Terry Gross:

My guests are actors Ralph and Joseph Fiennes, and their sister, documentary film maker, Sophie Fiennes. Ralph you were the first in the family to get into film. It sounds like you knew pretty young that you wanted to be in the actor?

RF:

Well, a mother who loved theatre, loved performance, and had herself, talked to us about having seen the likes of ?????, John Gielgud, Paul Scofield, Richard Burton, on stage, and the passion ?? that she discussed, or told me the memories of seeing these actors, I really listened. It really excited me. And I know that wanting to be an actor was definitely rooted in her shared passion for the theatre.

TG:

Ralph, can I ask what her reaction was when you told her that you were going to play a Nazi in Schindler's List and work with Spielberg?

RF:

She read the script and she thought that it was a brilliant script and that the character I was about to play was a tragic character really, um, uh, I think she thought that Steve Zaiillian's writing of this part was particularly rounded and perceptive, and sad, actually....so I think that, she was, her reaction was that it was a, that the script over all was, was brilliant and that the part was a wonderful opportunity for any actor.

TG:

Why don't I play a scene from Schindler's List. This is a scene in which, um, Ralph Fiennes, you know, as a Nazi is speaking to a young, attractive Jewish woman to whom he realizes he is very attracted, and he starts speaking to her in a way that is surprising considering he's a Nazi.

(Then you hear the scene in Schindler's List when Amon Goeth is in the cellar - the maid's room - and talks about wanting to touch her.)

TG:

That's Ralph Fiennes from Schindler's List, and after that comparatively sensitive moment he blames the young Jewish woman for trying to seduce him because he's so horrified that he's attracted to a Jew, he's so upset by the thought of it that just as he's about to tenderly touch her he instead erupts into a fit of anger and starts violently beating her up. Did your mother have any reaction to seeing that scene or to seeing this kind of.....to see you play such a really violent and unempathetic personality?

RF:

Well, I can't remember exactly what she said. She was very ill at that time and she had to be taken in a wheelchair to the screening. And she found it very hard to speak because the breath, her lungs were very badly affected by the cancer. So, I can only remember her just being full of praise, and being very effected actually by the whole film, as so many people were. Um, I think that's what's interesting in Blood Ties....

TG:

This is her novel.

RF:

Yeah. In Blood Ties, what she understands is that violence in somebody, somebody can behave, there is the potential for....for....I use the word warily, but there is the potential for redemption, and in the character of Spencer the reader meets a young boy totally rejected, almost from the moment of his birth, who could be very violent, and she never.....you know, he's definitely....he cuts off, he cuts off from people. He doesn't communicate. He becomes isolated and detached. You know, all his feelings are dead, but what is, what ex....I find moving about the book, you are led, the reader is led into understanding how this all came about. And.....and also then witnessing the potential for....for someone to change. And I want just to read you the very beginning of (On) Pilgrimage....because she touches on this in the first two paragraphs. It starts off.....it's not long......

(Then he reads that lovely "poor cancer" part about it being a constellation.)

TG:

In the studio now we have three members of the Fiennes family, all here to speak on their late mother's behalf, and I'm wondering if her sickness brought you closer together, or perhaps you were already very close.

JF:

Already very close, I think, um.......

SF:

Yeah, we're very close in age and, of course, it brings, I think, it did bring us together in a way, in a particular way, I think.

TG:

Uh huh. Well I want to thank you all very much for speaking with us about your mother. Appreciate it.

RF:

Thank you.

JF:

You're welcome.

SF:

Thank you.

RF:

Thank you very much.

TG:

Ralph, Joseph, and Sophie Fiennes. Their mother's final novel is called Blood Ties. It's published under her pen name, Jennifer Lash.