Ralph Fiennes: ‘I wish I’d been more of a punk, but it’s not in my DNA to be truly anarchic’

My mother had an expression: “Get your guts into it.” She used to say it with an emphatic movement of the forearm, which amused me and my siblings. She would push us to go deep into whatever we were doing, from homework to a painting or drawing.

I wish I’d been more of a punk. At 15, a large part of me wanted to cut loose and be rebellious. I pogoed at a Stranglers gig in Southampton, and my mother cut my hair into a semi-mohican mess. My father got very cross. But it’s not in my DNA to be truly anarchic; I still wanted my parents’ approval.

Barely being recognised at all is a great relief. Recently I went to India and nobody knew who I was. I travelled third class on a train, where there was no air conditioning and lots of odours: food, bodies, feet, spices. It was great.

Academic work was not my strength. At school I was happiest in the art room and all the other subjects fell away – I was hopeless at sciences, mathematics. Although I was reasonably at ease if I had to get up and read something, I was hopeless at A-level English, too.

Shakespeare came pretty close when he defined love: “Love is not love, which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove.” I find love is an overused word, put into cheesy contexts.

I like buckwheat, the occasional steak and really dark chocolate. But I could happily live without all of them if I had to. I can cook a simple meal reasonably well, but I can’t do fancy-schmancy stuff.

I was the new boy at school. I moved many times when I was young [the family moved to Ireland and then Salisbury, doing up houses and selling them on] and it was quite traumatic: the upheaval and getting to know new people. But having to relocate makes you good at surviving. It also helps you know quite quickly which people you’re going to connect with.

The people I am close to give me hope. Hope comes when I see or hear of acts of generosity and kindness, tolerance and forgiveness, and people’s endeavouring to connect with each other and support each other in small ways. The love of my parents was my first experience of a forgiving and benign force.

It’s in front of an audience that I start to really learn what I’m doing. You rehearse, but a play grows over time. I feel sad that we don’t have a system of adjusting and changing things after the first night.

It’s important not to get into a little hole of just perfecting one’s own technique. I’m always looking at other actors. Paintings, photographs and books can give you all kinds of insights.

I’m very disturbed and scared by where I feel the world is heading. There’s a malign energy, an ignorant force, that comes out in tribal, nationalistic animosities, or Mexican drug cartel violence, or religious-based extremism and blatant corporate greed and aggression. It’s fuelling terrible destruction.

At the moment I’m learning Russian. Just because I want to. I’ll admit my grasp is limited. I wish it were a bit more advanced. But it’s hard to concentrate on the grammar when my head is full of my work.

Someone once said of Alec Guinness that his speech was a “miracle of utterance”. That’s what I feel when I hear Judi Dench speak Shakespeare. Her ability to phrase and deliver it as if it’s her natural language is stunning.

Ralph Fiennes stars in The Master Builder, at The Old Vic until 19 March, and in A Bigger Splash, in cinemas from 12 February