Beauty Break: The Fiennes Profile
Wednesday, October 23, 2013 at 3:00PM 
this photoshoot adorned many a wallRalph Fiennes's original heyday in the mid 90s pre-dated 99.9% of the online movie world we know today (including the existence of The Film Experience in any of its forms) so I've probably never revealed to you how hard I crushed in the 90s. We used to cut his pictures out of magazines to hang them on the wall. My best friend had an even bigger thing for him and thus a veritable shrine. We felt mutual guilt given that this started with, you know, Ammon Goeth. (Don't judge!)
I felt a tinge of that old eroticism again watching the Grand Budapest Hotel trailer last week ("I sleep with all my friends"... friends? what about your fans, Fiennes, your fans!?!). Now, Wes Anderson movies are not usually with the sexytime so I'm guessing Gustav's bedhopping exploits are strictly diegetic.
Those old tingly feelings returned the second he went into profile in the trailer. Oh god, that profile.
Even when I crudely photoshop it, it's beautiful and timeless... or at least retro timeless like a daguerrotype boyfriend. I've always thought it was beyond perfect, the Most Handsomest and Profiliest Profile in The Movies.
The English Patient understood that and constantly offered it up in both moving pictures and promotional stills.
And in some perverse way I think the Harry Potter franchise did too, desecrating and perverting its holy planes (sculpted by God himself) by removing the nose entirely.
What are some of your favorite movie profiles?
Reader Comments (28)
Oh dear lord, Ralph Fiennes, what a knockout. The thinking man's (or woman's) hunk of manflesh. I love a bald guy as much as the next person, but seeing Fiennes bewigged in the Grand Budapest Hotel just looks right somehow. Maybe it's just nostalgia?
I go all the way back to the silent era for two of my favorite profiles: Ramon Novarro and Rudolph Valentino. I think they really understood faces back then, including profiles.
With a substantial nose and modeling experience, Anjelica Huston's profile is perfection.
Tilda Swinton- Don't ask me why but her chameleon-ness works
Old school:
Myrna Loy and William Powell
Pre-accident Montgomery Clift. I mean even The Clash made a song on the tragedy of him losing it.
Liz Taylor
Brando- Was his nose screwed up? Yes but it fit who he was.
I just watched DePalma's Dressed to Kill for the first time and even in her late forties, Angie Dickinson still had it. Wow.
I saw Fiennes do Hamlet on Broadway. So brilliant.
Profiles............Vivian Leigh, Veronica Lake, Rosalind Russell, Valentino, Navarro, Fairbanks, George Payne, Swanson and Streisand. I agree about Dichinson. Chrome Domes................Jason Statham in the Italian Job. He wasn't called Handsome Rob for nothing.
Jennifer Jones, Greer Garson, Gregory Peck, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Greta Garbo, Bette Davis, John Garfield, Ava Gardner, Audrey Hepburn, Julie Andrews
I had a major crush on him circa English Patient too. Unfortunately post End of Affair he started looking constipated on screen and lost his sexual aura. Quite like his predecessor in the hunky-British-thespian laurels DDL. Should we be fearing the same for for Fassbener in say 7 years?
That issue of Premiere - I kept it for weeks because of that cover! I see an English Patient/Constant Gardener film fest soon in my future. Someone should put him and Kristin Scott Thomas together again to profile off for the ages.
Barbra Streisand IS her profile. Love it and what it stands for. In her Playboy interview, Streisand singled out Silvana Mangano's nose for its beauty. Here's the relevant excerpt:
Streisand: When I was young, everyone would say, "You gonna have your nose done?" It was like a fad, all the Jewish girls having their noses done every week at Erasmus Hall High School, taking perfectly good noses and whittling them down to nothing. The first thing someone would have done would be to cut my bump off. But I love my bump, I wouldn't cut my bump off.
All I would want to do is change the tilt of the front and take off a little bit, just a little bit, that's all. I think Silvana Mangano, the Italian actress, has the most beautiful nose there is. An incredible nose, Roman, bumpy, like from an old piece of sculpture. That's what I consider beautiful. I certainly don't like pug noses or little tiny noses.
****
As for actors, I like big noses..."important noses" is how we refer to them in Italian...and ones with character. I think Owen Wilson's crooked nose gives him a beautiful profile. Also love Liam Neeson's profile, with that bulge above his eyebrows, and all angles of Daniel Day-Lewis.
One more profile that made a strong impression is that of Diana Ross. Her nose is beautiful -- not so beautiful that I would want to destroy my own to have it remodeled after hers ala Michael Jackson, but imitation is a sign of flattery and Diana's nose certainly flatters her face. And what about the beautiful Cicely Tyson? Her profile, as captured on the cover of Miles Davis' SORCERER album, is iconic.
All this talk of noses calls to mind Marsha Mason and Richard Dreyfuss' bubbly bathroom scene in The Goodbye Girl. "Your goddamn nose is driving me crazy." Ha!
Elizabeth Taylor
Juliette Binoche should get an Oscar of its own.
Juliette Binoche's nose should get an Oscar of its own.
Natalie Wood
I used to have the Strange Days poster of just Ralph Fiennes staring at me with those cold blue eyes and the tagline "You Know You Want It" in my college dorm room. I loved that poster.
LOL. My name is actually listed in the "Gaffe Squad" section of the that issue of Premiere pointing out the incongruences in the 1994 feature version of Maverick! I felt so Important. LOL.
Oh my! I used to stare at that cover of Premiere for hours. One could drown in those eyes of his. I had such a big crush on him! And those crushes never go completely away.
Ps: Garbo's nose is a masterpiece.
My Fiennes crash began during Oscar telecast in 94.
Barbra, Anjelica or Adrien Brody. I'm drawn to actors with sharp features. Despite what plastic surgeons may say, I think the camera loves them.
I love Ralph Fiennes since first time I watched The English Patient, only after that I watched Schindler's List through DVD. I think I also watched Oscar & Lucinda but the vague memory I have of that movie is a pre-Elizabeth era Cate Blanchett.
In a perverse way, I actually like him a lot in Red Dragon, more than him in Schindler's List and Harry Potter movies. I remember thinking his relationship with Emily Watson was so sexy I thought I must be going out of my mind LOL.
And then the same year he became the romantic lead in Maid in Manhattan. Say whatever you like about that movie, but Ralph Fiennes is damn fine as the "prince charming". Anything he made after that did not leave much impression on me (except maybe The Constant Gardener, but that movie is so much more than him, so it's not entirely his credit).
Uma!
Kate Hepburn, Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, Monty Clift, Diahann Carroll, Robert DeNiro, Sean Penn, Angela Bassett, Ryan Gosling.
I have to agree about Owen Wilson. His broken nose keeps him from just being another pretty boy.
WC Fields had a distinctive nose as did Jimmy Durante.
Ugh The English Patient. A foundational moment in pre-teen TB's journey to adulthood. Those faces...the desert heat...all that cooped up erotic tension...I mean, come on, after all of that lifelong crushes on Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas are a given!
Also profiles: Vivian Leigh! Elizabeth Taylor! Paul Newman! Myrna Loy! Marlon Brando! Bette Davis! I mean this is what classic Hollywood was MADE for.
La Kidman! http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnxe6kBJom1qftjzyo1_500.jpg
OMG I had and loved that Premiere cover too!
Nathaniel, like Joseph, I remember having and totally obsessing over that issue of Premiere! Memories! I was 20, working at Starbucks, and reading the issue between customers. I even remember his using the word "untoward" in the interview and deciding that I would work it into my vocabulary, out of pure worship.
Ralph Fiennes looks so good in The English Patient. Also in Quiz Show and The Costant Gardener
Marlon Brando
Gary Cooper
Montgomery Clift
Cate Blanchett
Jennifer Connelly
Rooney Mara
Greta Garbo
Paul Newman
He may not be as heartbreaking handsome as he was during the mid-to-late '90s but he's still certainly a dish, given the right hairline. And I agree, he and Kristin Scott Thomas need to get together again onscreen. Maybe Terence Davies could direct, in French.
My Ralph Fiennes crush was then superceded by my Joseph Fiennes crush after "Shakespeare in Love," and "Elizabeth."