'Harry Potter' Star Ralph Fiennes Embraces Voldemort's Evilness

If there was an award for perfecting the art of unadulterated evil, Ralph Fiennes certainly should have won it by now. The Oscar-nominated actor first appeared as Voldemort in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," and the series has never been the same since.

Voldemort gets more screen time than ever in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1" (in theaters Friday), including one incredibly den-of-evil scene in Malfoy Manor. Because he has so many opportunities to be so bad, it's unsurprising that Fiennes said that both parts of "Deathly Hallows" were his favorite two films to shoot.

"You have to embrace the totality of his evilness," he told about Voldemort at the "Deathly Hallows" red-carpet premiere on Monday. "He's like the devil."

It would take a 5 a.m. start time and two and a half hours of makeup for Fiennes to transform into the noseless, snake-like nemesis of the "Harry Potter" franchise, but he said that all the time in the make up chair helped him get into character. "A certain look that you have helps you locate who you're being. You look at yourself in the mirror, you see this face, and you say, 'I know who I am,' " he explained.

But for the Malfoy Manor scene, Fiennes used more than his creepy looks and a script to play up his character. He got to play off of his bad-guy co-stars, Alan Rickman, Jason Isaacs, Tom Felton and Helena Bonham Carter, to make it one of the most disconcerting scenes in the franchise. He also credited director David Yates with coaxing the evil out of him.

"[Yates] was very good at challenging all of us to rediscover things and keep ourselves alert to any new nuances and ideas, and I love that," Fiennes said.

Check out everything we've got on "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1."

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