Day and Night Magazine
The Mail On Sunday
September 9, 2001
Interview by Celia Walden

Film director Martha Fiennes grew up in a large family in Ireland, alongside her famous actor brothers Ralph and Joseph.

My childhood memories are so vivid, they're like images in a film. I can recall all the places, people and smells perfectly. I recently realised how much I think about my formative years.

I spent the first five years of my life in a large house in Suffolk. My father was a farmer when my mother married him and I think she fell in love with his romantic spirit as well as the East Anglian countryside.

I have four brothers, a sister and a foster brother. Ralph and my foster brother Michael were older than me. My mother wanted to bring us up to be very creative and well rounded: she saw us as a creative investment. We were surrounded by books and music from an early age. I was an anxious child but a very busy one. I made things constantly and loved knitting and sewing. I also loved writing stories.

My parents decided to move to Ireland in the early Seventies, when I was eight. They had gone for a brief holiday there and my mother simply fell in love with the country. They carried out their dream of designing and building thier own house in west Cork, on the Sheepshead peninsula.

For the first two years of our life in Ireland, my mother educated all her children at home. By the end of that time, I desperately wanted to go back to school and mix with other children. Our family went through the gamut of nannies - from the kindly to the lunatic.

Our lifestyle probably sounded terribly bohemian, but in fact, my mother was a disiplinarian and would hold our lessons at fixed times. We obviously had an eccentric upbringing, looking back on it now. The afternoons would rather simplistically be taken up with 'making', when we would do something creative. My mother taught us creative writing, English and art. An ex-Army captain, who lived on the peninsula taught us Latin. Ralph and I would sit there chanting: 'Mensa, mensam, mensae.' My mother, rather primly, had the local Roman Catholic priest give us lectures on ethics. Mum had left school at 16 but was impulsive, brilliant and volatile. She wrote novels and managed to look after seven children at the same time. People often asked if they could drop their children off at our house, so they could have lessons with her, assuming that a few more pupils wouldn't make any difference. It would make my mother livid.

She could be terrifying when she was upset, and I have vivid memories of being frightened by her. She could say extreme things and I had to learn to understand her temperament. Children have an innate wisdom, though and they know more than adults think they do. I trust people who are volatile now.

Though my mother was always present in my childhood, it was rare for me to spend a huge amount of 'quality time' with her, when it was just the two of us. This was because she was enourmosly busy caring for all her other children. I do remember carrying out a substantial amount of domestic tasks. I used to look after my younger siblings; feeding them and changing their nappies.

My father was a wonderfully supportive and gentle man and his character complemented my mother's. He calmed her down whenever she got worked up. I never witnessed them bickering. Their was a gentle union of force and understanding. I felt that I had a very stable upbringing which was filled with happiness.

I remember coming downstairs one Christmas Day and seeing this little package all wrapped up under the tree. From within it I heard a squeak and, as I moved towards it, I saw my mother concealing a smile. Inside the package wa a tiny puppy which we called Pepper after the fictional character Mrs. Pepperpot. I adored that dog but when we moved to London my mother insisted that we give her away, and it broke my heart. Recently, my brother Joseph received a letter from the woman who had given Pepper a home. She had seen him in a show and remembered him as a boy. The letter explained that Pepper had been a wonderful dog and a great companion to her but that the animal had died recently. She added that whenever Pepper had seen a little girl with long hair she would bound up to her, thinking that it was me.

My brothers never ganged up on me. We would split up into different groups depending on our whims, but would never pit girls against boys.

It was fortunate that my childhoos was spent in the country but as soon as I turned 16, we moved to London. It is at precisely that age that you are desperate to be able to roam freely. I sometimes wonder whether one should always give a child the freedom of the countryside.

Still my rural enviroment was not always idyllic. I remember being terrorised by a girl in Kilkenny with whom I played netball. She started to threaten me by shaking her fists in my face, for no particular reason. Once I was in a record shop with Ralph and saw her glaring at me through the window. I turned to Ralph , petrified, and he strode out of the shop, marched up to her and said: 'You so much as lay a finger on my sister and I'll kill you.' I couldn't believe it. I was incredibly impressed at his protectiveness.

Usually I got on well with everyone and I have always made friends easily. This was just as well because I was frequently being taken out of one school and shoved into another. I spent my whole life being the new girl and became skilful at it. If you do it enough times you can deflate the stigma.

I was a classic teenager who wanted to go to parties but I didn't miss boys at all as I was always surrounded by them. I occasionally fancied some of my brothers' friends but all my friends mainly fancied Ralph.

My husband teases me now because he maintains that every time a Fiennes family member comes to the house, doors are slammed loudly and voices are raised by several decibels. Perhaps this is a result of chaos ruling in our household as we were growing up - though our lives weren't quite as mad as some people think. What amazes me about my roots is that, as children, we were all treated the same way by our parents and yet have turned out completely different to one another; the only similarity being that we all grew up to be very driven in the paths we chose to follow.