Ralph Fiennes

Ralph Fiennes has been the very image of the trim, intense, heroically repressed Englishman in films like The English Patient (1996) and The Constant Gardener (2005). He performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company before winning a starring role as T.E. Lawrence in the 1990 TV movie A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia. He moved on to play Heathcliff (opposite Juliette Binoche's Catherine) in Wuthering Heights (1992) and seemed primed to be typecast in great British roles. However, he took a sharp turn in 1993, winning an Oscar nomination as the nasty Nazi commandant Amon Goeth in Schindler's List (directed by Stephen Spielberg) and then playing American game show fraud Charles Van Doren in Quiz Show (1994). Since then he has appeared in all manner of films: earning another Oscar nomination as the doomed desert mapmaker Count de Almasy (actually Hungarian, not English) in The English Patient (with Binoche and Kristin Scott-Thomas); spoofing spy movies as John Steed in The Avengers (1998, with Uma Thurman as Mrs. Peel); playing both Marcel Proust (in the TV movie How Proust Can Change Your Life) and Jesus of Nazareth (in the animated film The Miracle Maker) in the same year, 2000; and starring as an American politico opposite Jennifer Lopez in the frothy Hollywood romance Maid In Manhattan. He played a popular literary villain, Lord Voldemort, in the films Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007).

Extra credit: His name is pronounced rayf fines... Fiennes was married to actress Alex Kingston from 1993 to 1997... He won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Hamlet on Broadway in 1995... His younger brother, Joseph Fiennes, starred as William Shakespeare in the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love.