Ralph Fiennes

0:00It's a podcast. It's on YouTube. It's a way of life. It's called Rosebud. I'm Gyles Brandreth. Cue the music.

0:30Hello again, this is Giles Brandreth with another episode of Rosebud. I'm excited today because today's episode is being recorded at one of my favourite theatres in London's West End. It's the Theatre Royal Haymarket, a beautiful theatre, one of London's oldest theatres. For me it's very special because it's there that I went to in the 1960s to see some of my heroes in the world of theatre, people like Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson. currently appearing at this theatre is the actor Ralph Fiennes and he is appearing in a play about Sir Henry Irving. Sir Henry Irving was the first British actor to be given a knighthood.

1:13I think until the advent of Henry Irving well actors were regarded as being rather disreputable but when Queen Victoria recognised Henry Irving as the well the leading actor of his day and bestowed a knighthood on him. Incidentally, the knighthood was announced on the very day that Oscar Wilde was sent to prison for two years. That's by the by. Anyway, this is a play by Sir David Hare, who's also been a guest on Rosebud. And it's a fascinating play. And it's a beautiful performance by Ralph Fiennes. I really recommend the play. I think it's running until July at this theatre. Anyway, I've come to see Ralph Fiennes because I admire his work both as an actor and as a director.

1:56He recently had a season of plays at the Theatre Royal in Bath, where the one that he's appearing in at the moment, Grace Pervades, it began its life. I've been watching him in the movies since Schindler's List, The English Patient back in the 1990s, Conclave, of course, much more recently. But I remember seeing him too in The Constant Gardener, The Grand Budapest Hotel. I loved that. So many films and so much on stage too. So a very intriguing character who doesn't give many interviews and I don't think actually has ever before talked at such length and so personally as he does now on Rosebud.

2:33So this is a privilege for me and I hope it will be a pleasure for you. So let's go now to the Stalls Bar at the Theatre Royal Haymarket for this episode of Rosebud with the actor, director, Rafe Fiennes.

3:00This is very exciting, Rafe. I'm excited. Thank you. I'm happy to be here with you, Charles. Good. That's nice. Thank you. And it's Rafe. Rafe. Has it always been Rafe? It's always been Rafe, emphatically from my father, who I was named after my father's step-grandfather, his grandmother's second husband, who was Rafe, quote, Rusty Eastwood. And my father admired this Rafe Rusty and had decided, I think later, my mother accepted it, but later on she sort of said, I had to call you Rafe, your father insisted. but anyway it was always i've always i've always gone through life having to find ways to correct or gently nudge to say to people it's rafe not ralph good but i have there are one or two rafes spelt ralph they i meet them occasionally but i think it's an old version how rat the spelling r-a-l-p-h used to be pronounced raf i believe um in america of course it's always ralph and that's always been a bit of a hurdle.

4:09But I've stuck with it. Sometimes regretted I haven't changed the spelling. If this is the toughest hurdle you've had to cope with... Not the toughest, but just the sort of... It's just... Occasionally irksome hurdle. Yeah, an irritation. And the Nathaniel, which is your second name. Yeah. Who is that? That's a Fiennes family name, Nathaniel. It's in the extended Fiennes family, yeah. So, Rafe Nathaniel Fiennes. Yes. Okay. Born 22nd December 1962. That's right. Lighting very flattering here at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, as you're expecting. What, Rafe, is your very first memory? Well, I have a...

4:48Yes, I knew you were going to ask me this question. I think I have a collection of memories, and I can't tell you which was the first. I have a memory of being, waking up... I used to sing in my sleep. I used to or in my half sleep I used to twist and turn and sing a nonsense song I don't know how it came to me and I have a memory of my mother coming in and saying shh darling be quiet be quiet and that runs parallel with other memories of also being in bed at night awaked and troubled and frightened and my mother coming in and taking me in her arms and comforting me but that goes alongside I had other early memories because my father was a tenant farmer in Suffolk when I was born and being taken out to watch the aeroplane that came to spray the crops to kill off any unhelpful bugs and I remember there was an event to be taken out to watch that aeroplane and I can remember sitting around a kitchen table being given pencils and crayons to draw animals.

5:47I drew, I loved drawing African animals. That was my obsession. But I think the thing, the maternal arms around me, either to stop me singing my nonsense song. What was the nonsense song? Can you remember any of it? I can't remember the words, but I knew I used to twist and turn.

6:06Twisting from side to side. It was almost like a dream. You were in a... Yes, a sort of restless semi-dream state, yes. And the anxiety? Probably was anxiety. But my mother then reminded me that sometimes at children's parties, I wouldn't join in much, but then when I did join in, I got up and sang my nonsense song. Oh. And everyone was very bemused. Your party piece, your first party piece. My first party piece it was. So who was this mother? What was her name? Jennifer Ginny. She liked to be called Ginny. Her maiden name was Lash. Oh. And she was the third child of parents, my grandmother Joan and Hal Ash he was a brigadier in the British Indian Army the Garwali rifles and fought in the second world war under General Slim in Burma and before India had independence they had already made their way home and my mother was born 1938 actually she was born on leave when my grandparents had come back to England on leave but she has memories my mother early childhood in India but like a lot of people who'd worked in the British armed or civil services in India prior to Indian independence they came back and my mother I think was always a very precocious curious vivacious child but grew up I think she would say I think unhappily I think that demonstrative love was not the prime currency in this family.

7:40Clever family. Her two elder brothers went on to be... One was a Greek Archimandrite and the other was a... Forgive me, a Greek Archimandrite? Greek Orthodox priest. Thank you. And that was Christopher, who was my godfather and the eldest of the children. Then there was Nicholas, second son, second child, second son, who went on to hold a, don't ask me the name, important chair of theology at Cambridge. A Catholic family, too. And then there's a younger sister, Sue. So Sue is the only sibling remaining alive now. My mother died in 1993. But despite being, I think, constrained by a certain distance from her mother, who I have happy memories of my maternal grandmother.

8:36My maternal grandfather is a distant figure with a moustache and cigarette and very neatly combed hair. She would always gravitate towards the fruit machines in the pubs. Quite an easy part to play, the way you describe it. A certain kind of part, which many actors have probably portrayed many times. But my mother, I think, had a very her internal life her imaginative life was very very strong I think I sensed that from childhood she was a very she was a devout Catholic and her Catholicism was important to her until later on when I think her sense of faith shifted but I think it was a sort of it was never dour or difficult it was a sort of an enlightened belief but it was she was very committed to the rituals of the catholic calendar and we were taken to mass as children but interestingly it ran alongside um her a great creative mind she was a writer she published two novels before she was 25 before she married my father under the name under the name jennifer lash oh and then she continued to write it was harder for her to write and that was one source of great stress and difficulty for her was having six children and finally gosh the frustration yeah it was intense it became intense for her but um she would often say my mind is full of these voices and these people and these characters and i i think she she was full of the novels and the stories she wished to write which she did write but it was we grew up with the very aware of the tension for her a loving mother an inspiring mother um but also i think the six children all very close together in age where are you in the six i'm the eldest yeah so you were the first born i'm the first born yeah and she was quite young then if you're born in 62 and she's 38 she's only about 20 21 i think yeah so how did she meet your father and that's well my mother left under unhappy circumstances i think a small family row or tantrum or some upset between siblings but it was the sort of switch i think we can all have switches that are pressed where suddenly something in us that's held down bursts out and as she recounted it to us her children was at 16 due to a squabble with her brothers I think she just exploded in a kind of extraordinary hysteria and they called the local priest and she was sort of left home she found a way from I don't actually know the details Giles but she didn't she left home at 16 and she worked as a nanny for various families she had a stint working I believe as a secretary at MI5 briefly she attended what I think is no longer exists was pre-rada there was a pre-rada academy which I think she did a term I think she made money mostly in nannying jobs occasional secretarial work and she was I think had you know was lost and was helped and supported by different families and people but a key figure who supported her and held out supporting an encouraging hand was an extraordinary woman called iris burt whistle who ran i believe a simple art gallery out of a small shed or maybe even a caravan and in the suffolk village of warberswick and iris had adopted three catholic boys um and my mother she i don't know how she met my mother and i feel this ignorance is irritating to me because I wish I knew the more details anyway my mother was living with Iris helping her with her sons and Iris encouraged my mother to write and she always acknowledged Iris's support for her writing her first book called The Burial and Iris introduced my mother to my father Mark who was farming only a few miles away outside the seaside town of Southwold in a village called Wangford.

12:41And the story was that Iris said, you must meet this man Mark finds. And the way Iris described her, I think my mother thought she was going to meet some effete public school boy, Chinless Wonder, and then walked into, I think it was Iris' home in Warberswick, in walk this tall six foot two broad chested sort of I always thought my father had a sort of similar vibe to Gregory Peck oh my very very sort of strong male features and strong physicality and my mother was smitten but my father who was farming and worked always worked hard I think fell asleep quite quickly my mother always remembered him falling asleep but then And she went to visit him on her motorbike a few days later.

13:25The story goes that she arrived on her motorbike outside his quite attractive farmhouse, actually, where he lived. And he said, ah, hello, would you like to come in for a dish of tea? Which is a curious expression, a dish of tea. And then quite quickly she said to him, yes, I would, thank you, and I'd like to have six children. That's how they, that's the story. That's it, and she was probably still a teenager. she would have been I think 19 or 20 or something and a restless spirit on her motorbike that's right that's right there she turns up that's right and she's both excited and troubled and there's all sorts of things going on in her she's lost her mother but Alice is a kind of surrogate mother that's right she's got another family with these three boys that's right exactly and this man 10 years older than her maybe no my father was uh I think five or six years older yeah and they got married very quickly yes yes i was um i know there were stories about because my father's mother was a strong strong woman um sylvia had expressed anxiety that my mother was catholic and my father apparently said to her look i love you but i can't marry you because you're a catholic goodness my mother thought that was going to be the case i think they got around it but i think it was that tells you something about English society at the time where about Anglican versus Catholicism and did she bring up her six children as Catholics she she did so you are a Catholic I'm a Catholic yes I have to say I'm pretty lapsed although you make up for it by playing senior Catholics yes in the in the Vatican yeah yeah so you've done your bit I've never lost I've never lost a profound curiosity about questions of faith and belief.

15:12And my mother's Catholicism, it shifted when later on, when we were living in Wiltshire, she had an altercation with a Catholic priest. And she challenged him about his insistence on saying some of his masses in Latin. and she challenged him she could be quite challenging my mother she would not wasn't shy for she wouldn't shy away from a flirtatious debate i mean she would sort of she was never get angry but she would like to needle certain kinds of men who had a certain sense of their uncertainty um and she i think took on this priest i wasn't there i didn't witness it but she said why father do you insist on saying alas in matin are you surely you're not going to encourage any younger men, younger, sorry, not younger men, younger people to attend your mass.

16:07And he took umbrage. She was so shocked that he should take umbrage. She couldn't believe that he sort of cut her socially in the street. She was absolutely shocked. She thought he could have answered or had a reply or had a reason to say. I think that really disturbed her. And so from then on, I think she lent much more into exploring other ways of believing. And Buddhism became something I think she was drawn to in the later years. What is your most memorable conversation with her? Can you remember a special conversation with her? I had so many, many conversations. Give me the sweetest, the one that is a lovely one when you think back on her.

16:56but a proper conversation, and what would it have been about? Well, I don't know if this is a sweet conversation, but it was a key conversation, because I was at a grammar school in Salisbury for the sort of centre part of my teenage years, from, say, 14 to 17, 18. Very good grammar school, Bishop Wordsworth. Very happy there. And I'd done some school plays and enjoyed them, and had been flattered by a praise that I could get up and act, etc. But I'd never thought about being an actor. I thought I wanted to be a painter. Certainly, that's where I put all my focus, was in the art room. I had a wonderful art teacher, Duncan Davies, who supported me in drawing and painting.

17:48And I thought that was where my focus was. That was everything. I mean, I did A-levels, terrible A-level result in English, OK history, but art was everything. I got into Chelsea Art School Foundation course in 1981. And that course was fantastic because it was about shaking everyone up who came there and, you know, taking from them their school ideas of doing a nice, polite still life and saying, you've got one minute to paint that nude and never let your brush leave the page. and also offering us up, all the students up, a taste of graphic design, fashion design, photography. But go back to your mother and the conversation with her.

18:32But it's rooted in this because I was, my imagination, my sense of possibility was exploded and opened up by the Chelsea Foundation course and that was when I suddenly came to me that I wanted to be an actor. It suddenly became like a thing, like a spirit, like a voice, like a thing. this is what I want to do and often it was the sense of Shakespeare because we had been introduced to Shakespeare at a young age and I was thrilled to the language I remember it was like a great sudden thing I was opened up by Chelsea Art School but the thing I was opened up towards was this sense that I want to be an actor and I remember coming home and saying to her mummy I think this is what I want to do she expressed no surprise at all she completely just said yes yes yes you must she's like she recognized in me this sense of calling i suppose you might say she said but you must start you must do something right you must go and find where you can be an actor what is what is it is it where you must find a group you must start to look at how you can be an actor um and that was in that conversation i can't remember the details but i can remember the sense of embrace and recognition in the conversation where she said absolutely this is what you have to do this is clearly a woman who from the beginning is giving you embrace yeah those early restless nights and she comes and later this is an example of that can you recall a difficult the most difficult conversation you had with her

20:11I can recall there um these are not really conversations because of course conversations are extended and these are moments that you hold on to but she would often my mother um I think the stress of six children very uncertain finances um my father who was a wonderful man who worked very hard but but the ink the surety of income was always was very precarious precarious and often we were in the front line they never hid it from us my mother and father and you were sent to independent schools so there were fees to pay were there school fees no no i went to a grammar school as i said and we went to primary schools once for a brief moment i went to an independent quaker school in ireland when a godmother died and left my mum some money but that was only for barely a year otherwise we all went to state schools um and but with six children money inevitably is going to be tight tight yes and but my father was finding his way he left farming to be a photographer and that took a while to take off and the income from the photographic work was was very it was not what wasn't a lot at all there was a struggle my my parents we survived but my father had a great gift for doing up houses and would transform an indifferent house into something.

21:23This is why you move about 14 times. Yes, that's right. We moved. We moved a lot. But there was a time living in the city of Salisbury where my mother, she'd often literally launch into these quite frightening emotional tirades against all of us. And often the refrain was, why did we have so many fucking children? And they would come out in extremis, like Lear-like rages. And I remember once I said, well, we didn't ask to be born. And that just sent her off the deep end. I remember she just went livid when I said that. Well, it could be the title of your memoir. We didn't ask to be born.

22:12How did you get on with your siblings? Yeah, I mean, of course, there were fights and squabbles as there are, but generally very, very well. yeah yeah i think we were all we're all very close together in age i think we're all quite strong personalities as people and i think each one of us finding our own space within within the group was been the story of did you have rows with your father yes yes yes yes and were they difficult for the children to yes yes no she bore the brunt of a lot of her frustration massive often she would launch at him because of the situation, the circumstances I mean we always had I mean we had the environment we grew up in was always, my father, they made it always comfortable, attractive environment of books and surfaces to work on and bits of inherited furniture which made the vibe seem comfortable and it was the life of the mind wasn't it, you didn't have a television it came and went the television sometimes it wasn't there and then when it was there we all watched it too much and then my mother got furious that we would come in and watch television so we were there were regulated hours on television but my mother did see that on television there could be wonderful things but she hated the fact that the television should dominate the life of her children a sort of go-to after school where it would sort of erode their time for homework and other activities and so but of course there were fantastic dramas on television this is we're talking about the mid-70s um plays for today and um remember we yeah we watching things like i claudius and tinker taylor souls a spy and she saw the value of those great dramas were she and your father happy people together do you think initially they were there was a huge love between them a profound love that you could see that you yes yes but i think it got challenged over time because my mother was diagnosed with cancer in 1987 and I think she wanted, I mean it's all quite personal stuff, but I think she wanted to recharge or reframe.

24:22I think being diagnosed with cancer certainly realigns your sense of mortality and she was quite open about that. Yes, she was only 49. Yeah, she wanted to reconnect with my father in some ways and my father was I suppose what you would say in denial about it and I think there was there were deeper frustrations that had never been expressed um which came up um when she was she had some therapy when she was in remission and I think there were areas about the marriage which perhaps I mean you know I mean I think all relationships over the long term must carry lots of things that are unsaid or not addressed and frustrations that lie deep and people sit on them and perhaps later they come out and there's a lot of pain and uh i think the love never went i believe that but i believe it it was there like a deep underwater river but on top of it there were a lot of frustrations and and as my mother's um uh fragility in the sense of she must her questions I suppose were what have I got how many years do I have to live what if the cancer should come back and that's when she really pushed into painting and some of her paintings I believe are extraordinary very very strong expressions of what it is to be a woman, the identity of womanhood maternity, children also quite painful images of I would say

25:58non-gender specific heads and expressions of what is it to be a body? What is it to be human? What am I if I'm not a woman? What am I? I mean, the painting seemed to question a sense of her inner self and a sense of identity. So themes of identity, motherhood, maternity, child rearing, they're all, these are very loose terms to describe, very strong expression on the canvas. They're not dainty paintings. They are strong, forceful, unequivocal paintings, and they occupy the space of the canvas very, very, very strongly. Her sense of colour and paint, fantastic. It's wonderful to have them. Yeah.

26:40How were you affected? Because you were in your mid-twenties when she died. Yeah, I was just about 30, yeah. Yeah, but when you first knew she was ill. Did it affect you? Did it throw you? Yeah, we were all very, of course, very... the word cancer is a shocking word to come into a family.

27:04It was breast cancer she was operated on. She was in remission for five years. And do you feel now, looking back, actually you did your bit, you were supportive. Were you able to hug her back in the way that she had hugged you as a little boy? Yes, I believe so. I think we all wanted to believe it wouldn't come back. so how the ability of people to address death when it starts to make itself present is is is is a big one and i don't think any of us could quite confront death when she was when it clearly had come back and she was being treated and we all thought it would be fine again and then it was quite late when we realized it wasn't going to be fine again um and your father when it eventually happened he coped as people do did he remarry he did yeah yeah and did successfully you quite like your stepmother yes he he she he made a we were happy because he was happy yeah um and and i think we all wanted him to be happy uh and he was he was but i think I'm sad my father has died now he died in 2004

28:29and I wish of course now you know you wish you'd had certain conversations with your mother and your father which I think I'm probably I want to have them now when they die you don't know how to have those conversations what's the conversation you'd want to have with him. I see your relationship with your mother and I see her very very clearly. I'm very drawn to her and the frustrations of her life. Her creativity and all that burning that gets actually on the canvas at the end. You've got all that layer and all that's gone into making that and I love her like you do in a way, you know, briefly.

29:06You're having introduced us. Your father is to me still a bit more elusive. What would you be asking him now if he walked into this room? Well, I think I'd like to describe my father was a very, very, his social presence was very beautiful, strong, masculine, engaging. He would take great interest in people. He was a wonderful conversationalist. He was very articulate, incredibly lucid, very moving, describing his unhappy schooling. and um and and his we we romanticized his early years as sent out he had a health issue as a young man and was sent off to australia and texas to work on sheep stations and ranches and was a big outdoors man and and we we projected onto him this romantic cowboy rangy figure but that's what that's what he was when he walked in the room he carried that with him he was incredibly supportive and loving and he was stoic and worked worked very hard and took had to shoulder the knowledge that he was not quote-unquote a successful career man he had six children who he loved and a wife who he loved and but you know he struggled with the photography but did did find for a long period or for some years working consistently for Country Life magazine because his photography became centered more on architecture and being someone who could build a wall and build a house and lay a floor and put up wallpaper perfectly he had a great eye and his photography you wouldn't it wasn't artistically expressive in tradition of the great art photographers but it was perfect for architecture because he was technically brilliant um so he was commissioned by norma major to photograph checkers for a book she wrote on checkers on the back of the work he was doing for country life and he did lots of work for the architect norman foster he did photograph the charles randy mackintosh museum glasgow um so this is high part stock yes there was a satisfaction yes and he had a brilliant eye for how something was made how it looked and how the light would catch it so that detail in light architectural and design detail would be would be legible in a photograph and he lived long enough to see your success he did and that was that satisfying to him did he enjoy that do you think he was very proud he's very proud father we always laugh because he because of course as you know actors in our relationship with critical response is very tortured and ambivalent and we that we want to know when we're good we don't really want to know there are bad reviews but there are bad reviews of course and um and usually you know your friends go well i so want to see your play so much and i've heard wonderful things you know in the community of the theater but people don't really say to you with a terrible review for you in the times bad luck it was but my father would say didn't like what that person in the times said about you or this because i hadn't read it so i was trying to hold myself in in in ignorance i'm talking mainly about the theatre, I think.

32:14If he walked into the room now, though, what would you most want to say to him? I mean, would you hug him? Yeah, of course. Did you hug him in the old days? We did hug. Good. We were all a bit tentative huggers as a family. But I hugged my mother, and I would certainly hug my father if he came in the room, yeah. And what would you say to him?

32:46well I'd just say hello daddy and give him a big hug and then I would look him in the eye and say I'm so happy to see you

33:06and I would say

33:15you must come and see this field that I have luckily been able to buy and I'd want him to see it. I'd say, come and see it. Come now. And he would be very opinionated about the field and what I wasn't doing rightly with it. Actually, I'm lucky to have a wonderful man who helps look after it. But I think he would be... Because he loved gardening. He loved growth. He knew a lot about plants and he had a wonderful eye for land and earth and what you could do with the garden and how you could grow things. And that was his big passion, was being in the garden. So I think the first thing I'd want to do after an emotional embrace would be show him the land that I have.

34:00Something practical. Yeah, I think I would love to hear him talk about it. And of course I would want him to love it. And you're also, in a way, in doing that, you're reassuring him that everything is all right. that actually he did better than maybe he realised. I think towards the end he saw the way his children were making their way in the world with some success and I think that gave him huge pride and pleasure. From each of them, what have you got? What is the Rafe finds that we see today got from his parents? So much that it's hard to put into words quickly. my mother's sense of the continual process of making things artistically creatively that you never stop working looking seeing understanding that your comprehension of things is always unfolding that you never know anything that you are always searching and inspiration and ideas may lift you up and of course you hit the cul-de-sacs of the sense of failure or that you're no good but you have to keep keep working and she had this expression you must get your guts into it she hated the idea that he that we that you would just lightly skim the surface of any given enterprise that you must really explore it and keep keep your your as the martha graham says in her famous letter to agnes demont keep the channel open and my father my father's sensibility ran in harmony with that he was a very he was a very hard worker um and he i remember once i was asked we were living in ireland um they're both they're both big on the commitment to what you wanted to do they were whilst they would have been proud of achievement in the way parents would be they were they were very alert to how you can't rest on your laurels you if you have laurels or if you have any sense of something you've got to keep keep keep sense that there's more or there's an openness i mean i'm not just talking about ambition i'm talking about creative um um alertness i think but but i do remember i was always i was always you know i mean we were all i like drawing and painting and I was told told as a boy I was good at it but we were living in Ireland and my father had built a house for us we were there for a short time only and there were one or two British expat people living on this West Cork Peninsula and we were one of them and a couple called Tucker Mr.

36:46and Mrs. Tucker had bought a house and they wanted it to be a bed and breakfast and they had come to visit us and we welcomed them and they saw what I suppose was a child's aptitude for drawing or something and Mrs. Tucker, Annabelle her name was, had said oh perhaps Rafe would like to design the SAR bed and breakfast sign and I said we'd pay him 10 pounds and I said yes yes yes yes yes and my parents were very pleased and you must do this rave it's a wonderful opportunity but of course I I was flattered and I didn't I didn't get stuck into it I just accepted I would do it and they were I didn't sort of get on with it and the sun was shining one day and this beautiful I mean wonderful the house is positioned on a shingle strand overlooking the Dunmanus Bay and I think I went on to the rocks and was aged 10 sunbathing.

37:44God forbid. In our house, people did not sunbathe. And there were these rocks just over the side of it. There was a terrace on our house. It had a terrace. And you could look over the terrace to the rocks. And there was the sea. And I was laying on a rock, I think. And then one of my sisters poked their heads over the terrace and said, Rafe, Daddy wants to have a word with you. And I said, OK, I slightly had an inkling. I had already had a bit of guilt that I was sunning my body on the rock. And I think I went up into this kitchen room. My father was sitting at the end of the table, his elbows on the table, very stony-faced.

38:27And he said to me, Rafe, do you know what the definition of a genius is? I said, no. 1 % inspiration, 99 % perspiration. you have been asked to design the sign for annabelle tucker's bed and breakfast you have done sweet fuck all about it you are lying in the sun sunbathing your body and you've been asked to do a job of work an important commission where you could do something useful you are doing nothing i'm ashamed of you and he sort of his voice built in this sort of rise of righteous anger that i was idling away my time and i could have been working and making something and that would express my father.

39:07Wonderful.

39:15Quickly, your teenage years, before we move on to what you're doing now, as a teenager, you're at school on the whole, different schools doing okay, but it's the drama you're liking, the art you're really liking. Do you discover girls, boys, do you have teenage crushes girls was my territory um yes lots of teenage crushes i mean i was the usual a horny teenager but were you good at it because you've given this impression of your father really made an impression when he came to the room he was a looker he had a presence yeah he was also engaging in conversation yeah he could do it yeah were you like that no i think it um I didn't have his social ease or charm.

40:06It was always...

40:11No, I was quite shy. I definitely felt attracted to girls at school, of course. But I think my social skills, my flirtation skills were... I think they were a bit circular. I don't think I... It took me a while to have confidence, I think. So I didn't have... But that blossomed perhaps when you were at art school very briefly and then at RADA. Yeah, even at RADA I think I...

40:46I wasn't... Yeah, I mean, at RADA was an extraordinary time where, of course, you are... You know, you don't have time to go off. I mean, the workload is intense. It's fantastic. It was thrilling. I loved my years at RADA. It was a great group. Yeah. But there were relationships. I think relationships sort of came into focus later for me. And I think you're there. We're not going to go into your relationships. You'll be pleased to know. Unbelieved. Because I couldn't believe some of the cuttings that I read, so I decided not to believe any of them and put them aside. Thank you. But what I think is interesting, and you're clearly interested in the complexity of relationships.

41:26I loved the film you made about Dickens and Nellie Ternan. Thank you. Well, partner, really, when his marriage, in his view, collapsed. That whole story is completely fascinating. And the complexity of relationships between men and women is fascinating. That was the root of that, wanting to make that film, especially in the character of Nellie, how you come to terms with a relationship that's over. I think that's what moved me, about how is Nellie dealing with this, whatever it was she shared with Dickens as she moves on into another life. And that, what you hold inside you from intimacies you have shared, when those intimacies are no longer there, and what it's left in you and how you negotiate the emotional historical patterns, the history of emotion and feeling and closeness and that's finished and it may have finished unhappily or sadly.

42:29But how do you carry it? And I'm glad you mentioned that film because that was one of the reasons to make it. And Felicity's face at the end is so beautiful, carrying a sense of... Felicity Jones. Elizabeth Jones, wonderful, wonderful actor. Because what I'm intrigued to know is, does the turbulence go on? Yes. Because you've had turbulent relationships, but I'm sure you've had highs and there've been lows. You're perceived to be an elusive character, but you're clearly... You are perceived to be an elusive character, aren't you? And you're now playing Henry Irving, also an elusive character. Yes, yes.

43:11Nobody quite knew what his relationship was with the great Ellen Terry, the leading lady of the day. That's right. You are clearly drawn to these interesting, achieving men who have these relationships we can't quite place. In the case of Dickens, when he's the invisible woman, she was the invisible woman. So he was having this relationship with a woman that the rest of the world shouldn't know about. That's right. And that was both the allure and the problem, and all of that's going on. And with Irving, the most famous actor of his day, with the great leading lady, people must have been thinking, what is going on?

43:53All of that, before we come on to the play, that intrigues you, and that is part of your experience. Yes, yes. I mean, I think the path to Henry Irving was very much due to David Hare's extraordinary play. We had a discussion, and I love David's writing, and it's wonderful to play, have his words to play. But, yeah, I sort of tentatively offered up the idea that the play about Ellen and Terry, loosely inspired by Michael Holroyd's book, A Strange Eventful History. but David went away and found a mass of it that's a huge amount of material of course on them, on Ellen and Irving and of course her children but the Irving David has sort of distilled Irving from all the resources available into yes a man I mean the relation a man driven driven to make his theatre and his vocal in the play about the theatre is everything to him.

44:58Is the theatre everything to you? I think it almost is. I really do. I think that I have more sense of being at home in a rehearsal room or on a stage than anywhere else in terms of work. Is it because you feel safe there? Secure there? Well, of course you don't feel safe. You shouldn't feel safe as an actor, maybe. But you should feel that this is a landscape that you can be alive in. Of course, there are pitfalls and you're constant. Every time you do a new play, I feel I'm learning again. That however much experience, of course, you're with other people. So the energy of another partner, what they're doing, how they're the play.

45:40You're constantly, that's where my mother's, you know, you'll have to be open again. Always open again. Are you an easy person to be with? Are you an easy person to live with, do you think? No, I'm not easy to live with. Why is that? What is difficult in you? because I'm I value my solo space intensely and I'm probably not good at opening it or sharing it or I can but for a bit

46:13yeah I think I've always been like that I've always been someone who's liked privacy and the privacy of my own room and my own headspace. Do you think you know yourself? Ask that in the context of Irving. I'm a great enthusiast for Oscar Wilde, who obviously knew Irving. They were contemporaries. I think Oscar Wilde was awed by almost nobody except Henry Irving. He felt he was in the presence of a great man with whom he couldn't quite communicate. Oswald found it easy to talk to anybody and vice versa but there was a grandeur about Irving there was people didn't quite understand why was he a mesmerist how was he able to do this as he does he jokes somewhere doesn't he you know I can't talk I can't move I can't no face to speak of don't seem to have done too badly so he was an elusive figure you're perceived as an elusive figure are you elusive to yourself is the question no I think I'm

47:24I feel I'm teeming with ideas and thoughts and things I want to explore in work

47:33plays or parts or roles that offer

47:39that look at the big things in life what it is to be alive, to be in love to what it is to to wrestle with questions of personal morality duty films that i've made where i've connected with these ideas of these things like like conclave or english patient or the constant gardener where people are wrestling with big questions of what it is to be human to be alive to know yourself and I love the plays and the films with the roles and material that ask and you know in a way of course the sort of moral resilience is even I could identify it in Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel in Monsieur Gustave you know I mean I love Monsieur I can identify aspects of myself in him his his his perfectionism and his I mean his he's the almost you know fussy perfectionism um but all comes with a sort of determination to make something there was a right way to be um um of course there isn't or there you know your life challenges your sense of what's right all the time but the films are the material that asks those big those big questions i i i know that's that's what i'm drawn to so i know that about myself that i'm drawn to that stuff and when you hit the pillow at night at the moment are you a happy person when your head hits the pillow it's a biggie it's a big question it is the big i don't know about happiness i don't know i don't know i think i i'm grateful for for opportunities and friendships and partnerships and intimacies and work opportunities that but i i feel i admit to being restless and and um and i i have like lots of people that 3 a.m 4 a.m wake up in in terror and anxiety about all the great sort of chasm of self-doubt and and and panic about everything nothing it's all worthless and i hit low points um but i think you just get hopefully one gets better at saying this is the fabric of what i am some notion of happiness i sort of resist um i think there's a there's a sort of point of balance where you can be content or you can appreciate learning to appreciate what you have and celebrating it is a good thing to develop i think here i am how great that i can do this and be with these people and do that but i think the niggle of what else or the questions or the self-questioning actually what did i miss what did i do wrong that didn't that didn't do well i could have behaved better i could have done that better i could have been better there as a human being or as an artist i don't know but they often go hand in hand so there's a kind of um restlessness i suppose i would say often but i do find back if I love, you know, to be able to go on a stage with Miranda Raisin, who's playing Ellen Terry in this, and to look to us to both find our way through David Hare's words about a relationship where these big things are being asked, you know.

51:01She believes in being a human being. She's looking for, I suppose, intimacy and a wholeness and the grace. whether in movement or repose grace pervades the hussy as Charles reads description that's the title in a moment I'm going to ask you to read just a little bit to finish off if you wouldn't mind three quick questions I'm really grateful for this conversation and just looking at you I see why you've had all the successes you've had the Tony Awards well done the Oscar nominations bravo brilliant but I can see why it works because in the course of our conversation I've watched your face change so many times and at times there's brilliant sunshine and at times there's cloud times there's nostalgia and times there's sadness and there's the complexity of life is to be seen in your face which is very useful in an actor because it means you can do it all so well done You can keep doing it.

52:07Three quick questions, then the reading, please. I'm going to say something. You've got to give me the immediate answer that comes into your head. Rafe, a moment of joy, particularly from your earlier years. A moment of joy. Playing frisbee on the back lawn of the farm in Suffolk. Perfect. With some American friends. Lovely. A moment of sadness.

52:34moment of sadness would be my mother dying. I mean, intense extended sadness shared by all my siblings and my father. And that would go hand in hand with the deep sadness losing my father. The deepest sadness is in the loss of my parents. The greatest moment of excitement on a stage, the moment of it. I think... Henry VI at Stratford in Adrian Noble's Plantagenets, feeling that I had been gifted with this wonderful Mull Hill soliloquy by Henry VI. And if it's not excitement, it would be a thrill that I would get to play and say those words about what it is to be a shepherd. and that was, at the time, it was a great exciting gift to have those, to be on the Stratford stage with that soliloquy.

53:32A moment of regret?

53:39Some of it's too personal that I couldn't say it on this podcast, but I think I regret not telling my mother how much I loved her.

54:01Give us the reading and tell me what the reading is and why you wanted to do it. It's down here. This is a wonderful book. This is, I think, by the grandson of Henry Irving. And this is the biography of Henry Irving by his grandson Lawrence, not to be confused with his son Lawrence. And I just was struck last night by a speech quoted in the book. This is 1881, and it's a speech he made to the Royal General Theatrical Fund. He was very big on paying actors well, and the speech is primarily about how he's managed to improve the salary of actors. but he concludes the speech with these words and it's apt I feel talking to you today Giles on Shakespeare's birthday to read this speech and he's concluding his speech in the practice of our art he concluded we win if we can if we fail we have quote only our shame and the odd hits and whether we fail or not the breath of applause or the murmurs of censure are alike short-lived and our longest triumphs are almost as brief as either our lives are fraught with many temptations and should be solaced by the thoughtfulness, brightened by the encouragement and softened by the liberal estimation of the public.

55:33For we actors have in charge a trust and a deposit of enormous value such as no dead hand can treasure. The living voice, the vivid action, the tremulous passion, the animated gesture, the subtle and variously placed suggestion of character and meaning these alone can make Shakespeare to your children what Shakespeare is to you such is our birthright and such is yours we are so lucky aren't we that we are speaking Shakespeare's language and that we have Shakespeare in our lives and I feel lucky to have had you in the rosebud chair as we finish, we are finishing now what's life taught you in a nutshell?

56:26to be open to be open you know nothing, that's what it's taught me you've been so open and I know something now about you Rafe thank you very much and I'm looking forward very much to seeing Grace Pervades thank you so much, thank you for this interview thank you

56:44well for me that conversation with Rafe Fiennes was an absolute treat so my thanks to him and I do urge you to go and see his play Grace Parvades. If you're fascinated by theatre as I am, as I said, it's about the relationship between Sir Henry Irving and Ellen Terry and Henry Irving first acted to be knighted, Ellen Terry almost our first actress to be made a dame. Their relationship was extraordinary and I think Rafe's performance is extraordinary in this particular play at the Theatre Royal Haymarket until the beginning of July. anyway that was a treat gosh the treats keep on coming quite soon we're going to be letting you on a friday listen to some of the episodes we recorded recently when we were in new york and i have to say we've got some pretty interesting guests coming up and in the weeks and months to come i hope we will be meeting you because harriet jane and i are appearing on stage ourselves we're doing a show just an hour long show a bit of fun called Up Memory Lane with me telling some of my old stories and maybe some new ones too and Harriet will be part of it too it's called Up Memory Lane with Giles Brandreth and Harriet Jane and a twist of Rosebud we're doing some fun work in progress shows at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith at the Oso Arts Centre OSO Arts Centre in Barnes and then we'll be in Edinburgh at the Edinburgh Fringe at Assembly in George Square throughout August every day, a matinee, 4pm.

58:16Come to the show and then we'll be around afterwards. Come and say hello. That would be fun. So that's us on stage. But you can get in touch with us anytime by sending us an email. It's quite simply hello at rosebudpodcast.com. And look who sent an email. Athene. Now, this is so funny. Athene is spelt A-T-H-E-N-E. Here is a little story for theatre buffs. there was a wonderful actress called Athene Scylla she was a lovely actress first half of the 20th century but really famous in a day she went on to the 60s and 70s but she was quite a character Athene Scylla famously John Gielgud was with her in a company and said oh dear I've been oh just somebody said to him what have you been doing recently said John oh I said I've been in a Terrible play.

59:06Terrible play with that awful Athene Scylla. Oh no, not you Athene, the other Athene Scylla. Anyway, there's another story about Athene Scylla, given it's spelt A-T-H-E-N-E Scylla. Sometimes it will be misspelt because it's a difficult name to spell, Athene. Scylla isn't that easy. And somebody looked at a playbill and said, oh, this play's got somebody in it called A Tiny Sailor. That's funny, A Tiny Sailor. It was a misprint for Athene Scylla. If any of that survives the edit, it's because Harriet is in a very good mood. And really what she wants me to do is read the letter we've received. We get hundreds of emails.

59:48We're trying to get on top of them, staking us a bit of time. But this one has come to the top of the pile. It's from Athene, and she writes, Hello, Giles and Harriet, from a huge Rosebud fan. I've just listened to the really interesting Jeremy Corbyn episode. Is there ever an uninteresting episode? No, they cried. Oh, that's very nice of you, Athene. Anyway, the episode contained a lovely poem written by Phoebe, and I found myself writing this while thinking of those I've loved and lost. Memories are such a joyful, often very poignant embrace. Come what may, I know, time will change nothing, and I shall remember you just as much tomorrow as I did yesterday and I do today.

1:00:36Oh, I love that poem. Come what may, I know time will change nothing, and I shall remember you just as much tomorrow as I did yesterday, and I do today. Many thanks for the twice-weekly treat that is Rosebud. All best wishes, Athene. Thank you, Athene, that's lovely. You could, Athene, have a thrice weekly treat if you decided to join our club. Well, we call it the Rosebud family because we feel it is a family. And it's a, you know, a five or a month, something like that. You simply go to patreon.com, P-A-T-R-E-U-N.com forward slash rosebud. All the details are there. And you get an extra Sunday afternoon episode.

1:01:24Sometimes it's me reading one of my Victorian mysteries. Sometimes it's me and Harriet on a trip down memory lane. Sometimes it's me and Harriet with some of our family secrets. So if you want to join that, simply go to patreon.com forward slash Rosebud. And that you get ad free listening as well. But you find us free with the ads, which I do love every Tuesday, every Friday here where you get your usual podcast. This is me saying thank you very much indeed to Nigel Everett and the team at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, and especially to Ralph Fiennes. Great actor, great director, great conversation.

1:02:03And of course, my thanks as always to Harriet Jane of Plain Jane Media, who produces the show, and to my wife's godson, Alec Goodell, who puts it onto YouTube for us, so you can see us there, as well as hearing us here. This is me, Charles Bradworth, saying goodbye until next time. If there is music, time to cue it now.

1:02:51Thank you.