TORONTO—Though Ralph Fiennes made his name as a romantic leading man, his dashing roles are mixed up with lots of chilling villains. (Some might argue that he’s dishy in Schindler’s List, but that’s a pretty specific demographic.) The truth is that after setting foot in Hogwarts—as Harry Potter’s nemesis, Lord Voldemort, no less—Fiennes will certainly remain more famous for that than any other role.

Still, the Brit thespian’s fan base will probably be greatly relieved that Fiennes has emerged from the fugly world of J. K. Rowling and back into period drama, where he belongs. In The Invisible Woman, opening Friday (January 17)—which he also directed—Fiennes plays a late-career Charles Dickens, madly in love with Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones), a struggling actor much younger than him, for whom he leaves the mother of his 10 children in a scandal that rocks Victorian London.

Be forewarned: the Fiennes face is somewhat diminished here by the unwieldy Vandyke he grew for the role. But Fiennes as Dickens is still sexier than Voldemort, and a lot more sympathetic.

“It’s as though Dickens is your friend and he’s done a bad thing,” Fiennes told the Georgia Straight in an interview at a downtown hotel during last fall’s Toronto International Film Festival. In his view, he added, Dickens was a man deeply unhappy in his marriage.

“What’s wrong with leaving your wife if you’re unhappy? I couldn’t make a film in which it was, ‘These people are wrong,’ ” he continued. “They’re people, and I have to show them in the fullness of who they are. That’s what interests me.”

The Invisible Woman’s story is told from Nelly’s point of view, both in the past, as she is beginning her relationship with the great author, and after his death, when she is happily married to someone else. That, Fiennes said, is what drew him to the script, as he’d decided that Dickens wasn’t of interest.

“The thing that really moved me and led me to want to tell it is that the framework was of a woman who has inside her the memory and the markings of a past intimacy. It was her story, and the Dickens aspect brings another bundle of fireworks.”

And this story definitely contains fireworks. The Victorian era, as Fiennes shows it, is colourful, raucous, and messy. As a mainstay of period romances, who is better placed to subvert the genre than Fiennes himself? The actor-director admitted that part of what he wanted to convey in the film is that “Dickens did good parties.”

“I suppose the great classics are somehow permanently identifiable human stories that always have a connection for us,” he mused. In making a period piece come to life, he said, “you want to access the thing in it that is about us—the intimacy and negotiation between people. If it is a love story, then you want to find the truth of that. So, of course, you’ve got your corsets and bonnets and stuff, but actually, what’s going on inside the heart of Dickens and Nelly, and Catherine Dickens—these are human feelings and responses that haven’t really changed.”