TIFF RED CARPET: Ralph Fiennes looks much friendlier than Voldemort at Great Expectations

By Monika Warzecha | Photography by Erin Seaman

The stampede of literary inspirations at TIFF this year (Anna Karenina, Midnight’s Children, On the Road and Cloud Atlas, to name a few) has us wondering if all the film industry bigwigs had joined a book-of-the-month club. Last night, director Mike Newell added to the list with the TIFF premiere of Great Expectations, an adaptation of Charles Dickens’s 600-pager that Newell has somehow squeezed into a two-hour film (then again, he did bring Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to the big screen, so we guess he’s earned our trust). Newell was joined on the red carpet by Potter’s Lord Voldemort, Ralph Fiennes, who plays the criminal Magwitch in the film. Jeremy Irvine (of War Horse fame) and Holliday Grainger (who took a cue from her Anna Karenina co-star Keira Knightley and wore black lace) also made appearances, though co-star Helena Bonham Carter was nowhere to be found—which was too bad, because we always like seeing what offbeat outfit she comes up with.