Is Ralph Fiennes trying to overshadow his ex-wife’s Strictly debut? Clip of actor dancing with woman who ‘wrecked his marriage’ is released

With such appalling timing, it almost feels like Ralph Fiennes is deliberately trying to overshadow ex-wife Alex Kingston’s Strictly debut, by today putting out a trailer of himself dancing with the very woman who wrecked their marriage.

Ralph, 62, is appearing on stage at the Theatre Royal Bath with ex-girlfriend Francesca Annis for the first time this Friday in a play called Small Hotel.

Francesca does not star as Ralph’s love interest in the play and perhaps it is by complete coincidence that he chose a clip of the pair of them dancing together in rehearsals to publicise the play on YouTube.

The one minute 30 seconds-long clip went out on the video streaming channel this morning, a day after his first wife Alex Kingston debuted on Strictly Come Dancing.

It features voiceovers from both Ralph and Francesca.

Intriguingly, in the clip Fiennes only seems to add to the awkwardness of the situation, saying: ‘The play deals with intimacy. And it deals with past relationships. It is really the story of reconnecting with a past lover and the crisis that that meeting brings about.’

The three-times Oscar nominated actor, perhaps best known as Voldemort in Harry Potter, goes on: ‘I think there are ideas of loneliness, of disconnectedness, of disconnectedness, from people who we have been close to and interior disconnection.’

Francesca, 80, adds: ‘One of the things about being in a new play is that your perspective on your own character changes according to who you are acting with.’

Francesca and Ralph are appearing on stage together 30 years after they embarked on an affair, indifferent to the fact that she was 17 years his senior, after starring in a production of Hamlet together.

Coincidentally, Francesca is also playing Ralph’s mother from this week in Small Hotel – just as she did three decades ago when she played Gertrude to his Hamlet.

So intense was their connection in 1995 that, within two years, Ralph had told his wife, actress Alex Kingston, whom he’d married in 1993, that their union was over.

Subsequently Alex spoke of the despair she fell into following the revelation of the affair which even made her contemplate suicide.

Francesca, who was 50, similarly disentangled herself from photographer Patrick Wiseman, who’d been the man in her life since 1974, and with whom, though they’d never married, she’d had three children.

With such a messy history behind them, and with Ralph apparently unaware of the optics of putting out a video of himself and Francesca dancing together today, just a day after his ex-wife Alex debuted on Strictly, she certainly looked to be putting the past firmly behind her as she appeared on television.

Alex teamed up with dance partner Johannes Radebe and totted up 21 points, putting them half-way down the leaderboard on week one.

Meanwhile, Ralph and Francesca parted in 2006 after Cornelia Crisan, 31, a London-based Romanian singer, recounted how she and Fiennes had enjoyed a two-year affair.

It began, she said, after Ralph spotted her at the Dorchester Hotel, in London’s West End, where he treated her to champagne and seduced her.

Thereafter, claimed Ms Crisan, they met at a ‘bolt-hole’ in London’s East End, far from the house he shared with Francesca.

The following year, a Qantas stewardess told of two passionate encounters with Ralph – the first aboard a flight from Australia to India, where the actor was to talk about safe sex, and the second in a Mumbai hotel.

In 2023, the Daily Mail revealed that Ralph had grown close to Amelia Richards, a society figure who had just parted from James Lindsay, son of one of Queen Camilla’s close friends. Lady Annabel Lindsay.

Speaking about dating a man nearly two decades younger, Francesca previously said: ‘Of course I don’t spend days agonising over the age difference. How can I? 

‘There is nothing I can do about it. Ralph and I have been together ten years now so, whatever happens, we have had a very good, different relationship and an interesting time.’

In Small Hotel, which opens on Friday, Ralph Fiennes plays Larry, an acclaimed TV celebrity whose life and career are rapidly unravelling. 

As he is forced to unpick his past and confront his future, the audience are introduced to a collection of unforgettable characters, including his troubled twin brother Richard, his unpredictable former lover Marianne, and his domineering mother Athena played by Francesca Annis.

Ralph Fiennes’ representatives were contacted by the Daily Mail for comment.