Fashion Wire Daily
LA February 21, 2001
By Jenny Peters
If you're hoping to see the total hunk you remember from "Shakespeare in Love" when you head out to see Joseph Fiennes' intense new film "Enemy at the Gates," be warned. That guy, the one whose name has been linked romantically off-screen with supermodel Naomi Campbell recently, the same incredibly sexy man whose on-screen fire opposite Cate Blanchett also made "Elizabeth" so memorable, is nowhere in sight. Instead, Fiennes is completely transformed into a bespectacled, nebbishy Russian Jew, a political propaganda officer whose invention of a hero during the WWII battle of Stalingrad helps turn the tide of that seminal battle.
Shaking off the hot leading-man persona came easily for the classically trained 30-year-old British actor, who insists that he is not interested in parlaying his good looks into becoming a "Hollywood movie star," or the next Brad Pitt.
"I look for mileage, for strength, for creative energy, for doing something different and challenging myself," Fiennes says on this chilly day in New York City. He actually grimaces when remembering the sort of parts that Hollywood offered him after his Elizabethan double whammy of 1998, roles that highlighted his looks instead of his acting abilities.
"I don't feel the sort of pressure to follow up the heat of something," he insists, explaining his reluctance to go for those lucrative yet shallow characters. "I would hope and feel that this passionate field that I have chosen is for life, and I see a long journey. I think that instead of having one moment of heat in life, I would like it distributed throughout. I think publicity and film exposure is dangerous in that respect. It is quite good to jump back and not necessarily have a lot of pressure to pursue that moment of heat as if it were your only chance."
But don't get him wrong. Despite the fact that he goes back to the London stage regularly (he's in rehearsals to star in Marlowe's "Edward II" at the moment) and is more than willing to turn off his highly sexual screen presence in order to have what he calls his "creative energies" recharged by playing very different sorts of roles, he is also willing to be lured in by a good genre movie. Joe Fiennes readily admits that he just might eventually end up following in his big brother Ralph's footsteps and take on a big Hollywood action flick like "The Avengers" (but hopefully with more successful results than that box-office bomb).
"I would love to do an action movie if the material was right," Fiennes the younger says with a broad smile. "What I have learned through film is you need responsibility and if it is handled well it can be a magnificent medium. So I would love to do an action film, but ultimately I read the scripts and I ask myself, is this the right portrayal? I do think action films have a place, and I love them, but I seem to react more strongly when a sort of offbeat script speaks to me for some reason."
Which explains why he'll next be seen in two decidedly offbeat films, "Dust," "a beautiful morality tale" directed by Macedonian Milcho Manchevski, and "Killing Me Softly," "an obsessive thriller" directed by Chinese auteur Kaige Chen.
"It's been an incredible year, culturally for me," Fiennes says gleefully, flashing a meltingly sexy smile. "Actually, it's all been wonderful."
