Ralph Fiennes on the art of fighting and why The King’s Man is like a Roger Moore Bond flick

One-time Bond contender Ralph Fiennes tells how Shakespearean sword fighting helped make him an action hero in The King’s Man.

Ralph Fiennes at the World Premiere of The King's Man in London last month. Picture: Getty Images

Ralph Fiennes already has one spy movie franchise on his resume – and he’s now on active duty on a second.

A decade ago, he was cast as military man Gareth Mallory in Skyfall, Daniel Craig’s third film as James Bond, and was elevated to the status of 007’s boss M with the death of Judi Dench’s character at the end of that movie.

Fiennes, who was once considered for the Bond role himself, returned to that role for Spectre and this year’s monster hit, No Time To Die. But if Craig’s boldly definitive swan song left his castmates up in the air as to what their future with Her Majesty’s Secret Service held, Fiennes can take solace from having stepped out from behind the mahogany desk to join the frontline action by joining Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman franchise.

Fiennes plays the Duke of Oxford in The King’s Man, which serves as an origin story for Kingsman: The Secret Service and its sequel Kingsman: the Golden Circle, both of which starred Taron Egerton and Colin Firth.

THE KING’S MAN

The versatile, twice-Oscar-nominated actor says he was a fan of Vaughn’s fun and fanciful take on the action-adventure spy genre, which he says was a welcome contrast to the darker and more serious Bond films of the Craig era, as overseen by long-time producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson.

“I like where the Bond films have gone and I have to say I very much like where Barbara and Michael have taken it with Sam (Mendes) and then with Cary Fukunaga,” Fiennes says of his tenure as M. “But I would say it’s a contrast to Matthew’s quite overt mischief and sometimes almost slightly campy humour and action, which you might find in the Roger Moore Bonds of the past. So, I think that’s the difference.

“But what’s great (is that) these two very different franchises are both managed very strongly. Matthew has a very strong personal imprint on it – it’s his creation, so you don’t feel like it’s being run by a studio, you feel it’s one man’s baby. And that’s a good feeling.

“It’s the same with the way Barbara and Michael, with their directors, also manage the Bond franchise with a very particular sense of responsibility to what the Bond franchise has become over 50 years. So, in that sense they are sort of family businesses.”

Prince Charles speaks to actors Daniel Craig, Ralph Fiennes and director Cary Joji Fukunaga during a visit to the James Bond set at Pinewood Studios in 2019 Picture: Getty Images

Whereas M is mostly the shadowy figure pulling the strings in the Bond films (although he’s pretty handy with a firearm when push comes to shove), Oxford is very much an agent in the field in the WWI-era The King’s Man. After his wife becomes a casualty of war, Oxford eventually puts his pacifist leanings to the side and uses his wealth and influence to try to prevent the world sliding into the greatest conflict it had even seen.

As he faces off with real historical figures – Rhys Ifans is hilariously nasty as Rasputin and Tom Hollander has a triple role as real life cousins Nicholas II of Russia, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and King George V of England – Oxford shoots, slashes and punches his way around Europe, all of which meant some serious stunt training for Fiennes.

“I wanted to do as much of the stunts as I was allowed to do,” he says. “All of us who had to do action sequences trained quite hard and there is quite a lot of action and physical stuff for the Duke of Oxford at the end. But for certain stunts they were not going to give me the Tom Cruise credentials so I can’t pretend that it’s 100 per cent me. It was quite demanding at times – and I have given a decent contribution and lived to tell the tale.”

Ralph Fiennes, Djimon Hounsou, Harris Dickinson and Rhys Ifans at the The King's Man New York gala screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City Picture: Getty Images

One area where Fiennes already had a head start was with his sword fighting.

Oxford’s weapon of choice is a deadly blade concealed in a walking cane and thanks to his years of doing Shakespeare on stage, he was finally able to emulate some of his early heroes on screen too.

“It was great,” he says. “I have done sword fights in Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, some fighting sequences recently in Antony and Cleopatra. I have always loved stage fighting, which translates to film stunt fighting. And I have always admired the great sword fighting scenes of the ’30s and ’40s on film – Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn. I loved Ridley Scott’s The Duellists and recently I loved his medieval film (The Last Duel), there was a great sword-fight tournament at the end of that. I like a good sword fight, so when this came along I was quite excited.”

Fiennes says if he could choose any historical figure to play on screen – he’s already played Charles Dickins and Alexander Pushkin among others – he’d opt for British miliary heroes Lord Nelson or the Duke of Wellington. But he’s also been prepared to show a much darker side. His Oscar-nominated turn as real-life Nazi concentration camp supervisor Amon Goth in Schindler’s List was as vile a creation as has ever graced the silver screen and he dialled the villainy up to 11 to give children nightmares as the dark wizard Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies.

Ralph Fiennes and Gemma Arterton at the World Premiere of The King's Man in London last month. Picture: Gareth Cattermole/Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for Disney

He traces his willingness to make bold choices back to advice his mother gave him about staying true to himself and not worrying what others thought of him, as well as some early professional guidance.

“I remember once saying to a teacher at drama school, ‘If I do this then maybe they won’t like me’,” he says. “And he tore me down and said, ‘There are always going to be people who don’t like you – for God’s sake, grow up. Go forward, follow your heart and your impulse and look for people you trust’.

“If you only make choices only to satisfy your idea or my idea of other people’s opinion then I think that’s a mad path. We have to go through life trying to become who we were meant to be and if we are only geared by someone else’s version then we will never get there.”

The King’s Man opens in cinemas on January 6