Joseph Fiennes gets hosed up again to explore the sexy side of Shakespeare. The unfortunate thing for actor Joseph Fiennes is that he's Ralph Fiennes's brother. That's not meant disrespectfully. Joseph is rather proud of his elder sibling (as we all are every time the Oscars roll around). It's just that most feel compelled to dwell on this rather obvious family connection.

Out of deference to Joseph, who's been busy hacking out an acting career of his own, this detail usually appears further down the page, discreetly slipped in so as not to ruffle the 28-year-old, who has suffered comparisons with Ralph, 36, since the day he strapped on a codpiece of his own. But, what the hell? It's the first thing the famous surname brings to mind. So, let's get it over and done with, shall we?

"Of course, I understand there's bound to be parallels drawn, and it's important," sympathises Joseph. "But we're so vastly different. I would rather not talk about it purely because I'm protective of other people. Maybe they don't want to be talked about. Though having said that, once you start going "I don't want to talk about it," you fuel the need to find out. There's a fine line that we have to tread."

So, there we are. No jealousy, no blood feud, no nothing, actually. Over and done with. Next question please.

Mercifully, with the release of Shakespeare in Love, Joseph can at last step out of Ralph's shadow. He's so good in this masterful period comedy - from Mrs Brown director John Madden and writer Tom Stoppard - it's likely that both the film and Joseph himself will shortly be scooping awards (it has already been released in the States to qualify it for the Oscars.)

"I think 400 years is actually not that long and we like to think we've changed," reflects Fiennes on Shakespeare's eternal currency. "We dress differently and we don't suffer from the pox, but I think all our other neuroses and complexities - love and hatred and deceit and jealousy - the whole gamut of all the emotions, will always remain the same. That's why Shakespeare's so pertinent. He understands the human psyche to a decimal point."

As a former RSC player, with the kind of intense dark looks usually described as "smouldering," Joseph tends to be perceived as something of a broody sort. But, to tell the truth, at this meeting he looks a little odd, a little lopsided. "Oh," Fiennes grumbles, pointing to a largely absent right eyebrow. "That was shaved off for the theatre and it's crazy because it hasn't grown back. The make-up artist said "Oh, pluck it out and it'll grow back." Every time I look in the mirror I think "I'm gonna have to sue her." "

Fortunately, Fiennes is only joking. It turns out he's a rather smiley fellow. "Do I enjoy wearing tights?" he quips, knowing that he was also last seen hosed-up in Elizabeth. "Yeah, I do, actually. I like it to being naked on a beach when everyone else is in their swimwear. They feel embarrassed for you, but you feel liberated."

His playfulness is used to great effect in Shakespeare in Love. He's the Bard himself, a quill-for-hire churning out scripts for the local theater until writer's block prevents him from completing his latest work, a fledgling romance called Romeo and Ethel, The Pirate's Daughter. "I just want to say it, for the record, I'm definitely no expert. I'm a jobbing actor," protests Fiennes lest we delve too deeply into the film's text and subtext. Though the man clearly knows his onions. And the onions are these: a great deal of mystery still surrounds just exactly who Shakespeare really was, and from 1585 - 92 there is no documentation about him whatsoever.

"Here's a man who knocked out 36 plays, but that's the only source we have," Fiennes explains. "You could profile a man from those plays. But strangely enough, it's all at odds, it's all contradictory - his views on politics, his views on sexuality, his faith. You don't know quite where to place him - Catholic, Protestant, monarchist, street boy? I mean, he seems to have got everywhere, so it'll always inspire debate."

Shakespeare in Love reckons that a man who crafted some of the greatest love poetry must surely have had a pretty turbulent romantic life himself. What makes Will tick in the film is the comely Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow). And, as Geoffrey Rush, who co-stars in both films, points out, just as Fiennes oliged Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth, he beds his leading lady in Shakespeare in Love too. Bard to the bone.

"Well, I'm jealous," Fiennes mocks, about Rush. "He got the funny false teeth. Always gets a laugh."

Joseph Alberic Fiennes grew up in a family of seven kids, he and his twin brother Jake being the youngest. Their photographer father and writer mother doggedly eked out a rural existence, struggling to make ends meet, and supplementing their income by buying old houses, doing them up and selling them at a profit. "I'm not going to paint an idyllic, bohemian picture. It wasn't," insists Fiennes. "It was a normal, messy, noisy, functional family."

Despite a childhood full of fresh air, trees, a dog and no television, by his estimation the Twistleton-Wykeham-Fiennes family (to give them all three blazing barrels of their aristocratically connected surname) moved house 14 times - to Dorset, Wiltshire, and even southern Ireland for a while. "I mean I was young them and it was an adventure," he remembers. "Going to a new school, I could reinvent myself. It was great fun."

Perhaps this was what prompted Joseph to pursue a life treading the boards. He ended up at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and progressed to the RSC, getting rave reviews for Troilus and Cressida, starring as Jesus in Dennis Potter's Son of Man and then winning big plaudits for A Month in the Country with Helen Mirren. Film followed, with a part in Stealing Beauty, Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel & Laurence and then Elizabeth. Not that he feels particularly comfortable with running through the catalogue.

"Within my family there are other members who are equally prolific and dynamic, who, because they're not actors, don't get that kind of exposure," he doth protest. "There's my sister Martha, who's directing, my brother Magnus who's a musician, my sister Sophie who's a producer, my twin Jake who's a gamekeeper, all doing their own kind of thing. Another's an archaeologist."

There's also, famously, distant cousin Ranulph, the dwindling-toed Artic explorer. Joseph's never met him but would like to ("I hear he's a really lovely guy"). Though, these days, getting even the immediate family under one roof, Ralph and all, is a logistical family nightmare. Not that they spend much time swapping professional notes. "There are so many and we're so busy that when we do, we tend not to talk shop, we talk domestics," he laughs. "Very loud domestic talk."

Still, Magnus and Ralph did just collaborate on a film of Martha's. Joseph missed that one - he's working on a British gangster film called Rancid Aluminum. By the time it comes out, Joseph Fiennes will have carved his own notch on the bedpost of entertainment history.