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Ralph Fiennes Is an Extremely Fancy Boy

Fancy. Photo: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images

A new profile in GQ describes a day in the life of Ralph Fiennes, England’s No. 1 fancy boy. As if having a name with an unpronounced “L” wasn’t tony enough, Fiennes reads Shakespearian sonnets for fun (he once taught his Grand Budapest Hotel co-star Tony Revolori how to read them “the right way”). He flies with Beethoven’s piano sonatas as a security blanket, and he has an Italian villa where he goes “to read.” The refinements read like an ad against Brexit, how much a human can develop when borders are essentially meaningless. Fiennes recently spoke out about what he sees as a crisis in all of European politics, and how it especially could affect filmmaking. I wanted to say how much, how important I felt the community of filmmakers are, and given what this was, I would really be meaning European filmmakers, at the time when my own country is divided about what it means to be linked to Europe,” he told GQ. “The pleasure is that I see a French film and meditate on what it, being an Englishman, what it says to me … it offers up new provocations, and also confirms common identity of being a human being.” Even his politics are fancy.

Ralph Fiennes Is an Extremely Fancy Boy