31/10/2025
“Monsters often look ordinary. Sometimes they’re polite. And that’s what makes them most dangerous”
A trait Machiavelli espoused in The Prince but that is often forgotten
His portrayal of a Nazi commander was so terrifyingly real that Holocaust survivors on set watched in haunted silence. Ralph Fiennes didn't play evil—he showed us how ordinary it can look.
In 1993, Steven Spielberg faced an impossible casting problem.
He was making Schindler's List—a film about the Holocaust that would refuse to look away from history's darkest chapter. And he needed someone to play Amon Göth, the Nazi commandant who murdered concentration camp prisoners from his balcony like it was target practice.
The role required something more disturbing than a cartoon villain. Spielberg didn't want theatrics or over-the-top cruelty. He needed an actor who could show the banality of evil—the casual inhumanity of a man who killed before breakfast and then calmly sat down to enjoy his morning coffee.
He needed someone who could make evil look ordinary.
Ralph Fiennes walked into the audition and delivered something that made everyone in the room deeply uncomfortable.
Not because he screamed or raged. But because he was calm. Charming, even. Composed.
He showed them a man capable of horrific violence while remaining perfectly civil. A man who could shoot someone and then politely ask for more wine. A man who saw human beings as less than insects—and felt nothing about it.
Spielberg knew immediately: this was Amon Göth.
Amon Göth was a real person. A Nazi SS officer who commanded the Płaszów concentration camp near Kraków, Poland. By all historical accounts, he was a psychopath who murdered prisoners for sport.
Survivors remembered him standing on his balcony with a rifle, shooting people at random while they worked. He'd kill someone for walking too slowly. For looking at him wrong. For no reason at all. Then he'd go inside and have lunch.
He personally murdered hundreds of people. He was directly responsible for thousands more deaths.
And here's what made Göth truly terrifying: he wasn't a raging monster. He was educated, cultured, from a middle-class family. He appreciated music and fine wine. He could be charming at dinner parties.
He was, by all surface appearances, a normal person.
That's what Spielberg needed to show. Because that's the truth about evil that most people don't want to accept: monsters often look ordinary. Sometimes they're polite. And that's what makes them most dangerous.
Ralph Fiennes understood this instinctively.
He didn't play Göth as a screaming madman. He played him as a man doing his job—a job that happened to involve mass murder. He found the chilling disconnect between Göth's civilized exterior and his absolute lack of humanity.
The result was one of the most disturbing villain performances in cinema history.
Filming Schindler's List was emotionally devastating for everyone involved.
Spielberg shot the film in black and white, on location in Poland, at the actual sites where the Holocaust happened. The production used the real Płaszów concentration camp. They filmed at Schindler's actual factory. They shot outside Auschwitz.
Holocaust survivors consulted on the film, ensuring historical accuracy. They watched the scenes being recreated. They corrected details. They shared their memories.
And they watched Ralph Fiennes embody the man who had terrorized them.
One crew member later said that watching Fiennes in costume between takes was unsettling. Even though everyone knew he was acting, even though he was a kind person off-camera, seeing him in that Nazi uniform, speaking with that cold authority—it brought history back in the most haunting way possible.
For Fiennes, the role demanded something psychologically exhausting.
He had to inhabit the mindset of a man responsible for thousands of deaths. He had to understand not just what Göth did, but how he justified it to himself. How he lived with it. How he saw his victims as less than human.
That required accessing a darkness most actors never have to explore.
And he had to do it with restraint. No scenery-chewing. No theatrical villainy. Just cold, detached realism.
In one of the film's most chilling scenes, Göth stands on his balcony with a rifle, casually shooting prisoners in the camp below. Fiennes plays it with terrifying nonchalance—like someone shooting targets at a range, not human beings.
In another scene, he beats his Jewish maid Helen Hirsch (played by Embeth Davidtz) while simultaneously expressing a twisted attraction to her. The scene is unbearable to watch because Fiennes shows the complete psychological destruction Göth inflicted—the way he saw people as objects to be used and discarded.
The performance never tips into parody. It stays disturbingly, realistically human.
And that's what made it so powerful.
When Schindler's List premiered in December 1993, critics were unanimous: Ralph Fiennes had created one of cinema's most terrifying villains.
He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He didn't win—Tommy Lee Jones won for The Fugitive—but Fiennes' performance became the standard by which cinematic evil is measured.
Roger Ebert wrote that Fiennes made Göth "not a monster, but a man—which is even more horrifying."
The film itself won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. But more importantly, it became essential Holocaust education.
Spielberg refused to profit from the film. He established the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation to record testimonies from Holocaust survivors. The film was shown in schools worldwide. It became one of the most important historical films ever made.
And at the center of it was Ralph Fiennes, showing us something we didn't want to see but needed to understand: evil doesn't always announce itself. Sometimes it wears a nice suit. Sometimes it has good manners. Sometimes it looks exactly like a normal person.
The real Amon Göth was captured after the war and hanged in 1946 for crimes against humanity. He showed no remorse. Even at his execution, he remained convinced he'd done nothing wrong.
That's what Fiennes captured: the complete absence of conscience. The total dehumanization of victims. The banality of cruelty.
Years later, Fiennes said the role haunted him. Not because he couldn't separate himself from the character—he could—but because playing Göth forced him to understand how ordinary people can commit extraordinary evil.
It's a question that still haunts us: How do normal people become monsters? How does a middle-class Austrian become a mass murderer?
Fiennes' performance doesn't answer that question. But it forces us to confront it.
Here's why this story matters:
Great acting doesn't just entertain. Sometimes it bears witness.
Ralph Fiennes didn't play a comic book villain. He showed us what evil actually looked like in 1940s Poland. He showed us how it justified itself. How it normalized atrocity. How it made murder routine.
And by showing us that—by making us deeply uncomfortable—he helped ensure we remember.
Because forgetting is not an option.
Every time someone watches Schindler's List and feels that cold dread watching Göth on his balcony—that's the point. That discomfort is necessary. That horror is what we need to remember.
Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Countless others—Roma, disabled people, political prisoners, LGBTQ individuals—were systematically killed.
And many of those murders were committed by people who looked ordinary. Who went home to their families. Who listened to music and drank wine and lived normal lives—while participating in genocide.
That's the truth Ralph Fiennes forced us to see.
His portrayal was so terrifyingly real that it made evil look ordinary. And that's exactly why we needed to see it.
