Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes are sitting in a hotel room in New York, giggling like mischievous children. They’re here to talk about their new film, The Return, but they’ve wandered down memory lane, reminiscing about their 30-plus years of collaboration and friendship. Their recollections range from earnest tales of on-set camaraderie — the times they saved each other from mid-shooting breakdowns — to behind-the-scenes gossip, to loving teasing (mostly directed from Binoche at a blushing Fiennes). More than once, they grab each other’s hands over the table or stare at each other in silence; a few times, Binoche is brought to tears.
Binoche and Fiennes have co-starred in three films over the course of 32 years: Peter Kosminsky’s critically maligned 1992 adaptation of Wuthering Heights, as the star-crossed Cathy and Heathcliff; the beloved, Oscar-winning epic The English Patient, as the gentle, grieving nurse Hana and her tormented patient Laszlo de Almasy; and on December 6, in The Return, Uberto Pasolini’s take on The Odyssey, as a particularly grizzled, brooding Odysseus who comes back to Ithaca after the Trojan War and cannot face his lonely wife, Penelope. All are literary adaptations, and all sweepingly romantic, in their way. In two out of three of the films, Fiennes is very moody until he dies (in the third, he’s suspected of being dead). In each, they play out a different kind of love with each other: lusty and doomed, platonic, angsty but unconditional.
The real-life dynamic between the two seems just as complex. Binoche describes their bond as “like brothers,†though both admit to having had crushes on each other over the years and they appear to be mutually in each other’s thrall. Fiennes warmly cops to being “benignly envious†of Binoche’s career, though both have had (and continue to have) extraordinary runs. Binoche is the more unabashedly open of the two; at times, Fiennes seems shocked and sweetly shy in response to her candor. When Binoche realizes she and I had a similarly no-holds-barred conversation a year ago with her ex and co-star Benoit Magimel, she is delighted and turns her teasing toward me. “Do you have a good time doing these interviews?†she asks, laughing. “Are we gonna do all the actors I’m working with? All the couples?!†Fiennes chimes in, slyly: “If you do any other male actors, I’ll be very jealous.â€
Tell me about the first time you met and what you remember about your first impressions of the other.
Ralph Fiennes: I remember we were brought together by Ileen Maisel and Mary Selway, the two producers of Wuthering Heights, and director Peter Kosminsky. It was in a room in Mayfair and we read together. I was in awe of her, because I’d seen you in Unbearable Lightness of Being. I was very excited and a bit fluttery.
Juliette Binoche: The first time I saw you was in that doorway in my room. As soon as I saw him, I said, “Oh my god. I’d better watch out or I’m gonna fall in love with this guy.†After he started speaking, I thought, My god, he has the same voice as Daniel Day-Lewis! It’s gonna be a nightmare! [Both laugh.] And then you were married anyway.
R.F.: As good as, yeah.
J.B.: And we went on a journey of Wuthering Heights. It was a difficult shoot.
R.F.: It was difficult.
J.B.: It was six days shooting per week and I was playing two roles, a mother and a daughter.
R.F.: Is that the first time you were performing in English?
J.B.: No, but it was the first time that I had to transform my accent to British, and in a month and a half. I moved to Yorkshire and all of that.
R.F.: Also there were reasons that perhaps there’s no point unearthing, but the production was not entirely coherent. The way it was being run was a bit tricky.
How so?
R.F.: It was being produced by what was then British Paramount. If you look at the book, it’s a brutal love story, and Heathcliff is a brutal figure. He’s not romantic. It’s traumatic, it’s full of shadows and darkness, and stuff that’s quite ugly. Which makes it rich. We both wanted that to be in the film, and we could feel the forces of production and the studio wanting something more “marketable.†But it is the first and only film that shows Cathy’s story and then the daughter’s story; all the other Wuthering Heights adaptations tend to focus just on Heathcliff and Cathy.
It was your first movie, Ralph. A lot of people think it was Schindler’s List, but that’s just because Wuthering Heights wasn’t immediately released in the U.S. What was it like to have your first film be a difficult shoot, but opposite this person whom you clearly admired?
R.F.: We were a bit restless, but I did feel I had a real ally in Juliette. [They hold hands across the table.]Â
J.B.: You did. When you shoot five days a week, you have no time to cook or run errands, and I didn’t have any help. I remember Ralph cooking for me a couple of times. It was like heaven. I felt I was taken care of. What I remember is once on a day off, you took me walking near the sea of stones that you can see in the movie. We had this deep conversation about our lives and childhoods. When I remember that time, I remember that moment. I felt like I could hear you and you heard me. It was this connection. It’s very moving and rare.
What was the rare connection?
J.B.: It was something as deep as brothers. [She begins to tear up.] It’s true.
R.F.: We both love what we do. The value of what we aspire to, the challenge of it. The quest to get deeper. How can you get deeper, more realized? We don’t talk about it. But all I know is that not only when I’m working with Juliette, but when I see her work, there’s an extraordinary ability to access the truth. I find it so inspiring. And it’s a friendship, one that grows through the pressures of filming and the expectations and the long hours. It’s good in those situations to have a friend. And we laugh. Juliette, you tease me. You stop me taking myself too seriously.
J.B.: It’s easy to do that with you. [Both laugh.]
What do you tease him about?
J.B.: Everything! When we say “deep,†it’s about truth, but it’s also about being transparent. We try to take off layers, take off masks — the protections we have, and that we have to have, in order to function in this world. It’s nice to be able to talk to and listen to each other and have this place of transparency.
R.F.: What you’re making me think of, actually, is when we first talked about doing The Return. We’d bumped into each other when we were both shooting in Georgia and we met up and talked about The Odyssey. Umberto is a wonderful director, but as directors should have, he had a plan for a crucial scene in the middle of the film. I think we both felt that that scene is the sort of central pivot of our characters’ relationship. And you were very articulate and spoke very well about, “Please, let us find it. Let us be in the room. Watch us find it. Let your camera choices relate to what happens between us.†Obviously there are many ways to direct a film, but I think you spoke for both of us to say, “Let our instincts have their space to breathe. Let us play.â€
J.B.: Sometimes you have to fight for inside and outside space. Some directors understand that very intuitively. Andrei Tarkovsky is a good example. Wim Wenders as well. Uberto was so eager to get it right — sometimes they want to anticipate, to control the situation. But he very quickly understood he had to leave us and trust what was going to happen. We didn’t know how it was going to unravel!
Were you able to present a united front to a director like that early on in Wuthering Heights or The English Patient?
J.B.: Not in Wuthering Heights. I felt I was tied up. With the hours of work we were doing, and the relationship with the director was not that easy for me. We were allies, but we were not working as well as we did afterwards, like we did in this one. And in The English Patient I felt we were allies as well. But the thing is, you were lying down all the time, so you were dependent on me. [Laughs.]
R.F.: I was!
J.B.: So I could do anything because you couldn’t move very much. You had all the makeup. Hours of makeup. And I was so free, going around and flying off and coming back.
R.F.: But Anthony Minghella was wonderful. He instinctively understood about giving us space to play. He would say, “What could you show me? I’m interested to know.†It was amazing to watch. And your relationship with Anthony was very special.
J.B.: You were a little jealous of it.
R.F.: I was. I was! Benignly jealous.
J.B.: Lovely jealous.
As in you wanted to be closer to him, or you wanted to be closer to her?
R.F.: Hmmm. No, I had a relationship with Anthony. But I could tell that there was a wonderful creative …
J.B.: Connection.
R.F.: I mean, I probably can be quite sort of moody and prickly.
J.B.: That was okay for the character. It served the character.
R.F.: I can be kind of … closed. I could see you being all open with Anthony. I’m there in my makeup.
J.B.: And you couldn’t laugh in the makeup!
R.F.: I was imprisoned in latex.
I was going back to the interviews you both did around this time, and it’s funny the way you just characterized yourself as being moody and Juliette being open — those were also the characterizations you were given by the press. Did it feel accurate to you, Juliette? Was he moody, and were you more open?
J.B.: The journey for Ralph was more difficult, reading the book and making sure all of the elements of the book were there. How do you bring, as an actor, your own continuation of what’s been written while the script was different from the book? There was a lot for him to think about. For me, in the character, it was different. It was about rebirth, falling in love again, and taking care of this patient until the end. It was very moving. The scene when I was flying through the church, that wasn’t in the book. But it was a joy and a lightness. Ralph had something tragic — living with the memory of the love of his life dying in a cage by herself. He was tormented!
R.F.: Being younger, I realize now, you armor yourself. You have expectations and pressures and without thinking, you have sort of protective layers from which you might talk to the director. I don’t know how much I’ve changed, but I think I was quite kind of [affects an anxious look], “What’s that about?†I thought I was being properly examine-y, but I think sometimes it can be more defensive. I had more defensive layers then. Perhaps I’ve shed a few.
J.B.: I remember we were staying in the same hotel. Our rooms were next to each other. I didn’t know until you heard me shout on the phone.
R.F.: I did.
J.B.: I shouted because my boyfriend was very jealous at the time. And I couldn’t understand how he could be jealous like that. Because I was being perfect! And then you realized we were next to each other in the hotel. And then I felt ashamed that I shouted like this. But it made us laugh a lot.
Did you say to her, “I heard you on the phone�
J.B.: Yeah, you said that!
R.F.: Did I say that? “I heard you shouting last night�
J.B.: Yes! With my boyfriend, who was crazy jealous.
R.F.: And we were so good! [Both laugh.]
Wuthering Heights was not well received critically, and it only played on TV here after Schindler’s success, but The English Patient was a massive critical hit and won all those Oscars. What did both of those wildly different experiences feel like to navigate together, only a few years apart — one a success, and one was not a failure, exactly, but …
R.F.: It was a bit of a failure.
J.B.: You learn to be Buddhist. You learn to not take it personally if it doesn’t work, or if it works so well. I mean, I learned that. I don’t know if you did.
R.F.: It’s a learning curve. I remember feeling disappointment. It was a famous classic, and reviews were mixed to poor.
J.B.: You have to detach yourself from the nonsense.
R.F.: You have to move on.
J.B.: It’s interesting. In France, the idea of success was — you would do a film, and whether it worked or not was not the point for the actors and directors. That was the care of the producers and the distributors. But as artists it was not as important. Today, it’s changed totally. Now actors put the numbers of their box office on their Instagram.
R.F.: You’re saying in French cinema now there’s an emphasis on box office over critical success?
J.B.: Absolutely. Now it’s about the results. And if the quality is not good, it’s fine. It really changed. I’m not against a film that has success and is working; that’s wonderful. Very artistic films can work well. But it’s easy to get into the need for recognition. We all need recognition, but actors probably need more recognition than normal people.
R.F.: That’s true.
J.B.: Or why would we put ourselves in this place?
Now that you’ve made your third movie together, The Return, what’s your favorite scene you’ve filmed together?
J.B.: If I may pick one of each? In Wuthering Heights, we were toward the end of shooting and we couldn’t bear working on the film anymore. I felt I was on the verge of losing it. And I could feel Ralph going, Don’t do that. Don’t go there.
R.F.: On Wuthering Heights, you lost it in a way that was great and brilliant. There were marks on the floor, and your frustration came out: You kicked this wooden mark with colored tape on it. And you said, “I hate limits.†I never forgot that. I thought, That’s what I want to be.Â
J.B.: On The English Patient, I remember the moment when I broke the morphine vial, and the vial actually broke on my fingers. It was glass, and I broke it so strongly that it opened my fingers and there was blood. I remember Anthony carrying on the shooting, and Ralph being upset. And that really touched me.
R.F.: On The Return, you were not needed one day. But not only did you come in to be off-camera for me, but you put on the basics of the costume. It was an eyeline, not even dialogue. That’s very rare.
Between shooting and promoting Wuthering Heights and The English Patient and The Return, how often did you see each other?
J.B.: It depends.
R.F.: There are times when we don’t connect. And times we do.
J.B.: I came to see you in London to play Macbeth. You came to see me play Antigone.
R.F.: I saw it twice.
What was the longest you went without seeing each other or speaking?
J.B.: I have no idea of time. As actors, we work so much, we travel so much. Embodying different times in films, there are moments when you’re in another world, in a way. I live in a place inside me that has no real connection with real time.
Have you developed a shorthand after working together? A way of communicating in glances, little things you say to each other, code?
[Both stare at each other intensely without speaking.]
Are you doing it right now?
J.B.: I do remember one thing. But I don’t think I’m gonna tell it.
R.F.: Don’t! If you have that thought, then don’t.
J.B.: There’s respect. That’s what I feel. We’re different. Very different. And yet very close. I can be a little upset with you, but that goes away. It’s not a big thing.
R.F.: I don’t think I’m ever upset, and I hate the idea that I would ever upset Juliette. If I have, I’m sorry.
Over the course of your relationship, have you seen each other change, on a personal level?
J.B.: It’s difficult to answer that. I know you and yet I don’t know you.
R.F.: You do know me.
J.B.: I know you. But I don’t know everything about you.
R.F.: I feel our friendship has just got deeper. I feel Juliette sees me. All my faults, all the things. And I think I see you. And I don’t know things about you. Over the years, she’s become a mother of two children and has a life that I’m aware of, but I don’t know her children. We’ve met as friends and seen each other in our various plays. That’s terribly meaningful to me, when she comes to see me and I see her onstage, and it’s always wonderful. It feels like a really strong friendship.
J.B.: And I’ve met your parents. It’s very meaningful to have known your parents.
When did you meet them?
J.B.: Several times I met your mother.
R.F.: My mom came to the set of Wuthering Heights.
J.B.: And we had dinner at your place. He prepared an orange duck. He’s a very good cook.
R.F.: Did I do that?
J.B.: It was so good. I was sitting in between your mother and father. And once he came to Paris and I gave you my house so you could stay there with your wife. When he left the house, he did a little drawing — not a little one, a big one. Things like that stay in your heart. Once, at the end of filming Chocolat, Johnny Depp gave me the best wine ever, a very expensive Cheval Blanc. And Ralph invited me to have breakfast with Jonathan Kent, a director we worked with. We went to Ralph’s house to have brunch; he was preparing it. And I gave him the bottle thinking we were going to have it together. We had brunch and didn’t open that bottle. So I was a little disappointed. I said, “Okay, next time we’ll open it.†A few years after, I went to his house — he’d moved — and I said, “Where’s the bottle? Can we open it?†He said, “No. I drank it.†I said, “You’re kidding me! You didn’t wait for me?†I said, “What?! What a betrayal!†[Laughs and smacks the table.]
Did you know it was that fancy?
R.F.: I knew it was a fancy bottle. I didn’t know I was meant to open it at brunch.
J.B.: I forgive you. I forgive you.
R.F.: I now have to find another bottle of this wine, which was a great, great French Bordeaux. And I will make sure we drink it.
Career-wise, you have both made decisions to move away from Hollywood and turned things down that surprised people. Looking back, there are a lot of parallels in the way you guys have navigated your careers. Did you and do you talk about these sorts of choices?
R.F.: I don’t sense we discuss it that much. But I was always, again, benignly envious of her work. Amazing directors, all of these auteurs who make the films they want to make.
J.B.: Do you mean you’re a little jealous of me?
R.F.: Yes. Working with Claire Denis …
J.B.: Yeah, but it’ll come, Ralph. Don’t worry!
R.F.: Claire Denis doesn’t pick up the phone when I call her. [Laughs.]Â
J.B.: I think theater in your life has been such an anchor. Your love of Shakespeare. I wasn’t regularly in the theater. I’ve done crazy shows, like the dance show or the singing show. But the love of theater is very special. You can always come back to it.
R.F.: Juliette is incredibly brave and makes very interesting choices. I might make more conventional choices.
J.B.: Ralph has been going into directing. At the moment I’m doing it, and I see all the difficulty of it.
R.F.: She directed me recently.
In what?
J.B.: It’s a short film with Anish Kapoor. About a ride in Paris, bringing a painting to a collector, and Ralph was playing the collector. But the producer is not finding the way of producing it. So I might do it a different way. I have to find money for it. We’ll see; it’s on hold. But you played a scene that’s very funny.
R.F.: She enjoyed pushing me.
J.B.: I was pushing you a lot.
How’d you push him?
R.F.: She’d say, “I don’t know, Ralph, something’s not connecting.†And then she’d say, “Yeah, that was good — because I irritated you, suddenly it works!†[Both laugh.]
J.B.: You got grumpy.
R.F.: “You got a bit grumpy, Ralph, but actually this is your best take.â€
J.B.: I was teasing him a lot. He played the game very well.
From an acting perspective, have you seen each other get better? Or are there quirks you’ve picked up in each other’s processes that have stood the test of time?
J.B.: I’ve always felt that Ralph is intense, but in the best way. Concentrated, committed in the moment, as if it’s the most important thing he’s doing in his life.
R.F.: What I’ve learned from Juliette is allowing an accident to happen. I think I’m someone who wants to know the root or have the shape of the scene. But the best acting, particularly on film, is accident. István Szabó, a Hungarian director, once said to me, “Film is about the close-up. Emotions being born on the face for the first time.†Doing a number of takes, we dread the sense of being stuck. We’ve got to keep moving. That’s what Juliette is wonderful at. She just has a deeper instinct of going to the place where something sparks.
J.B.: What you learn as actors is that it’s not your will doing it. It’s you allowing it to happen in you.
R.F.: Exactly. That was the advice I was given by the principle of RADA, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, when I auditioned. It was the third audition, and I hadn’t got the place. He said, “I think you could be an actor, but I have one note for you: You’re making it happen. Let it happen.â€
Good advice for life, too. To return to the point you’ve made a few times, Ralph, about benign envy, was it uncomfortable at all when Juliette won the Oscar for The English Patient and you didn’t?
R.F.: No, no.Â
J.B.: No, I remember you had a beautiful gesture. When I walked down to the stage, you touched my arm like this, and I felt, Okay, I have Ralph with me. I remember you grabbing me because you were happy.
R.F.: The emphasis is on benign. You look at someone thinking, Oh God, I’d love to be doing that. But you look at them with love. It’s not, Why aren’t I doing that?
That’s very evolved.
J.B.: I remember once we were in a restaurant having dinner and there was an actor who plays Sherlock Holmes. And you said to me, “I should have been Sherlock Holmes!†Do you remember that?
R.F.: [Laughs loudly.] I don’t remember that.
J.B.: It was so funny.Â
Were there ever projects over the years you were almost in together and then weren’t? Or that you thought about doing together that didn’t work out?
R.F.: We’ll have to do a play together, Juliette. We’ve talked about it. I think we just need to find the right thing that moves us, and the right director. But I’d like to think that would be our next reunion: onstage.
When you first met, you were worried you’d fall in love —
J.B.: Because I just had a relationship before and Ralph looked very much like him. And so I was a little … [Makes an exaggerated gulp noise.]Â
You mean Daniel Day-Lewis?
J.B.: No.
At any point during all of these years as friends and working together, did you ever actually discuss being more than friends?
R.F.: Just friends.
J.B.: Well, he’s always been kind of busy with his love life.
R.F.: I do think it’s a big love. The love that can exist between friends.
But did you ever have a crush on Juliette?
R.F.: Oh, yes. Yes! Who wouldn’t?