The Sun-Herald, Australia
July 15, 2001
By Phillip McCarthy

There are two Joseph Fiennes: One is building an impressive acting resume, the other is a star's little brother. Phillip McCarthy meets both.

For Joseph Fiennes the novelty of being identified as Ralph's little brother probably wore off somewhere around adolescence. That was when thespian Ralph was bursting on to the theatre scene in Britain and Joseph's own acting hormones were beginning to stir.

So when Joseph emerged three years ago as a romantic lead in two acclaimed Elizabethan films in rapid succession - Shekhar Kapur's brooding drama Elizabeth and John Madden's effervescent comedy Shakespeare In Love - Big Brother Ralph hung over Joseph like an inescapable Orwellian metaphor. And distinguished bloodlines, after all, are as interesting in actors as they are in thoroughbreds and royalty.

Behind the brooding looks and fashionable stubble Joseph Fiennes, 30, is a seriously intense and physically compact man. His demeanour is friendly but it's clear that he has some conflicts about how to handle the Ralph factor.

Like any actor juggling celebrity, privacy and ego, Fiennes protests that he wants to be known for performances, not pedigree, but he concedes that's not going to happen for a while.

"I understand that it's inevitable that parallels are going to be drawn, it's one of those angles that journalists pick up," he said wearily. "We're so vastly different and I started out several years later so it doesn't really bother me. It's a bit like people making comparisons between me and someone in a different age group.

"I'm wary about making comparisons between myself and anyone else as a matter of courtesy for everyone. But once you go saying, 'I don't want to talk about that', you fuel people's curiosity. It's a fine line."

There are seven Fiennes siblings and five of them are in the musical or dramatic arts; his twin brother Jacob, a gamekeeper, and his younger stepbrother Michael, an archaeologist, are the exceptions.

If he is reticent about talking about Ralph, eight years his senior, Joseph is positively animated when he talks about Jacob, who spent a year or two jackarooing in the Northern Territory.

"The two of us have had quite diverse paths," he said, almost wistfully. "Perhaps it's because we are twins and were always labelled as such. But when you grow up so close to someone you have to carve out your own identity."

As it turns out Fiennes has had more palpable connections with Australia than his brother's stint at the Top End. He was Cate Blanchett's love interest in Elizabeth, he was rumoured to have gone out for a time with Australian singer Natalie Imbruglia and, in another unattractive characterisation, he stalks Heath Ledger's ex, Heather Graham, in his next film, Killing Me Softly. None of which he wants to talk about.

"Essentially when I do interviews I want to share as much about the project and as little about myself as possible," he said.

"But it would be naive to think journalists are not going to ask me about myself. You have your job to do. I'm OK with it and I try to be honest. No-one has told outright lies about me. It's the sloppy things that creep in, like reading about my father in the past tense, that drive me mad.

If anything, Fiennes's most recent role in Enemy At The Gates - as a World WarII Stalinist propaganda apparatchik in the besieged city of Stalingrad - has probably sharpened his acceptance of the fickleness of the media cycle.

In the $US77 million ($150 million) epic he plays Danilov, a Russian Army officer/journalist who turns Vassili Zaitsev, a gawky sharpshooter from the Urals (played by Jude Law), into an inspirational war hero and compelling propaganda celebrity.

As Zaitsev systematically picks off officers of the Nazi high command in conquered sectors of the city, it falls to Danilov to package Zaitsev's exploits as daily morale-lifting dispatches for the citizenry.

In that sense he is a bit like two of the main players in today's celebrity fame game: the media and the Hollywood publicists whose job it is to ensure that their clients are shown in the best possible light.

And after two romantic, men-in-tights roles, taking on Danilov - a sort of nerdy, bespectacled child of the revolution - does suggest that Fiennes is for real when he suggests that performance matters more than persona.

Law's character is, after all, the hero of the piece and if audiences don't feel a certain distaste for the way Danilov turns him into propaganda fodder, they certainly loathe his interference in Law's romance with leading lady Rachel Weisz.

"He's a terribly flawed individual and starts with such unshakeable beliefs that it becomes a matter of process rather than truth," Fiennes said. "He comes to realise that Stalin is no better than the Nazis. He realises that you can have this Utopian idea but in the end human DNA thwarts things.

"The fact that he is competing for the same love with the super hero he has created is his personal tragedy."

Enemy At The Gates will be released in Australia on July 26.