Ralph Fiennes: Dickens “was fueled by a kind of fury”

Ralph Fiennes has played Prince Hamlet and Lord Voldemort. He has been a Hollywood leading man (albeit briefly) and a collaborator with filmmakers ranging from Steven Spielberg to David Cronenberg. He may be the most acclaimed Shakespearean stage actor of his generation, and has been twice nominated for an Oscar (first for Schindlers List and then for The English Patient). What almost no one has noticed is that hes turned into an exceptional director as well.

Twice in the last three years, Fiennes has directed one of the years most intriguing, muscular and uncompromising films only to see it swamped by showier, higher-profile holiday releases. His 2011 Coriolanus is one of the most striking Shakespeare adaptations of recent years, a fearsome and imaginative reinvention of perhaps the Bards most impenetrable tragedy. With The Invisible Woman, Fiennes tackles another titan of English lit, Charles Dickens, playing the author of Great Expectations as an intensely conflicted and in some ways hard-hearted man, who dumps his wife for a much younger woman.

Dont make the mistake of assuming that The Invisible Woman is some sort of polite, actorly costume drama, driven by gowns, sets and showboating. And dont assume its a vanity project for Fiennes, who does not play the most important part and isnt the films real star. As we discussed when I met him in New York a few weeks ago, Dickens is a supporting character in the remarkable story of his mistress Nelly Ternan, played by Felicity Jones in what should be a breakthrough performance (if anyone sees it). Fiennes and screenwriter Abi Morgan adapted Claire Tomalins book about Nelly into a thoroughly unsentimental fable about a young woman navigating the profound sexism of Victorian society, and ultimately defeating it.

In this movie, and quite likely in real life, Nellys relationship with Dickens was essentially brokered by her mother (the reliably terrific Kristin Scott Thomas), an actress and theatrical impresario who understood that a famous writer offered her daughter a promise of security she would otherwise never find. Fiennes Dickens treats his wife, Catherine (Joanna Scanlan), with indefensible cruelty while pursuing Nelly, who isnt at all sure she wants the hypocritical and secretive life of being a celebritys kept woman. Much later, after Dickens death, Nelly successfully reinvented herself as a respectable middle-class wife, even passing herself off as 12 years younger than her real age. Meticulously crafted and full of brilliant, hard-edged performances, The Invisible Woman is a quietly subversive and yes, feminist portrait of Victorian society as the ancestor of our own time.

I was surprised when Fiennes brought up Istvn Szabs great 1985 drama Colonel Redl (set in the Austro-Hungarian Empire before World War I) as a model for this film, but perhaps I should not have been. Its obvious that Fiennes has been watching movies and thinking about them all his life. Sooner or later, hell make one that cannot be ignored.

I understand you had some reluctance about playing Dickens at first.

Well, only because I found it such a handful to direct and act at the same time, doing Coriolanus. The script was sent to me with the offer to direct and they said, If you would like to play Dickens we would like that, this is BBC and Headline pictures. And I didnt know much about Dickens at all. I had almost deliberately moved away from reading Dickens. I had read a little and liked it but hadnt chosen to read more. So reading this early draft of the script and then Claire Tomalins book that completely got inside me and I was fascinated by everything about it.

I mean, he is extraordinary as a character, as a person. But it was also her and her story and her background. What moved me was the story of how she went on and shes this woman holding this past who hasnt had any kind of closure. Thats when it moved beyond just a biopic-y thing. Because it was about interior life, about a person needing some kind of resolution, some closure, some understanding within herself. That moved me a lot. Initially I could see the attraction for Dickens as a role. In Abi Morgans first draft, even then she had great scenes and things. But I kept being haunted by the memory of being under pressure and what it was like trying to hold a film in your head and suddenly go and start acting.

Then, in a weird way, I started rehearsing it without the intention of playing it, because I worked a lot with Abi who was a very generous collaborator. She and I wanted to rearrange and reemphasize things and we did a lot of rewriting, together. I would test bits of dialogue and read all the parts but with her to see how they felt, and I enjoyed reading Dickens. I guess in that process I felt like Id like to do this. And everyone, Claire Tomalin included, said, I just think that you should play Dickens. She was very disappointed that I wasnt going to. So eventually I said to everyone involved, the producers, OK, look, I did approach one other actor, I did approach someone else. But that didnt go anywhere so in the end I did it.

Ive had a couple of people say to me that Dickens seems like a stretch for you. One friend put it that Dickens overlaps, at least in the popular imagination, with Santa Claus. And although I might enjoy the film in which you play Santa, I suppose youre not the obvious choice.

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Ralph Fiennes: Dickens “was fueled by a kind of fury”