Ralph Fiennes just fine with ‘Coriolanus’

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Updated: March 5, 2012 8:00AM

Ralph Fiennes is well rid of Lord Voldemort, the embodiment of evil who was Harry Potter’s archnemesis.

He’s not haunted at all by the nose-challenged troublemaker now that the boy wizard’s film franchise has come to an end.

“I think he’s been put to sleep,” Fiennes, 49, says with a resigned sigh.

Instead, the soft-spoken though mellifluous British actor — who has often gone to the dark side in such roles as the sadistic Nazi commander in 1993’s “Schindler’s List” and as a fiery Hades in 2010’s “Clash of the Titans” — is consumed by an even more complex literary creation, both behind and in front of the camera.

The Shakespeare specialist, whose stage resume ranges from Romeo to Marc Anthony (and whose beard was grown to play Prospero in a London run of “The Tempest” this fall), takes the director’s reins for the first time and stars in the title role in the just-opened “Coriolanus.”

“It’s a bit mad,” he says of his double duty while shooting one of the Bard’s later tragedies on location in Belgrade, Serbia. “But I couldn’t let go of it.”

Luckily, Fiennes was able to recruit some formidable talent to back him: Vanessa Redgrave as the general’s strong-willed mother, Volumnia; Gerard Butler as foe-turned-ally Aufidias, and Jessica Chastain as gentle wife Virgilia.

Instead of a soliloquy-stuffed rendition of the Roman military genius whose downfall is his haughty refusal to act the part of a political leader, the actor has turned the battle-heavy piece into a stripped-down contemporary action thriller.

After spending five months as Coriolanus in a 2000 theater production, “I had an obsession with the part,” he says. “I liked this compacted man with a sort of gross integrity, which is intolerable. He’s proud, he’s arrogant, but he is a soldier, and he has a soldier’s disdain for civilians.”

Fiennes, whose ferocious warrior ends up being banished from his own city, has no problem with inhabiting such a prickly man.

“I’m very impatient with this notion of whether someone is likable. I like being challenged by characters who are difficult and outrageous, and then be reeled into their life and who they are.”

Gannett News Service