Ralph Fiennes (Actor)

"I can do happy, I can be happy. There are times when I have been very, very happy. I don't mean happy, like this [gives a demented grin] but more happy, just-aah, thrilled." - Fiennes to The Observer, Nov. 14, 1999

"I did not become an actor because I wanted to be in MAGAZINES. I became an actor because I love the theater, because I love language. I love painting. I love all art forms!" - Fiennes in Vanity Fair, November 1995

"I don't want to sound elitist but Ralph has something theater actors have in common - they can kind of cut through the B.S." - Liam Neeson to The Los Angeles Times, Oct. 15, 1995

"I've been lucky in that since I left drama school, I've been in work. I couldn't believe I was being paid just to be in rehearsals. I was happy even with my first jobs, where I'd have a walk-on part and make coffee and sweep the stage and get out the props. As time has gone on, the money has gotten more. In a funny way, what's a little depressing is that with the money comes people's idea of your being, well, a film star. It's wonderful to be paid - I'm not begrudging it for a second - but more and more the very simplicity of being is taken over by career, by the decisions and responsibilities made by money." - Fiennes to Parade magazine, March 9, 1997

"No, I don't think he's a happy-go-lucky, cheery, cheeky chappie - you could tell that by shaking his hand. I think a lot of people find him difficult to read. He's always had that aloofness, and I don't think he would be offended by my saying he has an arrogant streak in him. You'll be talking to him and suddenly there will be sort of gauze that creeps over his eyes - an extreme level of disinterest. He just starts thinking about something else. He won't feel the social pressure to nod politely and say, 'Oh, really - the weather was good last Friday?'" - Martha Fiennes on her brother to Vanity Fair, November 1995

"Ralph did three takes. I still, to this day, haven't seen Take 2 or 3. He was absolutely brilliant, after seeing Take 1, I knew he was Amon. I saw sexual evil. It is all about subtlety: there were moments of kindness that would move across his eyes and then instantly run cold." - Steven Spielberg on why he cast Fiennes in "Schindler's List" to Time, Feb. 21, 1994

"When I decided to be an actor, my mother was the first person I told, and it was almost as if she'd expected it, even though I was halfway through art school, studying to be a painter. She had actually said to me the one time I acted in a school play, 'You know that if you wanted to be an actor, it's something you could do.'" - Fiennes in Interview, November 1996

His name is pronounced "rafe fines"

On working on "Onegin" (1999), Fiennes told the London's Evening Standard (Oct. 29, 1999): "I have a lot of anxiety about the film. I'm quite anxious as a person and I get quite knotted-up inside during filming about the state of the weather, people on set and things like that. I need to work with someone who can balance my anxiety with a stoicism. I'm a bit awkward about the title of executive producer. I had a lot of input and had final decisions on the script and the casting but I had nothing at all to do with the financial aspect of it. It has been quite a bruising experience."