Ralph Fiennes: My Life in Pictures

THE ACCLAIMED ACTOR SHARES CHILDHOOD MEMORIES AND BEHIND-THE-SCENES SET SECRETS

- By ERIC ANDERSSON and JORDAN FEIN

It’s no surprise that Ralph Fiennes pursued an artistic career. Raised in rural England by father Mark Fiennes, a farmer turned photographer, and mother Jennifer Lash, a novelist and painter, he and his five younger siblings were encouraged to express themselves creatively.

“We were very much an arts family,” says the actor, 62, who credits his mom for keeping the Fiennes kids curious.

“She always made sure we had access to drawing paper and paints and pens and crayons.

My mother was someone who, whatever any of her children did, was encouraging: ‘Do it, do it.’ But she was very strong about ‘Do it thoroughly.

Don’t just skim the surface of anything you’re interested in.’ If we had expensive drawing paper, we were allowed to take a sheet, but if we didn’t finish, she’d get frustrated.

She instilled in us a sense of ‘You have to be tenacious.’ ”

His mother’s lessons have served him well over the course of his career, which began onstage in the 1980s after he studied acting at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.