He's the Hollywood leading man who turned his back on the spotlight. Alistair Smith finds a superstar full of surprises.
It could all have been so different for Joseph Fiennes, younger brother of Ralph and cousin of explorer Ranulph. A decade ago, he burst onto the scene with his smouldering eyes and box office hits Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth. A career of corset-busting period dramas beckoned, but Fiennes stubbornly resisted.
Today, you're more likely to find him playing a homosexual in an illicit relationship with a young boy (Running with Scissors) or a postop transexual (more anon) than a romantic lead. "There could have been two routes," he says. "There could have been more tights and horses and things like Running with Scissors would never have come on the radar. But with the energy you get from being allowed to go into relaly interesting narrative pieces, it's a no-brainer for me. In the other area, it just gets very dry and stagnant".
Fiennes, 38, is sitting, grabbing a quick coffee before he starts rehearsals for his latest project. He is wrapped in a woolly top and scarf, even though its actually quite warm outside. In fact, he seems rather a wrapped up peron, arms crossed tight and eyes scanning the room. He is thoughtful, low key and intense - like his latest theatre offering.
Opening at the Bush Theatre, 2000 Feet Away is about paedophilia. Specifically, it deals with a law in Iowa which says a paedophile can't live within a certain distance of where children congregate. Fiennes plays a deputy sheriff charged with finding a home fora released sex offender.
"It's a fascinating play about fear", he explains between sips of cappuccino, eyes darting somewhere over my shoulder. "I think it will bring great debate." This is what interests Fiennes and has led him to take the road last traveled, seeking out independent films and returning to his first love-theatre-time and again.
"I never went out to do film. And theatre doesn't get caught up so quickly in cliche and formula. It doesn't have 100 million pounds riding on it, so it has great freedom. With a budget of 100 million pounds, there's big pressure and you end up becoming formulaic because there's a common denominator to satisfy. It's not my medium, it's the director and producer's medium. And theatre is firmily the actor's medium", he smiles, relishing the prospect of being on stage.
The other problem is the loss of privacy which Hollywood leading man status brings. Fiennes has always been closely guarded about his private life refusing to comment on rumours about who he might be seeing from the likes of Naomi Campbell to more recently a Swiss model. He still refuses to talk about it.
"Personally, if I pay for a ticket to see something, I want to see those characters. I don't want to see the people who pop up in all the 150,000 celebrity magazines," he explains. "I live by that rule myself. That's why I can lose myself in a character and surprise the audience."
Speaking of surprises, back to the cross-dressing. Fiennes has just appeared in a US pilot for a new series, orignally called 4 Ounces (the average weight of the American penis, he says). He plays Bob, who decides he wants to become a woman.
"It was great fun", he laughs. "There was a lot of airbrushing, because I've got a heavy beard. I had to shave three times a day. At first, I thought I looked rather wonderful and could get away with it, but no".
And then there's his decision to reprise his role from Shakespeare in Love. But, before anyone starts looking forward to Shakespeare in Love 2, it's only for a minute and a half. It's a short film Fiennes made himself to help the Free Burma campaign.
"I rang up the oeople who did the costumes for the film," he says, "and asked if I could have the Shakespeare jacket. I also got Nicholas Le Provost, who plays Gwyneth Paltrow's dad in the film to join me. The two of us got together and we filmed this tongue in cheek public service announcement."
For those of you who'd like to remember Fiennes as he was a decade ago, the film is online at www.burmaitcantwait.org. For everyone else, he'll be at the Bush Theatre next week.
Fiennes's Favorites
Last Book You Read? Resistance by Owen Shears. It's set in the Welsh valleys and he imagines there's a German invasion during WWII, and when the war ends, the Germans stay. I'd definitely recommend it.
Last Film? No Country for Old Men. I thought it was a real gauntlet down to fomulaic expectations, where the audience has got so savvy they think they know what is going to happen. But you are let down. Some people were disappointed, but I thought that was great and how it should be. It was cahllenging and refreshing.
Last theatre show? God of Carnage. I'm a bit biased, but I thought it was a really great cast (his brother Ralph stars). Great ensemble acting and a top, stellar cast.
Last CD? I'm downloading a lot of interresting songs for projects and bit scroe music such as the Doctor Shivago music. I'm going on iTunes more than buying CDs, but the last DVD I bought was The Wire.
Fave thing about London? It's full of life. If you're bored of London, you're bored of life. That's the bottom line.
What did we discover about the chap who sucked a quill in Shakespeare In Love? 1) His beard covers his surfing scars. 2) He nearly froze to death on a mountain. 3) He'd rathertalk bikes than girls, if you don't mind
Nine in the morning on a Monday in Fulham, London.
The rain is so torrential that the Live crew waiting for Joseph Fiennes are more concerned with drying their clothes than whether the star of Shakespeare In Love will turn up.
He's supposed to be a difficult interview and a thunderstorm is all the reason some actors need to stay in bed.
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Joseph Fiennes: 'The adrenaline, the fear, then the elation... That's what I do it for. For my next expedition I want to go ice-climbing'
It looks like a wasted day when a motorcyclist pulls up outside the studio's glass front, kills his engine and strides in, water streaming from his leathers.
A courier, everyone assumes, until he takes off his helmet and there's Shakespeare himself, forming a large puddle and asking for a hand getting his bike out of the rain.
Someone hands him an old dishcloth and he sets about getting his waterlogged Triumph polished to a high gleam.
Fiennes is not the man we were expecting.
True, he's one of a large artistic family including actor brother Ralph, directors Sophie and Martha and composer Magnus.
And true, after breaking big in two hit films dressed in a flouncy shirt – Elizabeth and Shakespeare In Love (both out in 1998) – he took a long break from movies to concentrate on theatre.
But the man wiping down his Scrambler in a rugby shirt, brown boots and tattered jeans is as far from a quill-sucking thespian as it's possible to be.
Now 37, he's rangy, smiling, sweary, good company and full of stories.
Take, for example, his scraggy stubble.
There's a reason you'll never see him clean-shaven any more, and it leaves the women in the room wincing and covering their mouths.
"I was doing a film near Brisbane called The Great Raid [released in 2005]," he begins, in an accent that's more west London street than Rada.
"It was a stormy day and the waves were huge. My friend with more experience of surfing said, “Dude, I can't go in there, it's ridiculous.” But I was a novice, so I paddled out. I was focused on not annoying all the other surfers – you know, that territorial thing, “My wave! My wave!” So I waited just that second too long, and this 15ft breaker launched itself on top of me."
Fiennes was under water for a long time.
"When you wipe out and go under," he says, "you don't know if your cord is caught in coral, whether you're drowning. It's like being in a washing machine." Fiennes began to panic.
Then he was smashed in the face.
"I knew something bad had happened. I thought I'd been hit by a shark, just this immense impact.
"The board either went up in the air and down again, or went down and shot up… I couldn't tell which way up I was, but anyway, it hit me. I was knocked out and it took my lip off.
"When I washed up on the beach, people were looking at me in horror. I felt my arms and legs… I couldn't work out what was wrong.
"My friend said, “Your face is hanging off.” It was literally gone from the mouth down, with my teeth and bone showing through."
His friend asked two girls to give them a lift to hospital. "But they wouldn't. I looked too scary," he says.
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Joseph looking moody on his motorbike - he is very cagey talking about his love-life but will talk to anyone about his beloved bikes
The girls ran away; a lifeguard called an ambulance, but the ambulance never arrived.
So there they were, sitting on a beach on the other side of the world in a storm, one of them covered in blood with half a face.
"Now when I shave I've got a lot of scars," Fiennes says, parting his whiskers to show a network of silvery wounds.
"The surgeon who fixed me said that it would help if I grew a beard so you can see where my lip ends, because it's not pink any more.
"They rebuilt it with a bit of my earlobe. It was a nice bit of surgery. So that's why I started with the stubble. I was filming for Miramax, and I couldn't turn up without a lip."
As film star anecdotes go, it beats the one about how Scientology put your life in perspective.
It also reveals more about Fiennes than just his scars. He's a man's man.
If he has a reputation as a cagey interview, that's because female journalists keep trying to pry into his relationships, which, to be fair, have included actresses (Sara Griffiths, Catherine McCormack and more recently his Great Raid co-star Natalie Mendoza), models (a Swiss beauty queen, a rumoured fling with Naomi Campbell) and a make-up artist (Fiona Jolly, who met him on a magazine shoot and ended up buying a house with him).
You can't blame them for digging, but he won't play along.
Today he says his current girlfriend is the sexiest person he's ever met, but he won't reveal her name.
His taciturnity – like his taste for danger – harks back to actors of an earlier and far less pampered generation. Like Fiennes's hero, Steve McQueen.
"McQueen was a forerunner to that school of actors who go through a script and say, “You know what? I don't want to say that. Or that, or that.” I love his quiet economy."
It was McQueen, in fact, who inspired his £6,000 choice of transport on this thundery day that, once dried and polished, will be the star of our shoot.
"It's a Triumph Scrambler 900 – top speed's about 110mph," says Fiennes.
"It's evocative for me of The Great Escape. It's basically a Bonneville but with scrambler tyres and quirky-looking pipes fitted.
"In theory you could go out and jump over fences on it, but it's a heavy bike, totally old school.
"I don't think it could withstand the landing, so I haven't done that, I just burn along country tracks."
Fiennes loves machines almost as much as McQueen himself.
Proudly listing the classic English marques – Triumph and Jaguar, Norton and BSA – he looks at the silver Triumph nameplate on the side of his bike and says, "That, in its heyday, was an extraordinary British company."
In the past, he's owned a Bonneville from the same factory, as well as a Thruxton, styled after the beautiful drop-handlebar racing bikes you'll see in black-and-white photographs. Newer, lighter, faster bikes don't impress him much.
"I'd far rather see The Great Escape than The Fast And The Furious," is how he puts it.
"I tried a 675cc Triumph model called the Daytona Triple, but the acceleration on that is just… remember Battlestar Galactica, when they launched the space fighters down those long tubes?
"It's exactly that sort of vibe, with lots of flashing blue lights, just incredibly quick.
"It was too aggressive for me, too inviting – even accelerating from 0–30mph you could feel all the power wanting to be set free; just ridiculously dangerous in the wrong hands. But an extraordinary bit of engineering."
It's a different story when he's in his Jaguar XKR and he's hurtling around Millbrook at 170mph.
"It's a speedbowl, a banked track," he says.
"You're not supposed to compete with each other but I found my lovely, luxurious Jag being overtaken by Subarus and Hondas and you're like, “Wait, that's not right!”"
Fiennes has been taking his life in his hands since he was 17, when he bought a Honda 125 that someone had tinkered with to make it 150cc. Every day on the road to art school he'd lean down low on the same corner, clip the footrest and fly off. Over-exuberance, he calls it.
"You've got to get a few scratches as a teenager."
He'd already shrugged off his share of blows by that age.
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Joseph on his Triumph Scrambler 900 motorbike: ‘It’s evocative for me of The Great Escape. It’s basically a Bonneville but with scrambler tyres fitted'
Because his parents – a photographer and a novelist – supplemented their income by doing up houses, he went to "12 or 14" different schools and became a "hideous little terror who beat people up".
At one school in Ireland he was beaten so hard by a nun that her bamboo stick broke.
So right now, despite losing a lip the last time he surfed (and the fact that a boy was killed on the same beach the same day when a board hit him), he's eager to get back in the waves.
And when I ask him about the high point of his career, he offers another story that most people would consider an ordeal.
"The great thing about films is that you have access to this whole world of experts who teach you the skills your character's supposed to have," he says.
"When I did Killing Me Softly, I decided I needed to research rock-climbing, so the producers sent me off on a course. I didn't really need to do it, I just wanted to try it out.
"I learned at a place called The Castle in north London and before long I was climbing cliffs in Scotland.
"One day, I was on a peak about 2,000ft up, and it started raining really heavily.
"I pressed my face to the rock and felt my way up. It was freezing cold. I realised I couldn't feel the rock any more.
"My hands had gone numb. I had to ask the guy I was with to watch my hands and tell me if I was holding the rock. That really is a point where you ask yourself, “What the hell am I doing 2,000ft up a mountain asking someone else if I'm holding on?”"
Fiennes says the elation when he finally reached the top was the biggest rush of his life.
"The adrenaline, the fear, then the elation… that's what I do it for. For my next expedition I want to go ice-climbing. It's incredibly dangerous, a challenging sport, but great fun and very beautiful."
When he's not half-dying on mountains – which, considering his cousin Ranulph is a polar explorer, is surely no more than a family hobby – Fiennes relaxes at home in west London, watching films on a big-screen TV or making them on his Apple Mac.
"I take a lot of footage with a little £80 Sony digicam. What I love is the editing software. Editing, for me, is film-making."
He collects photography books, loves wine and likes a good Cohiba cigar.
Aesthetics are important to Fiennes who – for all his love of speed and danger – actually spends a great deal of the interview discussing film, photography, art and architecture, a taste inherited from his parents, both deceased.
Fiennes raises funds for Breakthrough Breast Cancer, the disease that took his mother at a young age, and works with young offenders for the Prince's Trust.
He knows what it's like to be a "problem pupil" after he was diagnosed dyslexic and eager to be anywhere but school.
He left at 16, hoping to go to art college, but first spent a summer shovelling horse dung in a stable. Even that wasn't his worst job ever.
"The toughest was my four years at the National Theatre as a dresser," he says.
"You're washing pants and socks at 11 o'clock at night while the actors are in the pub. It's paying your dues, the way footballers start off cleaning their heroes' boots.
"I think everyone should do it. But it was tough. There are one or two very smelly actors out there."
It was a long way from there, and a long struggle to emerge from brother Ralph's shadow, to the five-picture deal he was offered in the wake of his triumph with Shakespeare In Love.
Fiennes rejected that contract, went to India for a year, then returned to the theatre, working for £200 a week at the Royal Court, his pants and socks washed by hands unknown.
This year, he's very much back on Hollywood's radar, with at least four films and one TV show set for release.
In British independent film The Escapist, he plays an accomplice to a man (Brian Cox) desperate to get out of prison to see his daughter.
In Spring 41, he plays the father of a Jewish family on the run in Poland during the war.
In TV pilot Four Ounces, he plays a transsexual – and is dreading shaving his legs every day if the series is picked up. In German film The Red Baron, he plays the Canadian pilot who shoots the fighter ace down.
And in Against The Current, he plays a man battling depression who decides to swim the Hudson River.
"He goes upstate about 150 miles and swims back down to the Statue Of Liberty," Fiennes says.
"It's a road movie in water. I spent a lot of time in that river and it was god-awful on some days.
"Freezing cold, a lot of “white jellyfish” – floating condoms – and huge tug-boats going past with 15ft propellers.
"It's not like you've got ten scuba divers on hand to help you out – it was one bloke in a dinghy.
"But the hairiest part was swimming past the nuclear power station that had seeped two years before.
"A lot of dead fish. So if I'm glowing, it's not that I'm happy to be back in London, it's because I'm radioactive."
And with that, he gets back on his bike and rides off into the gloom, raindrops instantly vaporising in his nuclear glow. Joseph Fiennes: definitely not the man we were expecting.
