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In bold black text, sprawling over the page and just barely squeezing into the margins, is the headline of 23-year-old Hero Fiennes Tiffin’s story in some imagined major global newspaper: “Just getting started.” The actor charmingly quips about the must-read, would-be news, “Let’s keep it vague and ambitious.”
Born and raised in London, the rising star lovingly recounts his home: a prophesied land of football stadiums, grime forte, and kitschy Skins UK wardrobes. The actor, though, espouses a demeanor à la Salvatore Ferragamo chic. In fact, he was recently chosen as the face of the fabled Italian luxury fashion house’s new men’s fragrance campaign.
Long before Italian luxury partnerships and steamy scenes with Josephine Langford, one of Fiennes Tiffin’s earliest notable roles saw him as a young Tom Riddle in _Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince_. Despite the hype around the _Potter_ franchise, Fiennes Tiffin never figured he’d become a well-known face years later vis-a-vis the Netflix juggernaut. Rising to the lead role as Hardin Scott on Anna Todd’s fan-fiction turned romantic drama _After_, opposite the aforementioned Langford, brought about that ascent.
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Fiennes Tiffin lives life relatively simply, a bit off-the-grid, reveling in the personal joys shared with close-knit family and friends, and is cautious to become overly saturated in the impersonal worlds of social media, though he measuredly partakes. His state of mind is refreshingly candid and dedicated. I ask the actor to share one personal thing in his room that is representative of his entire being. He earnestly responds with, “There’s a picture of my dad holding me as a baby that I’ve had for quite a while, and I don’t think it gets any more me than that.”
Fiennes Tiffin talks about the adjustments he made after transforming from a boy you would casually run into at a Premier League game to someone who could easily get recognized in a crowded street. “It was initially overwhelming,” he recalls, “but now at this point I’m obviously able to enjoy the good things and not dwell too much on the changes. I didn’t plan for this, I just wanted to stay busy and do loads of auditions and do things on the side. Now a few years later, I’ve kind of settled from a sudden change in a sudden period of time to now a long couple years of adjustments.”
He equates similarities between football and acting in one phrase, recalling that “in football, they often say that ‘You’re only as good as your last game.’ The same can be said with acting. I’m always looking at the last role I’ve done and how I could improve on that and keep it versatile and different.”
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Intrinsically, the _After_ canon is filmic pleasure at its finest, reminiscent of early 2000s romantic dramas with a slight Rated R edge. The interim from his days as a young actor to his Netflix stardom saw the odd detour, but eventually he found his way back to the haunting characters that initially compelled him. “I think maybe it’s a coincidence or a part of casting?” he considers, then shares with a smile, “Or maybe I just look like more of the ‘bad guy.’ To be able to play the bad guys and the good guys is definitely something I want to always be able to have a balance between.”
One vital reassurance that kept Fiennes Tiffin sane while filming this past year was basking in the energetic landscapes of the UK grime music scene. “I think if I were to name one song that I listened to a lot on set it would be a friend of mine’s, AR1, who dropped a song with Ham called ‘Fathom’,” he recalls. “They dropped that while I was out in Bulgaria filming the third and fourth installment of _After_. I listened to that full volume with the driver almost every other day to and from set.” He eagerly talks about his friends’ accomplishments with pride, “There’s a line in there along the lines of ‘my brother acting.’ I love that.”
Fiennes Tiffin states that the _After_ franchise gave him plenty of leeway to make his character malleable and refine Hardin’s identity through the process. “The interesting thing about Hardin is that he changes so much depending on how Tessa changes,” he shares. “Once he deals with his childhood trauma, you hope that he will be able to become his best self. I think the whole journey with _After_ as well is watching how he becomes the best version of himself alongside Tessa. He goes from being a version of himself who is far from who he wants to be to transforming to be who he wants to be.”
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Fiennes Tiffin looks toward future roles with the intention of intertwining an audience’s memory of an era, perhaps preserving a poignant place in history. When asked about what project he would want his mother, director Martha Fiennes, to direct him in, he excitedly responds, “definitely not something like _After_… I think I’d have to talk to her about it. I know she was in the process of writing a spy concept at one point, and I haven’t done a spy thing yet, and I would absolutely love to!”
Amid the pandemic, Fiennes Tiffin nostalgically wished for indulging in conversations with the cast and crew over buffet style catering, perhaps socializing when not filming out amongst the people and places of Bulgaria. Shortly after the _After_ franchise resumed filming, it was made to reinforce its COVID-19 bubble––something many productions are faced with at present. Despite the melancholic global situation, Fiennes Tiffin beams with optimism, and shares of his personal hopes for the future: “a bit more settled, my stuff not all over the place. I’m in my room and I still have two open suitcases that I haven’t managed to put away yet because I don’t have anywhere to put them. The next chapter of my life, I hope to find my feet a little bit more. I think _After_ was a bit more of a head down, go-go-go, and now I’m lucky to be on the other side of that.”
Fiennes Tiffin carries the enthusiasm of a good friend that one might stumble upon in a college classroom, talking about the occasional NTS radio show and the not-so-foreseeable future, quite the stretch from people’s potential projections of what they imagine a “heartthrob” to be like. “If we’re talking ten years,” he concludes, “I do think we can fit a bit of Safdie brothers-produced films, but I don’t think it takes ten years to unpack a suitcase and find a new place, does it?”
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Photographer: [Jason Hetherington](https://www.instagram.com/jasonhetheringtonstudio/)
Stylist: [Michael Miller](https://www.instagram.com/millermode/)
Groomer: [Larry King](https://www.instagram.com/larrykinghair/)
Flaunt Film by [Alyn Horton](https://www.instagram.com/alyn_uk/) and [Jacob Schüle-Lewis](https://www.instagram.com/jeak/)
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