The one movie Ralph Fiennes wants to delete from history: “The turkey of all turkeys”
Even though he comes from an esteemed and well-to-do family, studied at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and began his performing career treading the boards in plays written by William Shakespeare, Ralph Fiennes isn’t above hamming it up in a crowd-pleaser or two.
The results have been wildly inconsistent, though. For every memorable big-budget outing as Harry Potter villain Voldemort or the M to Daniel Craig’s James Bond, there’s Jennifer Lopez’s insipid Maid in Manhattan, whatever he was doing as Hades in the short-lived Clash of the Titans franchise, or Robert Downey Jr’s dismal Dolittle to balance the scales.
He doesn’t lend his talents to escapist fare all that often, probably because he’s not one of those actors who occasionally need a quick and easy paycheque gig to tide themselves over financially. It goes without saying that Fiennes is at his best when he’s allowed to dig deep into a character, but he made a huge mistake when he first went full Hollywood.
Having worked extensively on stage and screen for over a decade, gaining mainstream attention for his terrifying Academy Award-nominated performance in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List and another Oscar-worthy turn in Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient, Tinseltown came knocking with a leading role in an expensive action comedy.
Playing John Steed opposite Uma Thurman’s Ema Peel, it would be selling 1998’s The Avengers unfairly short to call it a complete and utter shitshow. Hacked to pieces in the editing room to desperately polish a cinematic turd, Warner Bros pretty much gave up on the adaptation of the 1960s TV show entirely, foregoing a glitzy publicity tour and marking blitz in favour of sending it out to die.
That’s exactly what it did, too, with the film taking a pasting from critics and being ignored by audiences, with nine Razzie nominations rubbing further salt into a gaping wound. It’s easily the worst movie Fiennes has ever been involved with, and he admitted to Vanity Fair that it left him at a pivotal crossroads.
“I was having a slightly up-and-down moment,” he understated. “I had done this big turkey: The Avengers, which was the turkey of all turkeys. They didn’t even have a premiere. They didn’t even have screenings. They just said, ‘Put it out and then shut your eyes’. And so I was literally thinking, as you do if that comes your way, ‘Oh, my career is over.'”
It wasn’t, but he had every reason to think it might be. He was less well-known to mainstream audiences than co-stars Thurman and Sean Connery, which meant he faced the longest road back to relevancy to distance himself from the stench of The Avengers. Thanks to a combination of his acting prowess and Marvel’s franchise of the same name, most folks have mercifully forgotten it even existed.
