Age: 63
male
Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes (born 22 December 1962) is an British-American actor, film producer, and director. He has received various accolades, including a British Academy Film Award and a Tony Award, as well as nominations for three Academy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Born in Ipswich, Suffolk, Fiennes was trained at and graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1985. A Shakespeare interpreter, he excelled onstage at the Royal National Theatre before succeeding at the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1995, Fiennes made his Broadway debut playing Prince Hamlet in the revival of the William Shakespeare play Hamlet, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. He was later Tony-nominated for his role as a travelling faith healer in the Brian Friel play Faith Healer (2006). Fiennes made his film debut playing Heathcliff in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1992). He has earned three Academy Award nominations for his performances in the films Schindler's List (1993), The English Patient (1996), and Conclave (2024). He has also acted in Quiz Show (1994), Maid in Manhattan (2002), The Constant Gardener (2005), In Bruges (2008), The Reader (2008), The Duchess (2008), The Hurt Locker (2009), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), A Bigger Splash (2015), Hail, Caesar! (2016), and The Menu (2022). Fiennes gained wider recognition for playing Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter film series (2005–2011) and Gareth Mallory / M in the James Bond films (2012–2021); and has voiced roles in the animated films The Prince of Egypt (1998), Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), and The Lego Batman Movie (2017). He directed and starred in the films Coriolanus (2011) and The Invisible Woman (2013). Aside from acting, Fiennes has been an ambassador for UNICEF UK since 1999.
The King in Yellow is a book of short stories by the American writer Robert W. Chambers, first published by F. Tennyson Neely in 1895. The book is named after a play with the same title which recurs as a motif through some of the stories. The first half of the book features highly esteemed horror stories, and the book has been described by critics such as E. F. Bleiler and T. E. D. Klein as a classic in the field of the supernatural. Lin Carter called it "an absolute masterpiece, probably the single greatest book of weird fantasy written in this country between the death of Poe and the rise of Lovecraft." There are 10 stories, the first four of which ("The Repairer of Reputations", "The Mask", "In the Court of the Dragon", and "The Yellow Sign") mention The King in Yellow, a forbidden play which induces despair or madness in those who read it. "The Yellow Sign" inspired a film of the same name released in 2001. The British first edition was published by Chatto & Windus in 1895 (316 pages).
