Toronto Sun
Tuesday, December 29, 1998
By JIM SLOTEK

NEW YORK -- While older brother Ralph got the acclaim in film after film, another actor named Fiennes -- dark-eyed, energetic, youngest brother Joseph -- contented himself working the boards for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

"I can't really say he was an inspiration. It was my choice, my own need, my own want," the star of the Oscar-bound hit Shakespeare In Love says with only the mildest trace of suffrance when he's asked about the influence of his brother on his career choice.

In fact, while he's an agreeable talker on other subjects, Joseph Fiennes is not effusive when it comes to his family. His father was photographer Mark Fiennes and his mother the late writer Jennifer Lash. He has six siblings, including a twin brother Jacob. His older sister Martha is a film documentarian.

Bloodlines aren't a big help in figuring out Joseph Fiennes, who cuts a decidedly more dashing figure than his brooding brother. Adoring fan Web sites have popped up in the wake of his two screen triumphs this year -- his portrayal of the love of Queen Elizabeth I's life, Earl of Leicester in Elizabeth; and his characterization of the Bard himself in Shakespeare In Love, the Tom Stoppard-scripted romantic comedy about a woman (Gwyneth Paltrow) who cures young Will's writer's block and inspires Romeo And Juliet.

Where has the 28-year-old actor been? It was his choice to take a different path as an actor, establishing early his intent to avoid movies and broadcast media until he felt he'd done enough stagework.

"I had a long conversation with my agent, who I was very fortunate to get when I was 18, just before I went to drama school. Drama school to me was of paramount importance. I needed stage work to accumulate confidence, to work with the classics. And now I'm ready. It's taken six, seven years of theatre to feel confident in film, radio or television, whatever. It's just kind of wonderful to reach that stage, really."

Of Shakespeare, he says "initially there was reservation that I was going to be taking on sacred ground. But in another sense, it's a blank page, there's very little known about him after all. Also the film dwells less onthe genius of the man, than on the age, the Renaissance and the Elizabethan vibe."

"Literally, Joe was the only one who came within reach of Shakespeare from my point of view," says director John Madden. "He had to be romantic and witty and charismatic. But the real trick was to find somebody whom you could believe had written the work. Because although the film is very mischievous in tone, it takes the work very seriously. "Joe uniquely had that because he has a private quality, a hidden quality. You're thinking when he's onscreen 'What's going on in his head?' He has a glorious wit and irony, does Joe, and an amazing energy which the movie needed to have."

That Shakespeare In Love is the vehicle for Fiennes' break into movie stardom is ironic on a couple of counts. For one, the film 'reunites' him with Elizabeth I -- played by Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth, and, in her dotage, by Dame Judi Dench in Shakespeare. "It was rather odd ... the two Elizabeths," Fiennes says. "We were shooting the scene near the end where Elizabeth comes onstage to face Gwyneth. And I was looking at her thinking 'Christ, I was your lover!' It was such an image of a sad butchery of femininity, where she put zinc on her face to cover what had happened to it. It's brutal seeing Cate gravitating toward that at the end of Elizabeth, and seeing Judi as the end result."

The other ironic note is that his film break should involve the theatrical love of his life, the work of the Bard of Avon. "The great thing about the movie is that it humanizes this icon. He's a bawdy Elizabethan writer. Anyone can access him, academics or fans of c--k jokes, which are prevalent throughout his work."

Shakespeare, he says, "is like jazz. If you can unlock the basic structure, you can go anywhere with it. But you don't necessarily need the discipline of the form to enjoy it."