Dr Fiennes is off to star in Hollywood

By Anne Gould

EAST Anglian movie star Ralph Fiennes will be soon returning to the familiar glitz and glamour of Hollywood after securing yet another major film role – to play a serial killer.

The actor, who was presented with a Doctorate of Civil Law by Suffolk College a few weeks ago, is to take the title role of the serial killer in Red Dragon, the new Hannibal Lecter film.

The movie will see Fiennes star alongside Sir Anthony Hopkins, who returns in his role as psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter.

Producer Dino De Laurentiis had been eager to secure Fiennes to complete the cast for the film, which is based on Thomas Harris's 1981 best-selling crime thriller of the same name.

The novel was previously adapted to film in 1986 as the thriller Manhunter and was directed by Michael Mann.

Fiennes, who was Oscar-nominated for his performances in Steven Speilberg's Schindler's List and Anthony Minghellas' The English Patient, will also star with Edward Norton, who plays FBI agent Will Graham.

The Dr Lecter saga began with the release of the psychological thriller The Silence of the Lambs in 1991, which was based on Harris's 1988 best-selling novel of the same name.

It became a major commercial and critical success, sweeping no fewer than five major Academy awards including best picture, best actor (Sir Anthony Hopkins), best actress (Jodie Foster), best director and best adapted screen play.

The film was followed this year by an adaptation of Harris' sequel, entitled Hannibal, which saw Hopkins brought back as Dr Lecter and Foster replaced with Julianne Moore.

Fiennes was born in the village of Wangford, near Southwold, and is the eldest of six children. His father Mark was a photographer and his mother Jennifer Lash was a novelist.

All but one of his siblings has followed their parents into the arts. Fiennes' brother Jacob, 35, from Raveningham, near Norwich, works as a gamekeeper on an East Anglian estate.

Now the cast is in place with a script from The Silence of the Lambs Oscar-winning writer Ted Tally, production of Red Dragon is due to begin after Christmas.