USA Today
explores how filmmakers made Ralph Fiennes into the evil Lord Voldemort for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The word is that Fiennes' performance as Voldemort is quite terrifying.
Rowling's words in the Goblet of Fire book describe Voldemort, also known as the Dark Lord or You Know Who, as "whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat as a snake's with slits for nostrils. ... His hands were like large, pale spiders." And, he likes to punctuate his terrifying utterances with "a high, cold mirthless laugh."
He is meant to embody the very essence of malevolence.
"It's hard to beat the human imagination: I suppose I had a rather melodramatic view of him in my head," says Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry. "I probably saw him with scales."
Fiennes' Voldemort has no scales, but his head is shaved and veiny, his pallor deathly, his teeth yellow and his nose erased, thanks to the magic of computers.
The actor says he imbued his Voldemort with "the quality of unpredictability, someone who's simmering with a deep, incredible rage and fury. I hope it's scary," Fiennes says. "It's what I call red meat. There's nothing in a minor key."
His co-stars think the portrayal will fall into moviegoers' indelible category.
"It's such an unbelievably hard thing to approach, playing ultimate evil," says Radcliffe. "And I sort of know firsthand, because he scared me when we were doing it."
Director Mike Newell agreed with Fiennes that to make his eyes red would hurt the performance. So they digitally erased Fiennes' nose to make him more snakelike, but the eyes are all Fiennes. We can't wait to see it.
