The Observer, Theatre Now supplement
April 1, 2001
By Lyn Gardener

Joseph Fiennes on what attracts Hollywood's A-list stars to the British stage

Since Shakespeare's time when foreign travelers would flock to Bankside and theatres such as the Globe to see plays, British theatre has always had an international reputation. But in the last five years it has also become a magnet for international stars. Nicole Kidman, Kevin Spacey, Juliette Binoche, Liam Neeson, Julia Ormond and Jessica Lange are just a few of those who in recent times have left behind multimillion pound salaries and Hollywood to appear for a few weeks or months at a theatre in this country and often on the Equity minimum of less than £3oo per week.

Why do they do it? "For the chance to do work you really want to do, the work you love," says Joseph Fiennes, the British star of Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth, who himself spent most of last month in Sheffield at the Crucible theatre playing the title role in Marlowe's rarely performed history play, Edward II.

He might have also added, because he was asked. The Crucible's smart young director Michael Grandage has had a long association with the tiny and canny Almeida, the first British theatre to realise that there was a bottomless well of A-list Hollywood actors with a lot of time to fill between big film parts who would see a prestigious stage part in London as a smart career move. When the theatre plucked up the courage to ask, more often than not the answer that came back was "yes".

In Fiennes's case it was yes because Edward II was not just a chance to play a role he had coveted since drama school but also a chance to return to his theatrical roots. After a year of back-to-back filming, including the recently opened siege of Stalingrad movie, Enemy at the Gates, and the forthcoming thriller Killing Me Softly, Fiennes found his return to the stage was like "going home".

"I've felt pretty exhausted by a year's filming, but I've found being back in rehearsal for a play exhilarating. When you've been away like I have, you forget how wonderful the process is, how exciting it is to interact with other actors. You just don't get that in any other medium. It is what makes theatre unique for the actor."

That is not to say that Fiennes will be suddenly throwing up his Hollywood career and heading back to the Royal Shakespeare Company where he spent three seasons in the mid-90s making his mark both on the classical repertoire as well as in new plays such as Dennis Potter's Son of Man.

Right from the very start of his career as a youngster straight out of Guildhall Drama School and into the West End playing opposite Helen Mirren in A Month in the Country, he made it plain that he was keen to work in as many different media as he could. His aim, he declared at the time, was to "play thousands of parts with as many dimensions as possible. One ideal is to juggle the different media. But employment is a wonderful goal, to pay the rent." Hollywood has ensured that the rent is paid, but Fiennes still has the restless air of a man who hasn't fulfilled all his ambitions.

"It is possible to move between different forms, and part of being an actor is the ability to adapt and shift and change. But for me film has always been a privileged by-product of work in the theatre. But it is a beguiling one. I don't think that it's a question of one being better than the other or that I favour one over the other. It is like trying to compare the plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare. You can't, they are different. But every time I come back to theatre I remember the feeling I had as a teenager watching theatre that made me want to audition for the local youth theatre."

Fiennes says that he has "no conscious game plan" and that he simply responds to what is on offer. "If I am offered great radio then I'll do that," he says. Straight after Shakespeare in Love he surprised everyone by turning up at the Royal Court in a new play by a relatively unknown playwright, Nick Grosso. Nonetheless he accepts that as he gets more famous on celluloid it is easy to become caught in the web of Hollywood machinations in which actors' careers are tightly controlled and directed by armies of publicists intent on controlling and creating an image.

"I understand why it happens. It is an immense and very expensive industry. But yes I might feel trapped if I thought I could only act in films, but really there is no reason why I can’t continue to do both."

More than that, Fiennes thinks "we need theatre. We really do. It is something imprinted upon our DNA. It is a need to tell stories. You see it going on as you walk down the street, in people's gossiping. I don't think there will ever be a time when humans don't need it and I love being part of that storytelling in the theatre. I love the idea of being part of a company that is doing that whether it is at the RSC or here in Sheffield."