Ralph Fiennes has a 'Grand' time

NEW YORK — Never stand between an actor and a superhero.

Even Ralph Fiennes, the genteel, soft-spoken British thespian who is the eighth cousin of the Prince of Wales, a veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a two-time Oscar and three-time Golden Globe nominee and BAFTA winner, and as it happens, enamored with a certain web-slinger.

"Is that your son's Spider-Man helmet?" says Fiennes, spotting a scarlet mask in this reporter's bag. "My god. I have to put this on," he says, immediately placing it on his face and mugging for a selfie.

TRAILER: 'The Grand Budapest Hotel'

MORE: 'Grand Budapest Hotel' completely explained

Yes, this is the same Fiennes who personified unmitigated, stony cruelty as Nazi officer Amon Goeth in Schindler's List, portrayed evil incarnate in four Harry Potter fables as Lord Voldemort and earned raves and a Tony for playing Hamlet on Broadway in 1995.

So it's particularly refreshing to see a more droll side of the actor, 51, who goes flashy and finicky in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel as a dandy, flamboyant concierge falsely accused of murder and seeking to clear his name. Fiennes' Gustave douses himself with L'Air de Panache and has a penchant for bedding older women, such as Madame D (Tilda Swinton). His reasoning, he tells his protégé, is simple: "When you're young, it's all fillet steak, but as you get older, you have to move on to the cheaper cuts."

Yet when Gustave goes on the lam,a strangely honorable side of him emerges. "I love unlikely heroes, surprising heroes who stand up for something. It moves me. I love that about him," says Fiennes of Gustave. "I loved the part on the page. The part came from my own center, and not a sense of affected personage. And then I could enjoy playing him. There's something in his voice — I felt close to him, dare I say. I felt I knew him."

The film is full of Anderson's regular crew of actors, including Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman and Edward Norton. So how, exactly, did Fiennes land the lead? "Wes had my e-mail address. Suddenly he said, 'I have a script. Would you read it and tell me what part interests you?' He asked me to look at 1930s Ernst Lubitsch films," says Fiennes, who wanted to ground Gustave in some sense of reality even as he inhabited Anderson's fantastical, whimsical world. "I had to feel like he was a real person in a real situation. I need to know there's a reality there."

Anderson had known Fiennes socially for a number of years, and had seen him on stage in London in the play God of Carnage.

"With this role, I thought of him and could never think of anyone else. He could make this character a real person," says Anderson. "And then as a collaborator, he really puts everything into it. This work is his life."

Oddly enough, Gustave was based, in part, on an actual person. "Wes and I know someone whom we used as a model for him. I can't tell you who. That guy does have Gustave-like qualities," says Fiennes.

In developing the character, Fiennes immersed himself in the singular world that Anderson creates. "For me, it's the text. The more I say it, the more I inhabit it — I like to ask myself questions about stuff. It's more of a head process. And then you get into a room and start to play. ... Sometimes the clothes help," he says. "I had to be light on my feet. The shoes had to fit perfectly. If the shoes are right, you can be light. It's got to look fantastic and effortless."

He, however, sees barely anything of himself in the foul-mouthed, oily character, who has exacting standards and tends to explode when things don't go as planned, but then is the first to apologize for overreacting. "I enjoyed the swearing. I can see myself having a temper tantrum when someone has failed to bring the perfume. You trip over yourself because you have failed to see the whole story," he says.

Like Gustave, Fiennes is alert, aware and observant. And as Gustave does, Fiennes, who has homes in Manhattan and London, sees the appeal of temporary lodgings where you get what you want, when you want it. "Sometimes they're a great escape. They're anonymous. You close the door to a room and it has nothing to do with you. It feels calm. If it's a good hotel, you go, 'Ah.' I'm in hotels a lot for junkets," says Fiennes.

Unlike so many of his peers, who love nothing more than expounding on themselves and can barely fake interest in others, Fiennes is one of the very few actors who would prefer to discuss anything other than himself. "Do you live in New York?" he wonders. "I have a place here too, downtown. The High Line is my backyard. You have just the one child? How old? Does he like to read a lot?"

Ever the itinerant actor, Fiennes makes the most of his globe-trotting lifestyle. "He's someone who likes to really get out in the world and see things and do things," says Anderson. "He travels and has lots of friends and he's very adventurous. Right after he finished with us, he did a movie (Two Women) in Russia in Russian. He's a very bright, thoughtful person. He's someone who really listens. He's also very particular and very precise in what he does."

And there's more adventure in his immediate future. He played the head of MI6 inSam Mendes' 2012 James Bond blockbuster Skyfall and, yes, he's returning for the next 007 installment.

"I don't know what it is. It's being written," says Fiennes, raising his voice in faux-ire. "I'm waiting to know what it is, what they're doing. "

The actor, who is single, himself is childless and thinks of his films, especially the two he has directed, as something akin to his children.

"It's this thing that I'm giving everything to," he says. "I think right now I am going through a choosy phase. I definitely want to direct again and originate something. I really miss the theater. I am currently identifying theater projects — one, a year from now, would be in rehearsal, and one would be in the fall of 2015. I really feel bereft. I wanted to be an actor because of the theater. I never thought of movies, movies. That seemed like a fantasy."

Quite like an Anderson film