By Martyn Palmer

"I tried to look at what academics say about Shakespeare but it drove me up the fucking wall."

No respect due to the greatest non-living Englishman then. In comic romp Shakespeare In Love, horny young Will falls for gorgeous pouting young aristo Gwyneth Paltrow, only to have his codpiece-busting intentions thwarted for reasons of class and decency. Along the way, though, he's inspired enough to jot down a little piece of his new play, called Romeo and Juliet.

Co-star Geoffrey Rush has made a few observations about this, one of the less reverential takes on the life of The Bard. The first? That the title may deter potential punters in the mid-Western American malls. "We reckoned that anything with Shakespeare in the title might be a kiss of death in the States. So on set we had this game to invent a new snappier title. My personal favourite was Good Will Humping. It has a certain ring to it."

The other observation regards Joseph Fiennes, who appears as Will Shakespeare, and who wore frilly ruffs with Rush in Elizabeth. "Joseph is excellent," he says. "He's an actor of the highest quality and has a big future. They'll love him in the States."

But Fiennes is more modest. "I don't believe in the next 'big deal' or the 'new hot things'," he says. "So many people are labelled and bandied around in that way, it's lost it's potency. I mean, there's another guy out there who is the 'new hot thing' and another one has been that for a while: there's a corridor full of us. I'm aware of that. To do good work - that's the joy."

The 28-year-old is joint-youngest in his clan (twin Jake is a gamekeeper) and followed in older brother Ralph's footsteps when he was a teen. "Ralph was already doing theatre by then. I'd go along and watch him. I used to go to see him at the National and that was wonderful."

After the Young Vic and Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he initially concentrated on theatre, including several Shakespearian leads with the RSC. This is only his fourth feature, following Stealing Beauty, Martha - Meet Frank Daniel & Laurence, and Elizabeth. Presumably he ever talks to Ralph about is acting?

"Not a bit of it. It's very rare that all of us get together because everyone is so busy. When we do we usually talk about domestics. I'm doing a bit of DIY [home improvements] on my London flat at the moment, so we talk about that sort of thing . . . "

Mercifully Fiennes is keen to talk about Shakespeare In Love. Superbly scripted by Tom Stoppard, directed by John Madden (Mrs Brown), and with an excellent ensemble cast (Rush, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Colin Firth, Simon Callow, Ben Affleck, Uncle Tom Cobbley et al), its set in the summer of 1593 and has will suffering from writers block.

"He's working on Romeo and Ethel, The Pirates Daughter and it's just not flowing," explains Fiennes. "He needs something to inspire him, a muse, and that's when he meets Lady Viola (Paltrow) and falls in love. Strangely enough, I didn't do much research for this: research is great and it's an opportunity for an actor not only to invest in the character but broaden ones own knowledge. But, with Tom's unique script, it's all there, it's watertight."

"At first I did look at what the academics had to say about Shakespeare's life but it's a can of worms - it dives you up the fucking wall! There was talk about whether he was the illegitimate child of Elizabeth I, but then you find a contradictory theory. The truth is we don't know much about his life. For every expert I realised that there was another expert with a different theory so I just closed the books and embraced Tom's script."

He admits he was somewhat daunted by the task of playing The Bard. "I liked to think of him more as a guy called Will and less like a man called Shakespeare. The great thing about Tom's script is that it brings out all the human elements. All the problems and sentiments that go with being a man - love, money, writers block - all things you wouldn't associate with being a genius. This guy is a young hustler, a writer who is blessed with genius. But he is like a leech, he's sucking energy to feed into his copy. He's looking for inspiration and it comes in the guise of Gwyneth."

And what better guise? "Oh, she's gorgeous. She brings a great warmth to the screen, and likewise in real life. She can nail an English accent to a decimal point." Thanks to Shakespeare In Love, the offers from America are pouring in, but in the meantime, Fiennes is filming a British indie adaptation of James Hawes novel Rancid Aluminium ("Don't ask me what it means...") and finishing off his DIY. "My home is in London. If I have to work in America from time to time then fine. But I'd still like to be based in London. And although the actor's psyche is nomadic - we're kind of gypsies, and wherever you read the script that's your home - it's nice to have your own place to come back to at the end of the adventure."