The atrocious 1998 movie Ralph Fiennes will always be perversely proud of: “It’s a badge of honour”
Many actors would go out of their way to distance themselves from the single worst movie they’ve ever made, and are likely ever to make, but not Ralph Fiennes.
He probably should, though, seeing as virtually everyone else involved in the production has taken a huge, steaming, metaphorical dump on it at least once, and he’s been one of them. And yet, despite its innumerable flaws, the star remains perversely proud of his professional nadir.
Ever since cinema became an international art form, those who deliver a breakout or breakthrough performance in an acclaimed, awards-bothering film will see their name value increase, and those roads will almost inevitably lead towards an expensive, effects-heavy studio blockbuster.
For Fiennes, his Academy Award-nominated role in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, which was only his third feature, did the trick. Three years and three films later, The English Patient did much the same, with another Oscar-nominated turn in a ‘Best Picture’ winner elevating his star to the highest it had ever been.
What did he do next? Oscar and Lucinda, technically, but after that, The Avengers. Not the Marvel one, but the really shite one, the one so irredeemably awful that Sean Connery, who sleepwalked his way through an embarrassing villainous performance, called it the one and only entry in his filmography that he wished had never existed.
The big-screen reinvention of the 1960s TV series also sent helmer Jeremiah S Chechik into directorial exile for 15 years, was butchered by the studio to the extent that screenwriter Don Macpherson compared his conversations with the suits to “listening to Stalin on crack,” and landed nine nods at the Razzies.
Make no mistake, it’s a piece of shit, the biggest and shittiest piece of shit you’ll ever see Fiennes starring in, and he was in those Clash of the Titans flicks. He knows it, too, having once referred to the ill-judged abomination as “the turkey of all turkeys,” one that had the potential to derail his post-English Patient momentum.
It didn’t, thankfully, partly because he’s too good to let one disaster define him, and he even refused to shy away from The Avengers‘ reputation. Reflecting on the most ignominious and egregious work he’ll ever commit to the cameras, Fiennes took it in good stride, saying, “I think it’s a badge of honour to have a real flop on your resume.”
That’s an admirable way to look at it, but in an industry where an actor’s career is completely capable of being made or broken in two hours or less, he might not have the same twisted pride in the movie if he hadn’t been able to recover.
