Ralph Fiennes Quotations

Performance is made in the editing room, and I've come to see the truth in that - the idea that they say performances are usually made in the editing room because what you film is the raw material. I think just going through the process of saying, "Which take do we use? Why is that the take we want? I want that take can you edit again, I'm not sure that's the one, I think it's this one." And just because you go through that process, I think somehow it's made me sort of more open about the [actor's] possibilities.

I felt it [Shakespeare's Coriolanus] is sort of an examination of our dysfunction as a nationalistic, tribal entities. I think the world is rocking and cracking open in weird and worrying places. And I think Coriolanus, the play, reflected that.

Having gone through editing process, I can see that in actor's faces there's point where they're not managing their performance and that's, I think, the best place to be. You've done the homework, you've learned the lines, at that point you just sort of let it out.

I learned a lot about acting - watching not just myself but other actors and learning how to distinguish between two great takes. It's also about one's own taste in performance.

The actor shouldn't edit themselves or be anxious. And the actors that I admire are always the ones who are inventive and their imaginative life in free-willing. It's a director's job to go, "No here, don't do that, go there."

I feel there's so much still to learn about acting. But there is some magic in the capturing of performance and in the process of editing a performance. The psychology of human beings and what's coming through the face... that fascinates me.

I should say, a piece of advice that was given to me very early on by the principle of RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) which is where I went. When he auditioned me, he said, "Your speech, monologue, is fine. It's good. Yeah, I think you have ability but you're making it happen. Don't make it happen, let it happen." And that's a sort of subtle shift I think, as an actor.

I have a great editor and I enjoy, in a masochistic way, being ruthless about my own performance. There's an initial point in the editing, if you're directing yourself, especially in my case, where you go, "Ouch, ouch, ouch, I can't watch this." And then, there's a point where you become hard-nosed and just take your neurosis away and go, "What's working? That's okay. That's okay. We can lose that, and lose that." You get objective about it.

It [the scene] can be something given to you and you go, "Ah this is a good idea, I can work with this." Sometimes it cuts right across your instinct and that's when I might resist. Even if the director might be insistent, I think it's very important to say, "Look, I'm not feeling this. I'll try to make it work but I got to let you know."

It's not great if someone gives you sort of bland praise without giving you clear direction and say, "This is good, let's try it like this." I have worked with someone who seemed quite inarticulate and just would say, "That's good, that's good." That's very frustrating because - it's nice to know something is good but you know it can always change.