Ralph Fiennes

“The tensions between authority and the people need to be heard, especially when they are suffering and they can't eat.”

“I don't feel particularly comfortable about actors using whatever power they may have to push their beliefs, unless they're extremely well informed.”

“I guess I'd love to be surprised by something I had never thought of.”

“I've never felt fallow in the sense that there's been no work.”

“The film depends on the audience's belief in this relationship.”

“There is a tension in relationships between wanting to return to the womb, but also wanting to be free. Because sometimes the woman's attentions can be overly maternal, and you want to go, 'Ahhhh!'”

“Little moments can have a feeling and a texture that is very real.”

“You feel yourself working to show something. I've learned to distrust that feeling.”

“There are those moments when you shake someone's hand, have a conversation with someone, and suddenly your all bound together because you share your humanity in one simple moment.”

“And although I've been very fortunate in the film work that's come my way, I need to get back to the stage. If I'm away for a maximum of two years, I feel something's wrong.”

“I veer away from trying to understand why I act. I just know I need to do it.”

“I don't feel I'm playing villains all the time.”

“I have grown up loving Shakespeare.”

“There is a humanitarian impulse that one aspires to and there are days when one doesn't do it very well.”

“You dread that there will be real problems during filming.”

“So much of movie acting is in the lighting. And in loving your characters. I try to know them, and with that intimacy comes love. And now, I love Voldemort.”

“Actors use who they are to be someone else, but I would hate to ever think I'm playing myself. It's imagining being someone else that is the key motivating thing for me. So when people want to know about me, it makes me a bit unnerved.”

“I like to keep fit, but I never lift very heavy weights.”

“Being an actor means asking people to look at you. I guess I accept that. But it's a profession in which the job is to show another world and other people. You may access it through bits of yourself, and your imagination and experience, but actually, in the end, you're not playing yourself.”

“Gardeners are good at nurturing, and they have a great quality of patience, they're tender. They have to be persistent.”