The movie set Ranulph Fiennes tried to blow up: “I thought I’d get rid of it”
He may be a knight of the realm, army veteran, intrepid explorer, bestselling author, record breaker, history maker, and all-around man of action, but Ranulph Fiennes is also the guy who almost went to prison for attempting to blow up the set of a Hollywood movie.
His life story is ripe for the big screen treatment, making it something of a surprise he hasn’t been the subject of a full-blown biopic yet. Whenever that feature film based on his adventures does come to fruition, though, it won’t be complete unless it touches base with his explosive ideation.
During his army days in the SAS, Fiennes discovered that a major film production had pitched up in Wiltshire, and he simply wasn’t having it. Most people would have lodged a complaint with the local council, scribbled on a placard, or shouted some abuse, but he took it upon himself to concoct something altogether more dangerous.
It wasn’t a hard-hitting drama, intimate character piece, or all-guns-blazing actioner, either, but a musical fantasy. In June 1966, principal photography was already well underway on director Richard Fleischer’s Doctor Dolittle, starring Rex Harrison as the eccentric veterinarian who can communicate with the animal kingdom.
It was a complicated shoot with many moving parts, one of which rubbed Fiennes the wrong way. As a period piece, any signs of modernity needed to be hidden away from view. The animals shipped over from the United States had to be quarantined and then replaced at short notice and great expense so as not to affect the schedule, and an artificial dam was constructed to block the flow of a local stream.
It was the latter where Fiennes drew the line, putting a plan into motion to blow the whole thing up. Just in the nick of time, his scheme was rumbled by the local authorities, and he never got around to setting fire to an outhouse with a gasoline canister that would have detonated the entire dam.
Reflecting on the moment in an interview with Daily Mail, Fiennes acknowledged “not being sent to prison for trying to blow up the set of the Doctor Dolittle film at Castle Combe in Wiltshire in 1966″ as the moment that changed the course of his life. “The locals weren’t happy with the set, so I thought I’d get rid of it,” he admitted. “The judge let me off with a heavy fine.”
He was also given six months probation and dismissed from the SAS for using his spare time to try and cause an unimaginable amount of chaos, but being freed from his military duties allowed him to focus more time on his exploration efforts. Doctor Dolittle may not have been blown up, but it did bomb at the box office, while Fiennes would go on to write his name in the history books.
