USA Today (2/3/99)Joseph Fiennes Mocks Celebrity
by Marco R. della Cava, USA TODAY
Younger brother Joseph — "My mates call me Joe" — aims a bit lower
than the heart, delivering performances in the films Elizabeth and
Shakespeare in Love that have set libidos afire from Britain to Baton
Rouge.
That chiseled face. Those bewitching eyes. That commanding voice.
It's enough to make Joe retch.
"There's nothing special here," says the 28-year-old actor, burying
a messy mop of black hair in his hands. "Report the truth! It's all
lighting and camera work."
Report the truth? It's only likely to generate more crazed fans.
Fiennes, one of six children born to the nomadic duo of photographer
Mark Fiennes and the late artist Jennifer Lash, remains a compelling
vision off-camera.
Dressed street-hip in a black leather jacket over a down vest,
khakis and sneakers, his gaze locks onto its target with unnerving
intimacy. His voice is never more than a whisper. He is exceedingly
polite, verging on shy.
Perhaps his most shocking trait is an Everyman quality: You're
convinced you've met him somewhere before.
"Joe has that magical quality of a movie star, which is vulnerability
and accessibility," says John Madden, director of Shakespeare in Love,
which recently garnered a Golden Globe award for best movie comedy —
though nothing for Fiennes — and looks to be an Oscar contender.
Madden claims to have witnessed Fiennes' "wacky side," which
would include helping co-star Geoffrey Rush come up with alternate
film titles for a Bard-resistant U.S. market (among them: The Full
Montague).
"Many of the people I tried out (for the role of young Will
Shakespeare) were intimidated by this icon of icons," Madden
says. "But not Joe. He was able to jump from comic deftness to
passionate intensity, to making pure intelligence watchable on
screen."
Fiennes is indeed cerebral.
His passions include reading (recently Ian McEwan's Amsterdam),
music (early American jazz, particularly the Ink Spots), travel
(Costa Rica has caught his fancy) and home repair ("I'm busy
sanding floors at my new home" in north London).
And, of course, there is his true love, the theater. A veteran of
the Royal Shakespeare Company, Fiennes affirms that no amount
of celluloid stardom will cause him to stop treading the boards.
"I love inhabiting someone else's mind, character, view of life,
through language," he says.
"The theater brings total strangers together to share a space.
They can choose to look anywhere they want. In a film, you
(viewers) are directed, you are led. You're not as free," he says.
"What I love about the theater is realizing the potency of an
empty stage."
But Fiennes' move to film has sent his earning power soaring.
Does that matter to a true actor? "Absolutely," he says. "I'd be
lying if I said it didn't. Film pays the rent better than theater
ever did."
Not that you can tell. Fiennes recently made local tabloid news
at the London premiere of Shakespeare. Co-star Gwyneth Paltrow
wore an expensive white Ralph Lauren number; he wore a favored
blue shirt picked up at a charity secondhand clothing shop.
Fiennes mocks celebrity.
"A celebrity might court the press, but an actor is about the roles,"
he says. "But having said that, the less you say, the more people
seem to want to know about you. So it's a Catch-22."
Being a heartthrob makes him "chuckle, in a cringy sort of way.
You've got to be pretty shallow to allow that (adulation) to get
to your head."
And pretty even-tempered not to let the flashbulbs of fame enrage
you. British media have reported that Fiennes recently finished a
six-year relationship with actress Sarah Griffiths, but Fiennes is
mum about the current status of his private life.
Asked if there was any uneasiness on the Shakespeare set because
he was doing nude love scenes with Paltrow, who at the time was
dating Shakespeare's Ben Affleck, he gives a very Fiennes answer.
"I wasn't aware of any. But if there was any, I wouldn't tell you
about it."
For now, Fiennes is focused on the work. After playing the Bard
and the lover of a British queen in Elizabeth, he'll head to Miami
to begin shooting Paul Schrader's Forever Mine, a thriller in which
he plays a man who is disfigured and returns to avenge a lost love.
Fiennes has just been fitted for facial prosthetics, including contact
lenses that will render those laser-like pupils dull and powerless.
For an actor known for his good looks, playing a man who has been
shot in the face is not the obvious choice.
But this is a Brit who has not spent much time in Hollywood, and
doesn't plan to, an actor who admires the career track of Johnny
Depp, similarly soft-spoken and drawn to offbeat projects.
This is a man for whom an important show-biz night means joining
his brother Ralph at a Dublin bookstore — as they did two years ago —
to read passages from their mother's final book, Blood Ties.
"I'm completely grounded within myself. I find the infringement
of so-called stardom grotesque," he says. "It's something I never
bargained for."
With that, the star pulls his jacket around his slight frame and
steps into the welcoming anonymity of a rainy London night.
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