Scripps Howard News Service
March 13, 2001
By Luaine Lee

When Joseph Fiennes isn't acting, he can be found sanding the stairs in his house, rewiring a lamp or removing an annoying squeak in the floorboards.

Fiennes, the British actor who moved front-and-center with "Shakespeare in Love," may be a pretty good carpenter, but acting is his calling. He's known that since he was a kid, he says as he sinks into a maroon frieze chair, his slim legs swathed in black chinos, his unpressed black T-shirt hanging loosely from his shoulders, his buck shoes untied, the laces trailing on the carpet.

"I was very outdoors, very outgoing, into the physical life," he says. "And I guess the earliest point that I can recollect acting taking hold of me - although I did plays at school - was probably at primary school when I was 7 or 8, maybe 9, and the teacher cast the play 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.' And she very sweetly cast me as Joseph. I thought, 'I'm called Joseph, and he's called Joseph. This is meant to be.' So I remember the sheer joy, as I had the sense of finding my place even at that early age, a feeling of raison d'etre."

It wasn't until he was 17 that Fiennes (who is eight years younger than his famous acting brother, Ralph Fiennes) decided to pursue his passion in earnest.

After he stirred audiences as the courtier in "Elizabeth" and the frustrated Bard with writer's block in "Shakespeare in Love," Fiennes seemed to disappear. He didn't really.

He returned to the theater in England, out of the sightline of most Americans. Now he materializes again in "Enemy at the Gates," a wartime thriller about the desperate battle for Stalingrad during World War II.

Fiennes plays a firebrand Communist whose rousing propaganda helps inspire the city to heroic heights.

Shy in real life, Fiennes says portraying others helps him muddle through. "I think it's easier for a shy person because in playing a character, it's not me. So I get that freedom of expression through someone else's shoes and not my own. So give me a script, the words and the character, and the shyness goes away. It comes back when the focus is on myself. But I'm a bit of a joker at heart, too," he says, smiling and resting his stubbly chin on his hand.

Many actors are told to strike while the iron is hot, but Fiennes, 30, has no concerns about growing "cold" after "Shakespeare in Love."

"I get creative energy from the quantum leap of working from really an extreme of medium and character," he says. "And I went straight back to theater at the Royal Court. I think I was perplexed by the power and strength (of fame) - although I had an intellectual idea of this medium and the press. And I felt that I was bombarded, and I didn't want to lose control of my own voice and wanted to hold on to that, in respect of what I love," he says.

Besides, he's in it for the marathon, not the sprint. "I would hope and feel that this passionate field I participate in is for life, and I see a long journey. And I guess I didn't want a moment of heat in one moment of my life, but distributed throughout. I think publicity and exposure is dangerous in that respect. It's quite good, I think, to disappear and come back and disappear and jump up again - and not necessarily feel the pressure to pursue that moment of focus."

Fiennes' father is a photographer, his mother an artist and writer. He spent part of his childhood in Ireland with his four brothers and two sisters. He says he was encouraged by his parents to chase his rainbow, though it wasn't a very practical choice.

"It was difficult because the government and local borough where I lived only gave out discretionary grants, and it didn't cover my fees. So I had to get a sponsorship. So I worked very hard at getting a sponsorship and getting to drama school."

He set about writing letters to various companies in London asking them to back his education. "To my amazement one company, out of 100 letters, wrote back and said, 'Come and have a meeting.' I went into a boardroom - it was very strange - and here was this young student actor, and I don't know what happened. They said, 'Look, we'll push you through drama school and maybe you'll come back and give us poetry readings when we have company or parties.' I don't know whether it was a tax incentive for them to write off money for me, but it got me through drama school."

And did he ever return for those promised poetry readings? "They never heard from me again," he laughs.

Fiennes doesn't like to talk about himself and when asked if he has a sweetheart, he merely shrugs, "Maybe."

He does admit that he doesn't cotton to the idea of dating an actress. "I've been there and I don't think I'll go there again," he says, shaking his head. "On the one hand, you have an understanding of the stresses of working in this business, but on the other it doesn't prove too positive."

(Luaine Lee writes entertainment profiles at Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail 102404.1356@compuserve.com.)