The Invisible Woman

The second directorial effort from Ralph Fiennes, The Invisible Woman tells the story of Nelly (Felicity Jones), a happily married mother and schoolteacher, who is haunted by her past. Her memories, provoked by remorse and guilt, take us back in time to follow the story of her relationship with Charles Dickens (Fiennes) with whom she discovered an exciting but fragile complicity. 

Dickens – famous, controlling and emotionally isolated within his success – falls for Nelly, who comes from a family of actors. The theatre is a vital arena for Dickens – a brilliant amateur actor – a man more emotionally coherent on the page or stage, than in life. As Nelly becomes the focus of Dickens’ passion and his muse, for both of them secrecy is the price, and for Nelly a live of “invisibility”. 

On portraying Charles Dickens 

Fiennes did not intend to play Charles Dickens at first. “I was undecided for a long time,” Fiennes admits. “Until after quite a few months of working on it, I felt, despite knowing it would be very difficult, that I couldn’t resist playing him.” 

The Charles Dickens revealed in The Invisible Woman is a man possessed of ferocious energy. Not only does he juggle a young mistress with marriage and 10 children, but he successfully maintains a vigorous writing regime and roles as a journalist, actor, theatre director, social campaigner and celebrated bon vivant.

“In a funny way, that probably helped me because it was very Dickens to be organising people and doing everything,” says Fiennes, of the enormity of the role he undertook as director and lead actor. “He was in control of everything.”

The cast was thrilled to have an actor of the calibre of Fiennes as director. He won a BAFTA for his role in Schindler’s List in 2004 and has since been nominated a further four times, including for the best debut by a British writer, director or producer for Coriolanus in 2012. He has also been nominated twice for an Academy Award® for Schindler’s List in 1994 and again for The English Patient in 1997.

For Kristen Scott Thomas, who plays Nelly’s mother, Catherine Ternan, it was the third time she had worked with Fiennes following their famous on-screen love affair in The English Patient, for which they were both nominated for Oscars. “I enjoyed being directed by Ralph as much as I enjoy acting with him,” she says. “I’m in awe of what he’s doing. He’s keeping it all in the right place, with everything ticking over and at the same time manages to remain one of the team as far as the actors are concerned.”

For Fiennes, it was very important to convey Dickens’ vitality, love of life, and the sheer force of his charm. He points to the first scene in which Dickens’ appears – a cheerfully organised yet chaotic rehearsal scene, as crucial to this depiction. He describes Dickens as a man of “extraordinary imaginative power and range”.

The Invisible Woman is in cinemas nationwide 17 April.