On January 23, 2025, Ralph Fiennes was nominated by the Academy for an Oscar in the category of Best Leading Actor. There was no surprise when the nomination was read aloud; Fiennes’ performance in Conclave checked all the boxes with every critical group and previous awards givers. But what if I told you that this was just the third Oscar nomination of his career and the first time the Academy has recognized him in 28 years? That’s right, Ralph Fiennes, readily accepted as one of the finest actors of his generation, has not been feted as such for nearly three full decades. A fact that will likely swirl more than a few brains.
It’s fair to say that in Ralph’s generation, the typical consensus of who is the greatest actor of his generation revolves around two men: Denzel Washington and Daniel Day-Lewis. The logic for supporting either Washington or Day-Lewis is strong. Washington has been nominated for an Oscar nine times as an actor, winning twice. Day-Lewis has been nominated six times, winning thrice. The argument between the two often comes down to quantity vs. quality. Washington has made 51 films to Day-Lewis’s astonishingly sparse (at least to me) 20. You could also argue that Washington has more old-school movie star charisma than Day-Lewis, which makes you all the more grateful for his presence in genre films like the Equalizer series or last year’s goofiest movie, Gladiator II. To put it another way, Washington can make just about anything watchable–he’s that good.
On the other hand, Day-Lewis is the purest method actor who only commits to a film when his heart and soul are all the way in it. Because Day-Lewis stays in character during the entirety of a film’s shoot (even off-camera), that sort of dedication must be exhausting. Even in what is probably his most commercial endeavor–The Last of the Mohicans–Day-Lewis spent more than a month living on his own in the wilderness to prepare for the part of Hawkeye in Michael Mann’s classic telling of James Fenimore Cooper’s heralded novel.
Day-Lewis’s quality rate may be higher than Washington’s, but you can easily argue that Washington has given us more, and I don’t know if Day-Lewis could make The Siege or Safe House a tolerable sit. Washington can do that. For that reason, I’ve always favored Washington by a hair’s breadth between the two. However, while watching Conclave last year and seeing Ralph Fiennes’ Cardinal turn the silent act of carrying to safety a Vatican turtle into what felt like a sacred act of mercy, I (an atheist) had a thought rush over me:
What if there were three? Three actors who deserved to be in the conversation of the best of their generation? So, I began to scroll through Fiennes’s resume. At the level that Washington, Day-Lewis, and Fiennes have all worked at makes any argument for or against any one of them nothing more than a matter of taste, at minimum, I concluded that the duo should be a trio–Fiennes’ lack of Oscar nominations be damned. By my count, Fiennes has made 57 movies. His resume may be slightly diluted by being a part of three tentpoles (Daniel Craig’s Bond films, the Harry Potter series, and the Clash/Wrath of the Titans twofer); the other way to look at it would be to say he classed up the Bond films, made the Potter films feel like something was genuinely at stake, and, well, I got nothing on the Titans movies, other than to say they certainly would have been worse without out him. Fiennes has also taken on the occasional small part in terrific films like The Good Thief and In Bruges, the latter of which experiences a sky-high elevation when he turns up on screen more than an hour into an already terrific movie.
The willingness of Fiennes to play supporting characters has created a lack of appreciation for his body of work. Whereas Washington and Day-Lewis have almost always been the center of the films they’ve taken part in, Fiennes’ career has kept the phrase “That’s a Ralph Fiennes’ movie” out of our lexicon. One cannot say the same about the audience’s perception of Washington or Day-Lewis’s films. Their films seem to always belong to them (again, see Gladiator II for an example). The question is whether that terminology should matter so much. Fiennes is an actor’s actor to the nth degree. Going through his CV is like looking at a Tom Petty setlist. You don’t appreciate how good Fiennes is until the accumulation of great films and performances is laid out before you. So, let’s lay it out.
I first saw Ralph Fiennes in two episodes of Prime Suspect, in which he played a British hoodlum. I noted his striking face and ability to go toe-to-toe with Helen Mirren at her peak. “I bet I’ll see this guy again,” I thought. That was 1991.
Two years later, he proved my intuition correct as the Nazi leader Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List. If I thought he was good in a bit part in Prime Suspect, well, let’s just say I had no idea what he was capable of, even given his notable first impression. Goeth was more than just an awful overseer of the Krakow Concentration Camp; he was a creature full of self-loathing, who, somewhere behind Fiennes’ steely eyes and irredeemable actions, you could see a flicker of guilt. Fiennes’ performance as Goeth reminds us that human beings commit monstrous acts, but that doesn’t mean they are not human. As a grim, artistic coming-out statement, Fiennes gave one of the best performances in recent memory, playing a part that must have given him nightmares. Imagine living in the skin of Goeth every day and not falling into rote villainy, or worse yet, making him cheaply empathetic. I’ve often heard it said that because actors want to be liked (that’s how they get parts), they often want their characters to be liked, too. Fiennes would have none of that, nor would he make Goeth a cartoon. The performance of Fiennes is miraculous not only because of what he accomplished on screen with his Oscar-nominated performance (in the category of Best Supporting Actor) but also because he did not get trapped in a box created by his own excellence. Fiennes would go on to move away from Goeth with an ease that cannot be easily appreciated but should be. Many other actors would have spent the rest of their careers playing menacing characters, but not Fiennes. Fiennes has spent the last three decades building a resume of astonishing width and breadth.
I apologize for going travelogue here, but I can’t think of a better way.
1994: In Robert Redford’s Quiz Show, Fiennes played Charles Van Doren, a handsome underachiever from a wealthy family who knowingly cheats on a television game show. Again, Fiennes plays a character consumed with guilt, but this time, he plays a passive man who goes along with the network scheme to keep him on the show as a contestant for as long as possible due to his marketability. Fiennes manages to be charming, pathetic, and empathetic all at once. It’s a marvelous performance that garnered some Oscar buzz but no nomination. What Quiz Show did prove is Fiennes could carry a film as a lead.
1995: Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days is one of the most undervalued near-future sci-fi thrillers in the genre’s history. As a disgraced former police officer named Lenny Nero who becomes a hustler of illegal virtual reality CDs, Fiennes plays a weak man, groveling for the attention of his ex (played by Juliette Lewis) in a film that has enough room for action, speculative fiction, a murder mystery, and a serial killer all at the same time. Strange Days turned out to be prescient in the way people look for new realities through technology, and to see Fiennes’ character regain his dignity while being protected by a woman (a stunningly buff Angela Bassett), he turns the notion of an action hero on its head. It should also be said that the film (and its soundtrack) are an absolute blast. Somehow, no one turned up at the box office. Find Strange Days. If I were of a certain age, I would call it “a banger.”
1996: One of the more polarizing Best Picture winners since they’ve been opening envelopes and giving out gold men to producers, The English Patient is a classic, David Lean-inspired (although with a healthy heaping of sex) historical epic about ye olde star-crossed lovers who meet with a tragic end. Whatever one thinks of Anthony Minghella’s Oscar winner, it would be hard to argue that Fiennes, as the cartographer Almasy, and Kristin Scott-Thomas, as his lover Katharine, have ever been filmed so beautifully. John Seale’s Oscar-winning sun-soaked cinematography brings out the angular features of both actors. While the film is undeniably romantic, Fiennes tempers his natural swoonworthiness by introducing Almasy as an almost hostile man, but Katharine’s warmth and beauty prove to be irresistible. The English Patient would not be the last time Fiennes would play a tragic romantic lead, but it would be his last Oscar nomination (Best Actor) for nearly three decades.
1997: Somehow, Cate Blanchett and Ralph Fiennes have only acted together once (that needs to be rectified). Oscar and Lucinda is not a film that sits at the top of either actor’s accomplishments, but it is a heartbreaking little gem. Fiennes’ Oscar is a degenerate gambler whose addiction stands in the way of his promise to move a glass church across Australia for Cate Blanchett’s Lucinda (hey, many men and women would do crazy things for the great Cate). The two actors have brilliant chemistry, and even if the film is a bit of a footnote for both, it is a lovely one.
1999: Fiennes ratcheted up his productivity while giving away no quality in the last year of the century. Fiennes had three films released that year: Sunshine, Onegin, and The End of the Affair, and he went three for three. Sunshine is one of the last century’s great “lost” films. Directed by Istvan Szabo, Sunshine tells the story of three generations of a Hungarian Jewish family, with Fiennes playing a character in each period. There is a staggering scene when one of Fiennes’ three characters refuses to follow the orders of a Nazi lieutenant in a concentration camp that ends with a scene of unforgettable horror. Fiennes makes you believe his character is willing to pay the price. Sunshine is also the first time that Fiennes acted with Rachel Weisz. More on their second film together further down the scroll. Onegin, directed by Fiennes’ sister Martha and based on the Alexander Pushkin novel “Eugene Onegin,” barely registered at the time of its release, and that’s a shame. Fiennes plays a 19th-century Russian aristocrat who is the portrait of the “emotionally unavailable man.” Eugene eventually finds himself capable of reciprocating the adoration of the woman with whom he falls in love, but it is too late. Onegin is an elegant film that is at times as chilly as the Russian winter, but Eugene’s eventual epiphany, coupled with his rejection, hits hard as a reminder of how sometimes you only get one chance.
How do I even begin to talk of The End of the Affair? Directed with great artistry by Neil Jordan and based on one of my favorite novels (by Graham Greene), The End of the Affair “…is a diary of hate.” Those are the words that begin the film in narration by Fiennes’ angrily despairing Maurice. The End of the Affair takes place during the Nazi blitzkrieg of World War II in London. Maurice falls in love with a friend’s wife, Sarah–a luminous Julianne Moore. They carry on a passionate affair that Sarah ends suddenly for reasons best left unstated if you haven’t seen the film. Fiennes’ Maurice carries on for the bulk of the movie as if he were an atheist, but as the film closes, it does so with a prayer by Maurice: For God to leave him alone…”Forever.” Devastating is the only word I can think of to describe the film’s end. Moore deservedly received a Best Actress nomination from the Academy, but her co-star was again overlooked. Fiennes could have easily, on merit and critical raves, been nominated for Sunshine or The End of the Affair. 1999 was a quietly extraordinary year for Fiennes. Far too quiet.
2002: For the first and only time, Fiennes and David Cronenberg connected to create Spider. While being one of Cronenberg’s lesser-known films, it may be his darkest and unsparing film. Lord knows that’s saying something. Fiennes plays Daniel Clegg, a schizophrenic recently released from a mental institution, who starts to relive childhood memories that begin to mix horrifyingly with his present day. Clegg’s connection to reality goes from tenuous to missing in action. Hardly anyone saw Spider when it was released, and I’d be willing to bet that those who did never saw it twice–it’s that grim. That being said, it’s one of Fiennes’ greatest performances. Cronenberg revealed that he and Fiennes took no salary for the film just to get it made. Spider may be buried in the filmography of Fiennes and Cronenberg, but it is one hell of a piece of dark matter. Fiennes also turned up in an uncredited cameo as a skeevy art dealer in Neil Jordan’s The Good Thief, an entertaining remake of John Pierre-Melville’s Bob le Flambeur, starring Nick Nolte as a heroin-addicted thief trying to pull off one last job. While Fiennes’ role is but a cameo, he has the best line in the movie: “If I don’t get my money back by Monday, what I do to your faces will definitely be Cubist.” There is an almost casual aspect to the way Fiennes speaks those few words that make them all the more disturbing. He’s not threatening for the purpose of motivation; he’s simply telling the future.
Fiennes’ most visible role of ’02 was as Francis Dolarhyde in Red Dragon, an unnecessary prequel to The Silence of the Lambs. Michael Mann had already covered this territory with his infinitely superior Manhunter from 1986, but after the twin financial successes of The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, the studio went back to the Lecter well with Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal for one last money grab. Despite the film being directed by the far out of his depth Bret Ratner (the Rush Hour director, really?), Fiennes gives a fully committed performance that is larger and sadder than Tom Noonan’s brilliant work in the same role in Manhunter. Fiennes’ take on Francis leans into the sorrow of the serial killer, not to absolve him, but to understand him. A hallmark of Fiennes’ career is making characters whose morals are questionable (to something far worse than that), and forcing the viewer to see what lies behind their visage. Even in a film directed by Brett Ratner, Fiennes created something special in a movie otherwise best-forgotten.
2005: Fiennes laid fairly low in 2003-2004, but when he returned to the big screen in 2005, he did so with force. My hands-down favorite film and performance by Fiennes is Justin Quayle in The Constant Gardener, a passive British Diplomat in Kenya married to a fiery activist (Rachel Weisz, in a well-earned Oscar-winning performance). Based on a novel by the great John Le Carre and expertly directed by Fernando Meirelles, The Constant Gardener is a true heartbreaker that plays out against the backdrop of a Civil War between African tribes. Fiennes plays a man who loves his wife deeply, but she’s a mystery to him in terms of her deep-rooted and even radical activism. When she disappears, Justin becomes a detective of sorts, working against the bureaucracy he is a part of to find his missing wife. In doing so, he learns the truth of who his wife really was, and finds that he loves her even more. The final moments of Quayle’s reckoning, where he awaits his fate with an unloaded gun, have remained embedded in my head for twenty years now.
2005 would also be the year that Fiennes made his debut as Lord Voldemort (“He who must not be named”) in the Harry Potter series. While I found the first two films based on JK Rowling’s popular children’s books to be colossal boors, the third film, The Prisoner of Azkaban, was watchable and modestly entertaining thanks to the direction of Alonso Cuaron. But if you want to talk about the true elevation of the Potter films, it begins with Fiennes’ first appearance in Goblet of Fire. Everything from that film through the final three reached new heights due to Fiennes’ fearsome and terrifying performance. There is no wink in Fiennes’ eye as he plays the villain in a children’s story. He made the Harry Potter films more than “product.” He gave them a reason to be respected.
2008: AKA the busiest year in film of Fiennes’ career with a whopping four releases. One year after terrorizing ‘tweens in The Order of the Phoenix, Fiennes returned with two leads and two supporting roles. In Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges, Fiennes plays a mobster who sends the hitman duo of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson to Bruges, Belgium, after a job goes terribly wrong. Fiennes’ mob boss “Harry” can be heard in the film’s first hour, but his cockney accent is so thick that only the sharpest of ears could correctly guess the actor on the other end of the phone. Fiennes does appear over an hour into the film and a movie that was already incredibly amusing and full of pathos lifts to a higher level for its remaining 40 minutes or so. While Fiennes’ character is ruthless, his comic timing is brilliant, and considering the delirious rapport that Farrell and Gleason had already created before Fiennes’ arrival speaks to how flexible Ralph’s talents are. He doesn’t just match Farrell and Gleeson; he lifts them.
The Duchess, an oft-overlooked 18th-century costume drama starring Keira Knightley in the title role, may not be the height of a Merchant-Ivory-type film (it’s directed by Saul Dibb), but both stars play well off each other as a Duke and Duchess in a miserable arranged marriage. Fiennes plays his part with an unflinching cruelty. There is not a single moment where he asks the audience to like him. He serves the part, not his ego–a common theme in Fiennes’ work. Proving that there are “no small roles, only small actors,” Fiennes turns up in Kathryn Bigelow’s Best Picture-winning The Hurt Locker for just a few minutes as an unnamed military leader in a film built around Jeremy Renner’s bomb squad member during the Iraq War. Having Fiennes appear mid-film could have been a distraction, but Fiennes melts into Bigelow’s desert background like he’s been there all along.
Fiennes’ last film of 2008, The Reader, was his most polarizing. Despite winning the great Kate Winslet her first and only Oscar, many critics were divided on the film morally and aesthetically. Some writers found the film to be cheap “Oscar bait,” while others took issue with the film’s perspective. As New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis stated:
“You have to wonder who, exactly, wants or perhaps needs to see another movie about the Holocaust that embalms its horrors with artfully spilled tears and asks us to pity a death camp guard. You could argue that the film isn’t really about the Holocaust but about the generation that grew up in its shadow, which is what the book insists. But the film is neither about the Holocaust nor about those Germans who grappled with its legacy: it’s about making the audience feel good about a historical catastrophe that grows fainter with each new tasteful interpolation.”
In all the sturm und drang, Fiennes’ stellar work as a broken man lost to his past and further traumatized by its return was lost. Winslet got her Oscar, but Fiennes got overlooked. The overlooked part has become a theme.
2011: In 2010, Fiennes filmed The Deathly Hallows Part One, the penultimate film of the Harry Potter series. Fiennes took on a passion project the following year, a Balkans War-based version of Shakespere’s Coriolanus. Fiennes didn’t just star in the film; he also made his directing debut. All those years on set served him well because his adaptation of one of the Bard’s lesser-known plays is a bracing barn-burner of a film. The ferocity of Fiennes’ performance is matched by the grit and immediacy of his direction. Coriolanus falls under the “tragedy” section of Shakespeare’s plays, and Fiennes holds the course to the bitter end. Coriolanus is not just a stunning film with a pitch-perfect lead, it’s one of the finest directorial debuts that no one ever talks about. Hell, Fiennes got a good performance out of Gerard Butler. Case closed.
2012-13: While no one is going to think of Fiennes’ work in the third Bond film Skyfall (his first in the Daniel Craig series of five) as Oscar-bait, his commanding presence made his transition into the role of ‘M’–taking over for Dame Judi Dench, no less–feel like an equal trade. The following two films Fiennes appeared in were a couple of unique curios. He played Magwitch in a respectable adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations and then turned around and played Dickens himself in a biopic he also directed, The Invisible Woman. The film received excellent reviews but despite co-starring Felicity Jones and reuniting Fiennes and Kristin Scott-Thomas, The Invisible Woman came and went quietly. However, it did score an Oscar nomination for costume design. The Invisible Woman is another case of Fiennes proving his peerlessness as a heartbroken romantic protagonist.
2014: Before starring in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, few would have considered Fiennes ideal for a comedic lead. As hysterically amusing as he was in Bruges, his bon mots were always delivered with a sinister tone and incredibly in a remarkably vulgar manner. I’m not sure what made Anderson look at Fiennes and think he would be the perfect fit to play a hotel concierge caught up in a caper centered around a murder in which he is the main suspect, but the director’s casting eye was profoundly on the mark. Like all Wes Anderson films, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a very Wes Anderson film, full of all the quirks and off-kilter humor that his rabid fanbase would anticipate. Still, imagining the film without Fiennes as Gustave is almost impossible. Channeling Charlie Chaplin, complete with pratfalls, physical comedy, an ultra-quick wit, and a gift for comedic facial expression heretofore unseen, Gustave is one of the finest (pun maybe intended) hours of Fiennes’s career. No one had ever seen him in a role like this before. The Grand Budapest Hotel is the film that proved Fiennes could do anything asked of him, and with aplomb.
2015: A Bigger Splash, Luca Guadagnino’s precursor to his breakthrough film Call Me By Your Name, is a sumptuous erotic tale of jealousy starring Fiennes as Tilda Swinton’s ex-lover, a Bowie-esque rock star who is recovering from throat surgery on an island off the coast of Italy. Fiennes turns up in this remote area, which Swinton shares with Matthias Schoenarts, her new lover and former music-producer protege of Fiennes’ character. Fiennes is not alone; his traveling companion is a young woman who may be his daughter (an enigmatic Dakota Johnson). Based on Jacques DeRay’s brilliant ‘65 French film La Piscine (The Swimming Pool), A Bigger Splash is a study in discomfort, and the linchpin of that awkwardness is Fiennes’ Harry, who makes inappropriate statements constantly that wrongfoot Swinton and Schoenarts in large part due to the mixture of charm and sadness with which the remarks are delivered. The centerpiece of the film is a joyful and on-the-verge-of manic sequence where Fiennes puts the Rolling Stones’ “Emotional Rescue” on the turntable, presses play, and then acts out the song from the interior of Swinton’s gorgeous rental to the swimming pool outside. To many a Stones fan, Fiennes’ argument that the disco-fied “Emotional Rescue” is among the band’s finest moments may be a bridge too far, but there can be no doubt that Fiennes sells you on the idea that he believes it. It’s a stunning, vanity-free sequence that could have been too goofy in the hands of almost any other actor but not in those of Fiennes. That same year, Fiennes fully settled into the role of ‘M’ in Spectre. It’s not a superb Bond film, but every scene between Fiennes and Craig hits the mark.
2016: Fiennes made only one movie in 2016; within it, he had only one scene. The Coen Brothers’ satirical take on old Hollywood, Hail Caesar!, is a somewhat forgotten film in the Coen oeuvre, and that’s a shame. It’s a delightful romp through the creation of the studio system that brings forth many a laugh. One thing that has often been true in filmmaking history is that films about filmmaking don’t tend to do well at the box office, even if they have George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Josh Brolin, Scarlett Johannsen, and Ralph Fiennes in tow. While many focus on the wonderful mid-film song and dance number of Channing Tatum, for me, that one scene with Fiennes as an upper-crust director (replete with an ascot) trying to get a hopelessly miscast cowboy actor (Alden Ehrenreich–a total stitch) through a single line of dialogue in his upper-class drama. The line Fiennes walks between encouraging and hopelessly enraged at his predicament is so funny that you won’t want to take a drink during the scene. That is, unless you’re into cleaning spit-takes off your floor.
2018-19: While 2018 and 2019 were relatively low-key years for Fiennes, he did direct his fourth film, The White Crow, depicting ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev’s defection from Russia to the United States. The White Crow is a beautiful, stately film that never quite achieves lift-off but certainly clears the “good movie” hurdle. Most interestingly, Fiennes plays the famed Russian author Alexander Pushkin, which leads me to my favorite Fun Fiennes Fact: The hero of this article has played characters in films based on novels by Pushkin and Dickens and also played both authors in historical dramas he directed. Fiennes also appeared in the deeply underrated Official Secrets starring Keira Knightley in this true-life tale of the whistleblower who discovered an illegal spying connection between the British government and the United States during the Iraq War. Official Secrets is ably carried on Knightley’s slender shoulders, but Fiennes’ performance as her defense attorney is full of all the grace, grit, and complexity the actor has long been known for.
2021: No Time To Die aside (Daniel Craig’s final Bond film), 2021 found Fiennes giving stellar performances in two other films that few saw. The Forgiven, co-starring Fiennes and Jessica Chastain as a married couple on the rocks, whose vacation in Morocco (an in-vain attempt to reconnect), is one of the most bitterly grim films I’ve seen since Ridley Scott’s The Counselor. When Fiennes’ character kills a young man walking on the road while driving, the remainder of the movie consists of the couples’ effort to cover up an accident that becomes an act of malfeasance, both husband and wife indulge in the darker sides of their nature. While few would consider The Forgiven a “good time,” there can be no doubt that it follows through with the courage of its convictions. Based loosely on the excavation of the Sutton Hoo Cemetary in Suffolk, England, The Dig is a sadly beautiful film about an amateur excavator (Basil Brown–played by Fiennes) who discovers a remarkable find below the Sutton Hoo grounds, but whose contribution to the discovery was greatly diminished due to his lack of formal education. Fiennes and Carey Mulligan (who plays the Suffolk landowner where the dig takes place) have marvelous chemistry despite Fiennes’ stoicism. Fiennes plays a proud man who accepts his fate as a matter of course, and the film taking place in 1939 England reminds you of how little power the “lower class” and women had at the time, regardless of how right they were.
2022: The year 2022 brought about an odd triptych of films about the wealthy receiving their comeuppance on a deserted island. The overpraised Triangle of Sadness scored a Best Picture nomination, and the execrable, screechingly awful Knives Out sequel Glass Onion somehow scored an Oscar nomination for one of the most fatuous screenplay adaptations in recent memory. The Menu, however, which starred Fiennes as a malevolent chef who invites a very exclusive clientele to his restaurant on an island for nefarious purposes, wasn’t just darkly hilarious, it was, unlike Triangle of Sadness and Glass Onion, genuinely entertaining. Anya Taylor-Joy (as a guest of the upper crust) and Fiennes play off of each other marvelously. My family isn’t big on holidays, so I spent that Thanksgiving in the theater dining on The Menu. It was a wickedly delicious feast.
2023-24: I doubt that the financial success of The Menu gave Fiennes a career bounce (as if he needed such a thing), but his work since then has been beyond exemplary and, most importantly to my point, well-noticed. Fiennes re-teamed with Wes Anderson to make the lovely Oscar-winning 2023 short film The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar (which was later expanded to a four-story compilation film). Fiennes’ played the great children’s author Roald Dahl (is there a better actor of legendary authors?) with perfect grace. When the short was expanded to feature length in 2024 by adding three more Dahl stories, Fiennes and Benedict Cumberbatch played different roles throughout each tale, with no diminishment in quality. As has been the case through much of Fiennes’ career, he will take a part in a film that goes largely unnoticed despite the strength of its telling.
Such is the case with 2024’s The Return, which reimagines the final portion of Homer’s The Odyssey, with Fiennes playing Odysseus and the wondrous Juliette Binoche as his wife, Penelope. The journey of Odysseus leads to an acceptance of his fate as a warrior king, and the savagery with which Fiennes imbues the final battle leaves him soaked in the blood of his enemies, as well as a heaping portion of regret. In the very same year, Fiennes played a character who could not be more unalike Odysseus, the liberal, gentle Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, who is charged with leading the conclave to decide who will be the next Pope after the death of his revered, aging papal leader. Lawrence’s conflicts run deep. He does not want to be Pope. He does not want to lead the quest to name a new Pope. He doesn’t even want to be a part of the Vatican anymore. But as the task falls to him, he takes it up with all the dignified gravitas he can muster (and man, does Fiennes have a lot of dignified gravitas). There is a scene in the early part of the film where a Cardinal making his first trip to the Vatican for the vote takes note of a pond of turtles that were given to the now-dead Pope as a gift. Fiennes’ smiles somewhat ruefully as he speaks of their tendency to wander off and get smashed under the wheels of passing cars. Late in the film, Fiennes’ Cardinal Lawrence regards a wayward turtle, heading off to a likely doom. Lawrence walks over to the turtle, gently picks it up with two hands, and as if carrying the most precious thing he’s ever held, returns it to safety. Fiennes speaks not one word during this sequence. He does not need to. His whole being is about being merciful to those who are fragile. I’ll be damned if he doesn’t make saving a turtle come off as a sacred act, and I’m an atheist.
Fiennes’ performance as Cardinal Lawrence ended a 28-year drought of being overlooked by the Academy and nominated him for the third time. Look, comparing performances and giving out awards for them can be incredibly silly. You can look back at any number of years and be puzzled by the selections the Academy made in the case of both nominees and winners. Fiennes doesn’t need an Oscar to become a better actor. That seal can’t be broken. But what it would do is help formally establish him as one of the most gifted thespians of our time (or any time, really). And to award Fiennes with an Oscar this year would be no gift, or lifetime achievement award. I know that Adrian Brody and Timothee Chalamet are the favorites heading into the calling out of the names on March the second. And yet, here I am, thinking about this phenomenal actor, his remarkable career, and how much he accomplished just by carrying a turtle. He deserves the Oscar not for all the times he’s been passed over, but because he is the best actor this year. Maybe he’s been the best actor all along and we just haven’t been paying close enough attention.
It’s fair to ask whether it really matters who among Washington, Day-Lewis, and Fiennes who should be called the best of their generation. As my father-in-law likes to say, “At that level, it’s just about taste.” He’s right about that. It’s all just a contest involving the splitting of (in this case) graying hairs. I would argue any time that question is being asked that Fiennes’ name should be included. He is on that level. It should be easy for all to see.
Why haven’t we noticed?
