Brit hottie/acting scion Hero Fiennes Tiffin is ready to romance Hollywood.
Hero Fiennes Tiffin knows there are a couple of instant talking points built into his name. Indeed, he’s part of that Fiennes family—his mother, Martha, is the acclaimed filmmaker sister of British actors Ralph and Joseph—and he’s grown quite fond of his unconventional given moniker. “I used to find it a bit strange that my name was so odd, but I learned to own it,” the 21-year-old actor says. “It’s good small talk—every time I meet someone, there’s always something rehearsed to chat about.”
Despite an early big break playing an 11-year-old version of his uncle Ralph’s villainous Voldemort in the Harry Potter film series (“It was good to have a small taste of that when I was younger so it isn’t so overwhelming now,” he notes), Fiennes Tiffin insists his clan’s performing arts inclinations didn’t directly influence his career choice. Then again, he says, pondering, “any family you’re in, you’re in from birth, so you have nothing else to compare it to.”
After a string of roles in smaller-scale U.K. productions, Hollywood came calling. His Tinseltown star suddenly on the rise, Fiennes Tiffin landed the leading role in the hot-and-heavy collegiate romance After, based on Anna Todd’s whopping best-seller. Playing a brooding bad boy who rocks a good girl’s world, the steamy new guy in town relished portraying a reckless romancer “who couldn’t care less about his effects on other people… I don’t have to deal with the consequences of my character, so it’s quite fun in that respect,” he says. For now, Fiennes Tiffin is elusive about greater career visions. “I tend to keep my aspirations deliberately vague so I don’t put myself on a path to a somewhere-I-want-to-be kind of thing. I never know what I like until I do it!”