Ralph Fiennes’ casting brought unparalleled darkness and terror to Voldemort, and the HBO Max’s Harry Potter reunion special that his family finally convinced him to play Voldemort.
After being confronted to play the part by Mike Newell, Fiennes wasn’t sure that he wanted to sign on as Harry Potter’s Voldemort, knowing it only as a series of films for kids. He then spoke to his sister, director Martha Fiennes, about the offer, and her opinion heavily influenced his later decision. Martha had three young sons who very much enjoyed the Harry Potter films and books, and she told him he absolutely had to accept the role. Paired with the captivatingly darker direction that Harry Potter’s films were taking by Goblet of Fire, Ralph Fiennes’ sister and nephews were a driving factor in his decision to play the nose-less Lord Voldemort.
As such, it was wonderful that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince perfectly referenced this motivation with the casting of 11-year-old Tom Riddle. While the casting director and David Yates saw plenty of young actors audition for young Voldemort, the role eventually went to Hero Fiennes, then the 11-year-old nephew of Ralph Fiennes. The scene, which is extremely important to Tom Riddle’s character history, occurred in Half-Blood Prince during a flashback where Dumbledore goes to visit Riddle for the first time in an orphanage. Dumbledore invites Tom to go to Hogwarts, while also realizing that this boy is much darker than the typical young wizard, partially due to his family history, anger, and curious inherited ability to speak to snakes. Considering Hero and his brothers were one of the major reasons why Ralph Fiennes agreed to Harry Potter’s cast in the first place, it felt right that he would go on to play the younger version of his uncle’s character.
Although Hero’s Tom Riddle casting was thought to be a case of nepotism on part of Ralph Fiennes, Harry Potter director David Yates has made it clear that Hero was hired because his lines were read with palpable darkness and his spirit perfectly captured the essence of a brooding young Voldemort (via Half-Blood Prince’s teenage Voldemort actor from another memory was not one of Ralph’s nephews, being played instead by Frank Dillane.
While Hero Fiennes being cast as young Lord Voldemort wasn’t completely due to his familial relations, it didn’t hurt. Yates itted that Hero’s physical resemblance to his uncle Ralph Fiennes was what clinched his Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince casting, but his ability to read Voldemort’s dark mood at such a young age was much more important. Since Ralph Fiennes may have never signed on to play Lord Voldemort for Harry Potter’s final five movies without the insistence of his sister and nephews, the casting of Hero was nonetheless a perfect tribute to how the movies got their best villain actor.
