Ralph Fiennes on the set of his second film as a director, "The Invisible Woman," about Charles Dickens and the woman who became his mistress.

Fiennes told CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason that he had been "pretty much ignorant" of Dickens and his work, having been consumed by Shakespeare while he was in the Royal Shakespeare Company.

"I hadn't gone down any Dickens road - not for any negative reason, I just hadn't really. And so it was only when I read an early draft of this screenplay of this film, 'The Invisible Woman,' and subsequently Claire Tomalin's book -- suddenly this man who I'd only had sort of goblets of information about, didn't really know much about, he's coming at me." 

Born in 1962 in Ipswich, England, Ralph Fiennes - an eighth cousin of the Prince of Wales - was raised in a family of artists: a photographer father, and a writer mother, his five siblings included fellow actor Joseph Fiennes, filmmakers Martha and Sophie Fiennes, and composer Margnus Fiennes.

Ralph studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and later joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. 

His film debut was in the 1992 film version of Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights," as Heathcliff opposite Juliette Binoche's Catherine. 

Ralph Fiennes starred as Charles Van Doren in director Robert Redford's Oscar-nominated "Quiz Show" (1994), about the cheating scandal surrounding the 1950s quiz show, "Twenty One." Also pictured are Christopher McDonald as host Jack Barry, and JOhn Turturro as contestant Herb Stempel. 

Actors Alex Kingston and Ralph Fiennes, photographed in March 1, 1995. The two, who met while at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, married in 1993; they divorced four years later. 

Ralph Fiennes played Count Laszlo de Almasy, a Hungarian nobleman and cartographer mapping the Sahara Desert, in the 1996 romantic drama, "The English Patient." 

Ralph Fiennes and Kristen Scott Thomas as lover in the 1996 romantic drama, "The English Patient." The film won the Oscar for Best Picture; both Fiennes and Scott Thomas received Academy Award nominations. 

Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman starred as secret agents John Steed and Mrs. Emma Peel in the big-screen version of the classic 1960s spy series, "The Avengers." 

Ralph Fiennes with director David Cronenberg on the set of "Spider."

When asked in 2003 about his attraction to darker roles, Fiennes told CBS' "The Early Show," "I suppose I'm interested in people, there's an ambivalence in people's inner life. I like the conflict inside people. I think people who are struggling - it's always interesting."

In "The Constant Gardener" (2005), based on the John le Carre novel, Ralph Fiennes plays a British diplomat increasingly frustrated by his wife's secretive behavior.

"There are two equal parts to this movie," Fiennes said. "On the one hand, it's a political thriller about corporate wrongdoing, malfeasance and manipulation. On the other, it's about the relationship between Justin and Tessa Quayle [played by Rachel Weisz].

"Justin's journey traces not only what Tessa was investigating; he's also playing detective about their relationship, [and] rediscovers and re-assesses his own relationship with his wife. It's a wonderful part, because he goes from being a reticent nice guy to being someone who is forced to confront some pretty tough truths about the world."

Weisz won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance. 

In the Wallace & Gromit stop-motion animated feature, "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit," Ralph Fiennes voiced the dashing Lord Victor Quartermaine. 

Ralph Fiennes and Natasha Richardson starred in "The White Countess," directed by James Ivory and writtren by Kazuo Ishiguro ("The Remains of the Day"). 

In "The Duchess," Ralph Fiennes played a philandering, cruel 18th century English Duke who begins an affair when his wife (Keira Knightley) does not deliver him a son.

In "The Reader," Ralph Fiennes played the older version of the film's central figure, who as a teenager has an affair with an older woman (Kate Winslet). She is later revealed to have been an SS camp guard during the war, and Fiennes is drawn to make up for his own complicity - his silence - in her prosecution. 

Ralph Fiennes directed and stars in "The Invisible Woman," about the author Charles Dickens and his affair with a young aspiring actress, Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones, center). The film also stars Fiennes' "English Patient" costar, Kristen Scott Thomas, as Nelly's mother.

"I was really moved by 'Nelly's] story," Fiennes told Mason, "by the story of a woman who is trying to find some sense of closure with a previous love affair, [which] happens to be with Charles Dickens. But what moved me was what is it like to not have had some kind of resolution with a past intimacy.  That's really what led me."

Fiennes described Dickens as a man of "ferocious energy, a man who can't stop working, writing not only installments of his novels but editing a magazine. He's putting on amateur productions of plays -- the director and the actor.  He's producing a big family.  He's socially engaged at a level that is terrifying.  He loves social engagement, taking on charitable causes.

"What comes off the page of the novels is this extraordinary imagination. I'm so glad I've come to Dickens at the age that I am because I haven't had the burden of teachers saying, 'Write this essay,' or 'This is what you've got to study.'  I haven't had to study him.  I've just completely enjoyed this incredible, descriptive imagination and comedic sensibility.  Amazing."

Having played Dickens, Ralph Fiennes also recently starred in Mike Newell's new film version of Dickens' "Great Expectations," playing Magwitch opposite Toby Irvine as Young Pip.

"There's a range of adjectives [Dickens] describes to use the first appearance of Magwitch as a man who sort of literally emerges out of the shadows of a graveyard to frighten young Pip.

"And I think I'm meant to be scared by this guy.  He is capable of violence and harm.  But he's also got a sense of honor in him which comes through. Dickens likes to reveal someone is capable of doing a good deed or capable of some kind of loyalty and love. Magwitch is a great creation of Dickens: a convict who's been in Australia, made some money, comes back -- he's the man who's given Pip all these opportunities.  Maybe [he's] the fantasy that Dickens would have liked; he would have liked someone to magic him with sort of a Pip-like life in London."

Ralph Fiennes, as a hotel manager, with Saoirse Ronan in "The Grand Budapest Hotel," a new comedy from writer-director Wes Anderson ("Moonrise Kingdom").

"The Grand Budapest Hotel" opens in theatres in March 2014.

By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan