Glamour Magazine
April 2001
By Garth Pearce
Photographs By Julian Broad

Joseph Fiennes really is as modest as he seems - which just makes him more attractive in our view.

Joseph Fiennes is sipping lemon-zest tea and considering the best way to have sex with actress Heather Graham. He is going to be in control. It will be powerful, passionate and have an unexpected twist that he's been working on for the last month. Will they be naked? "Definitly." No holds barred? "It's going to be full-on." How long will they be at it?" At least a couple of days." Anything kinky? "Yes. It has to tackle that area in the script."

Ah, of course. We're talking movies here. But Joseph, 30, and Boogie Nights star Heather, 31, are currently filming what is tipped to be the hottest sex scene of the year for the erotic thriller Killing Me Softly. "Our characters meet as strangers; he takes her back home and they make love with a passion neither has experienced before. Thats why we've got to get it right," Joseph explains. When I ask him whether he has ever experienced that kind of lust at first sight, he pauses, smiles and answers diplomatically, "Maybe I have. We all have at some point."

It's hard to ruffle Joseph. This is the Joe Cool of the sex symbols. You only have to mention his name and women melt, but he also has that rare ability to combine a serious actor's credibility with sex-symbol status. He's got the looks, manners, sophistication and family breeding - with Ralph as his older brother, how could he fail? (He also has a twin brother, who is a gamekeeper.) And interestingly, despite a string of high profile movies, he's managed to remain fairly elusive as a person - until now.

The world mostly knows him as the man who proved there was more to William Shakespeare than quill and ink, with his Gwyneth-seducing role in Shakespeare in Love. Other sexy screen moments include taking Queen Elizabeth's ( Cate Blanchett's) virginity as Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in 1998's Elizabeth, a smouldering walk-on part in Bernardo Bertolucci's 1996 film Stealing Beauty, and a lead role in Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence, which proved he was the sort of guy who always gets the girl. You can currently see him in Enemy At The Gates, which is set during the long siege of Stalingrad by the Germans in 1943 and co-stars Jude Law and Rachel Weisz. Joseph plays a political officer who turns a russian sniper (Law) into a local hero in order to keep up the spirits among the starving population. Weisz plays a beautiful Russian soldier with whom they both fall in love.

We meet in London's Regent's Park, where he's currently filming. He's dressed for summer on a winter's day, in a long sleeved flimsy T-shirt, brown cotton jeans and a sleeveless Puffa jacket. This is the third time we've met and he greets me with a friendly air and leads me to his trailer, which is notable for two things: its sparseness and tidiness. While most actor's trailers are strewn with empty beer bottles, coats on the floor and coffee-stained scripts, Joe's is immaculate - a bed, desk, sofa and a box of lemon-zest tea bags. That's it. I comment on the barren trailer and he tells me that, unlike most other actors, he brings nothing but himself to the set.

Joe reckons his monastic clutter-free living is down to growing up in the Fiennes family, where he had to get used to making new bases for himself. "As a family, we had a crazy upbringing," he says. "My parents' income came from selling houses, so they could clothe and feed all these kids. We moved regularly around the country and I fell down badly with the changes of school and styles of lessons."

The youngest of six children, Joe was, and still is, very close to his twin, Jacob, who he says is the only person in the world he envies. He tells me Jacob's wife has just had a baby and says, "If I envy anyone's family life, it's his. His daughter is absolutely beautiful. I can't wait to have children. Families are great - the best way to be brought up, in my opinion," For now he's single, but he remains tight-lipped on the subject.

The desire for parenthood is a suprising revelation from a man who notoriously hates talking about his private life and feelings. He even admits to watching what he reveals to friends, for fear of it leaking to the press. "I know some actors talk about their private lives brilliantly, particularly in America," he says. "Maybe I want to talk, but others involved may not want to be exposed. It doesn't feel right." Don't get me wrong. He's not prissy, but to imagine him standing in the bar with a pint in his hand, talking about how he got his leg over is unthinkable.

I remember when we first met, during a break in shooting Elizabeth, and there was a lot of old-fahioned courtesy on display. He opens doors for women, stands up when they come to the table and holds eye contact in conversation. He also seems to have a lack of awareness - and this is impressive from one guy to another - of how damned attractive he is to virtually every woman he meets.

In the past he had a six-year relationship with actress Sara Griffiths, who he met at an audition during his three years at the Guilhall School of Music and Drama. Then there was the beautiful Catherine McCormack, whose career hasn't paused for breath since playing Mel Gibson's tragic bride in Braveheart. And more sensationally, he and Naomi Campbell were allegedly an item - her personal assistant sold the story about their secret relationship. He never said a word. When I ask him about it, wondering how he could possibly not talk about dating one of the most beautiful women in the world, he smiles wryly, pauses for thought and anwers cheekily, "I think I've decided to keep quiet on that one."

Joseph clearly has a sense of humour, he lists Fawlty Towers and Only Fools and Horses as two of his favorite TV programmes, and freely admits that he doesn't read much, apart from scripts and books to research roles. He's down-to-earth and not at all 'actorish' - he recalls feeling a 'right prick' when dressed as Dudley in Elizabeth, trying to get a pint among the electicians and carpenters at the pub in Shepperton Studios; being 'terrified' at the prospect of playing Shakespeare with Gwyneth Paltrow, both in and out of bed; and says he feared leaving school at 16 would render him "a bit thick and ill-educated".

Joseph may wear an air of slight vulnerability but he doesn't suffer the same sensitivity as his more famous 39-year-old actor brother, Ralph. There are no long awkward silences as he searches for the right phrase, as if he fears seeing it in print. Like Ralph, however, he plays no attention to tabloid gossip. When we came to take pictures, he eavesdrops on a conversation about Billie and Chris Evans, and innocently asks, "Who's Billie?"

So there will be no pictures of his future marriage in Hello! then? He looks horrified. "I would only have one word for them: goodbye," he replies. "I really admire people like Kate Winslet for refusing to have either her wedding or the birth of her baby, Mia, emblazoned across their pages. They're buying you at a personal price. If you refuse to be bought and sold, I think that can only empower you," he says.

On that note, he's called to continue filming and the interview is at an end. We stand up to leave; he shakes my hand warmly, wishes me well and strides out of his immaculate trailer to tackle another few hours of sex with Heather Graham.