The Daily Telegraph
March 5, 1997
By Will Bennett

While Ralph Fiennes has a life in the spotlight as an Oscar-nominated actor, his brother Jake lives a peaceful existence as a gamekeeper on a Norfolk estate.

It is not Jake, however, who's jealous of his brother's celebrity but Ralph who is sometimes envious of Jake's less stressful life in the country.

On Sunday night Ralph, 33, attended the premiere of his new film The English Patient in London. He has been nominated for an Oscar for his lead role.

He arrived with actress Francesca Annis, almost 20 years his senior, amid a frenzy of media interest in both the film and the couple's relationship.

By contrast, a night out for Jake, 27, is more likely to be a late check around the estate owned by his employer Sir Nicholas Bacon, in Raveningham, near Norwich.

Jake's proudest moment was not widely publicised. It was winning a trophy in Inverness for catching salmon and shooting grouse and a stag.

But despite the difference in their lives, the actor likes to visit his brother, who lives in a 100-year-old cottage on the estate and whose girl friend Mel is a veterinary assistant.

Ralph said: "Whenever I go and see my brother Jake he frog-marches me over the estate, shows me a dead hare and plucks pheasants. I am envious of his life. It is very different from my life and I can see its attraction."

Jake said: "I see quite a lot of Ralph and he enjoys coming up to the estate. I am very happy doing what I am doing. The attraction is that I am out all day in the countryside that I love.

"We live in two different worlds and there is no comparison between what we do. I was brought up in a house in London and a house in the country but now my life is here."

Jake's twin brother Joe is also an actor. So he is the only member of his family who is not on the stage or a musician.

Jake said: "I am very different from the rest of my family. I am a country boy at heart and I like a quiet life.

"Here I can see kestrels and short-eared owls on the estate. I see things no one else sees, a stoat chasing a rabbit, a fox moving her cubs before the sun rises or a red deer on the edge of a ride.

"You see all these things happening. If you blink you miss them. As a gamekeeper, I know I am a dying breed. I have been to many places but I will always stay in East Anglia where I feel most at home."

Jake worked on an Outback farm in Australia for two years after leaving school before becoming a gamekeeper six years ago.

His pride in his famous brother is evident. Inside the cottage on the 2,500-acre estate is a poster of Ralph in Hamlet and a video of the film Schindler's List. But these are surrounded by books with titles such as Tales of the Old Gamekeeper and A Poacher's Tales and one of Jake's most treasured possessions is a painting of a hare on the sitting room wall by his late mother Jini.