Amidst the many things from stage to screen keeping him busy, Ralph Fiennes will be cuddling up to Charles Dickens for two film projects. According to The Daily Mail, he’ll be taking a second shot at directing with The Invisible Woman – a film telling the story of the author’s affair with an 18-year-old girl (when he was at the ripe young age of 45). He’s been meeting with actresses like Imogen Poots, Abbie Cornish and Felicity Jones, but the entire project is still in its earliest phases. There’s always the possibility that he’ll act while directing (like he did with Coriolanus), but at this stage it’s unlikely that he’ll star as Dickens.
While he’s aiming to shoot that next Spring or Summer, he’ll be facing Dickens first this Fall as he plays Abel Magwitch in Mike Newell’s adaptation of Great Expectations.
More Fiennes is never a bad thing, and if he can deliver on the directing front with the same power he did in his first outing, he may start hearing his name up for awards for work behind the camera as well as in front of it. In the short term, though, it looks like he’ll be responsible for a new resurgence in Dickensian work. Apparently Voldemort is extremely well-read.
