done, it should at least be on his terms: on neutral ground, in a trailer, the door ajar at his back. He likes it open, he says, because it lets in some air, although it’s also a handy escape hatch should the need arise.
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