ACTOR and filmmaker Ralph Fiennes is to step behind the camera to direct a film about Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, according to Screen Daily.

    The film will be Fiennes third feature as a director, after 2011’s “Coriolanus” and 2013’s “The Invisible Woman,” in which he played Charles Dickens.

    Unlike those, though, the biographical drama — scripted by David Hare — will not see Fiennes play the lead.

    Gabrielle Tana from “Philomena” will produce the film, set to shoot in late 2016.

    Financed in part by BBC Films, the film will be based on Julie Kavanagh’s celebrated biography of the Soviet-born dancer who defected to the West in 1961.

    He went on to dance with the Royal Ballet and act in films — among them a biopic of silent star Rudolph Valentino — before dying of Aids in 1993 at the age of 54.

    Fiennes’ previous collaborations with Hare include the 2008 film “The Reader,” which Hare scripted, and the TV films “Page Eight,” “Turks & Caicos” and “Salting the Battlefield.”

    He has also written a new version of Ibsen’s play “The Master Builder,” in which Fiennes will star at the Old Vic in London next year.

    Fiennes will be seen later this year as M in the next James Bond film “Spectre.”

    He is best known for his Oscar-nominated roles in “Schindler’s List” and “The English Patient” and for playing Voldemort in the “Harry Potter” series. (SD-Agencies)