Celebrated actor Ralph Fiennes received the Outstanding Performer Of the Year award at SBIFF for his Oscar-nominated work in Conclave.
Lord Voldemort himself descended upon the masses at the 40th Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival last night. Oscar nominee Ralph Fiennes attended the festival to receive this year’s Outstanding Performer Of the Year award. Conclave director Edward Berger was on hand to present the award to Fiennes. It followed a lengthy career retrospective moderated by The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg.
“Looking back at some of my work tonight with Scott, I just realized how profoundly lucky I’ve been to have had these opportunities and have shared them with so many remarkable people. The terrible fires that have devastated and wounded your sister city, Los Angeles, are an immediate shock,” Fiennes offered. “They shock us into realizing who we are in a community — civic, local or international — and when we witness terrible and traumatic destruction and loss, it can short circuit our awareness to recognize, to see again, what we value. I value the transformative power of art, low or high art, the art of storytelling.”
Feinberg acknowledged Fiennes would consider the work paramount. He did, however, open the evening by marveling that the actor still did not have an Academy Award. Fiennes’ first nomination came from his supporting role in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. A Best Actor nomination quickly followed in Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient. It would take over 25 years before The Academy came knocking again with a Best Actor nomination for this year’s Conclave.
Looking Back Across His Career
Feinberg guided Fiennes through an in-depth career retrospective, highlighting key performances through curated clips. Fiennes admitted that his debut film, Peter Kosminsky’s Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, was not particularly well received. It did, however, attract the attention of Spielberg who quickly cast him as Amon Göth in Schindler’s List. The awards attention, Fiennes revealed, came at a difficult time in his life personally. His mother passed away as the film debuted, and he reflected on the moment during the tribute.
“It was a very bewildering time to be part of this film and the success it was receiving. My mother died at the end of ’93, just as the film was being launched and being considered for all kinds of awards. It was, as you can imagine, extremely painful to lose the woman, your mother, who has inspired you and supported you and all of her children,” Fiennes shared. “So it was a very odd and painful time, but having gone through all the grief and loss that you would imagine, I feel she’s watching.”
The retrospective barreled through highlights of Fiennes’ career, including his great performances in Robert Redford’s Quiz Show and his Oscar-nominated turn in Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient.
Fiennes paused to reflect upon the late director and his remarkable penchant for working with actors.
“Anthony Minghella, who directed this film, was a very special human being who had this amazing quality of bringing all his crew and cast into a sort of deeper sense of collaboration with what he was doing,” Fiennes said, later praising the experience of making the Oscar-winning epic. “It was an amazing experience. When I read books about filmmaking in the 50s and 60s – Laurence of Arabia with long days on locations – this film was like that. The Tunisian desert was extraordinary. The light in the desert and the cold in the desert. The feeling of community between everyone, led by Anthony and Saul [Zaentz], was unforgettable.”
On Being “Ignorant” of Harry Potter
When it came to acknowledging his turn as Lord Voldemort in four Harry Potter films, Fiennes admitted he was initially “ignorant” of the franchise.
“I hadn’t seen the films in order to dislike them, hadn’t read the books. I was aware of their big success, but I think I was probably guilty of a sort of totally misplaced snobbery about witches and goblins and things,” Fiennes laughed. His sister ultimately convinced him to take on the role. “She said, ‘Voldemort, you’ve been asked to play Voldemort… You have to do it! Ralph, you don’t realize, you don’t realize. This is it, it’s the man, it’s the big antagonist, it’s everything!’ And I said, okay, I’m in.”
Fiennes and Feinberg continued with a discussion of his own stint as a director in Coriolanus. Fiennes admitted he would be hesitant to take on direction again. He cited the anxiety-laden financing process as his chief deterrent.
Fiennes received his third Oscar nomination for Berger’s Conclave. He shared that there was an immediate connection to Peter Straughan’s Oscar-nominated screenplay.
“Sometimes there’s a spirit in a screenplay, you go on a gut feeling about something, and you sort of have a feeling, dare I say it, where you go ‘I’m meant to do this.’ It doesn’t happen very often, but I had that feeling.”
You can view the full Outstanding Performer of the Year Tribute on the SBIFF YouTube page.
