Terry Gross:

My guests are Ralph and Joseph Fiennes, and their sister, documentary film maker, Sophie Fiennes. They're promoting the final novel by their mother, Jini, which has just been posthumously published in the US. It's called Blood Ties. Your mother was a writer, and an amateur painter. Your father was a photographer. I'm wondering if there......

Joe Fiennes:

Is still.

TG:

IS still a photographer, good. I'm wondering if their work made it easier for you, Ralph and Joe, and you, Sophie, as a film maker, to imagine yourselves going into the Arts. You know, becoming performers or film makers. I think it's SUCH a leap for some people who don't grow up in families or neighborhoods in which there are artists to imagine becoming one themselves.

Ralph Fiennes:

Well I think we were very lucky that my mother was passionate about words, literature, ideas, the imagination, and she and my father, also talked to us, discussion and conversation was encouraged. It wasn't even a self-conscious thing, it just was there, because my mother loved to talk about ideas, and discuss books, ideas of films, plays, pieces of music, and she, I remember, she would always come back from an event, if we were too young to have seen a certain film or gone to a certain concert, she would come back and say, "We saw the most wonderful concert last night. The composer was such-and-such. Or we saw an amazing play last night and it was this kind of play and the story is this." And I think we all were on the receiving end of this enthusiasm. So, in that sense it, I suppose, it may be....to choose to follow a career in, what I suppose, we have to call the Arts, um, didn't seem a big step for us because of the nature of the environment that Jini gave us.

TG:

Did you get to see much in the way of theatre or movies when you were growing up?

RF:

YES! Yes. I think, um, I can remember being taken to see Laurence Olivier's Henry VI when I was about 5.

(laughter from all with Sophie being the loudest)

TG:

What did you make of it at the age of 5?

RF:

I loved the music by Sir William Walton. I loved the battle scenes.

TG:

Uh huh.

(Joe laughs)

RF:

It was a great film. I mean it, it's got such great cinematic energy that, I think, that an alert 5 year old can respond to it. It's such a brilliant piece of film-making. It's a proof that Shakespeare needn't be the stuff of A-level exams. It's alive. It's story-telling. It's visual.

TG:

What else made a big impression on you as kids?

SF:

Well, now I was just thinking of the, I remember being taken to Waiting For Godot when I was 9. Because she was a passionate Samuel Beckett fan.

TG:

Another children's favorite. (laughing)

(Joe laughs.)

SF:

Yea, exactly. I love Lucky. I thought Lucky was a brilliant character.

JF:

It is. It's great vaudeville. It's wonderful. Broad comedy.

SF:

So, um, yeah....no, I think, definitely her enthusiasm for, um, for creative work was something that was very inspiring for us to be a part of. And it definitely conveyed....

TG:

With seven kids in the house did you get into a "Let's Put On a Show" type of thing?

SF:

Well, I'll, uh....I'm going to interject here because I remember as a, sort of, 5 year old being subjected to a 7-hour long performance of...

JF:

No interval!

SF:

Of a Pollocks theatre production...

RF:

It's a toy theatre.

SF:

Which is a toy theatre, like a sort of proscenium stage, that was produced, directed, and EVERY single part played by Ralph. And I think there was Treasure Island, and, what was the other one?....The Corsican Twins, was it?...

RF:

The Corsican Brothers, Jack the Giant Killer, Cinderella.....

JF:

You mustn't get him on to this....(laughter)....really, you should move on very swiftly.....

SF:

It was a brilliant theatre, because what he'd done was, he'd made little footlights in tiny matchboxes. So, there were actually footlights at the bottom of the theatre, and the cut out characters, um, which were on, attached to little wire, um, poles that got moved in and out in front of the proscenium. It was, it was brilliant....

RF:

I've still got it. I'm doing a show next week.

(laughter)

TG:

How long is it going to be?

SF:

Would you like to come on the road...

RF:

Eight, eight hours.

JF:

You see, he's not really plugging Blood Ties.

TG:

Joe, you uh, you have a twin brother. Is he an identical or a fraternal twin?

JF:

Fraternal. Um, very, very different. Um, uh....he's a bit taller, blue eyes, blonde hair.

(laughter from the siblings)

TG:

Why's everybody laughing?

JF:

Describing his, uh....he's sort of the Aryan-looking one. Um, yeah....Jake went in a very different way and moved into wildlife......was compelled and, um...fascinated by wildlife at an early age.

RF:

Tell the story of Adam and Eve.

JF:

Well there was....(laughs).....I think as twins, um, uh, there was....it wasn't too bad for us (laughs)....oh God, okay....um, we were labeled as the twins although encouraged very much to be individual. But obviously when you're young and together, and paired off at school, you are constantly fighting for, to find your individualism. I remember a time in Ireland, when we had moved there at the age of 4, I think we were camping with my mother and father, and, um, Jini told us, it was an early, wonderful, beautiful, misty morning, and Jini told Jake and I to go and wash in the stream. It didn't really appeal to 4/5 year olds, um, too much. And so she, in order to invoke us to do this she said we should play out the roles of Adam and Eve, and we took the bait, and thought this was rather glorious and wonderful, so we ran off bounding down through the, down the meadow to the stream, but only moments later there was a God almighty row, and a terrible fight broke out, and it seemed that there was some confusion, or an issue rather with the casting because neither of us wanted to play Eve. And, I guess that was the first moment in our lives when we discovered how to fight for our individualism.

TG:

And for the best parts.

JF:

Absolutely. I think I should've taken up the challenge really. It might've opened up my range at an early age.

RF:

There's still time.

TG:

So, who were you finally?

JF:

Aah....well, I'm now going to try and pursue any roles...female roles like Eve.

TG:

Well, this could've been good preparation for SiL when, you know, all the women's parts went to men, yea, I think that's what your mother had in mind.

JF:

It's a great British tradition....cross-dressing.

TG:

That's right. Well, Joseph Fiennes did get to cross-dress for a scene in SiL in which his character, William Shakespeare, decides to accompany his lover, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, to a gathering without the knowledge of her fiance, played by Colin Firth.

(Then you hear the scene where Wessex comes to escort Viola, and Will comes out as the "country cousin".)

TG:

We'll be back with more from the Fiennes after a break.

(commercial break)