By Frances Hubbard
Every evening for the next two months, Joseph Fiennes will suffer the torment of being not quite seduced by Helen Mirren. Fingertip will, fleetingly, brush fingertip. Their eyes will lock for a second of unspoken communion and then forces beyond their control will wrench them apart.
How many young men would happily be tantalised in this way? And on a nightly basis, too. Joseph can only gulp in embarrassment when asked if he likes the idea of being stalked by a bosomy femme fatale of seasoned years.
"Maturity and wisdom has a certain something. You get that in older women, I suppose," he says. Joseph, 23, is attractive, unpretentious and nice enough to be disconcerted by mildly saucy questions.
He is also the brother of Ralph Fiennes, the actor whose superb performance as Nazi commandant Amon Goeth in Schindler's List earned an Oscar nomination.
Inevitably, the relationship has caused additional interest in Joseph's second West End part since leaving drama school.
He plays Belyaev, the young tutor who unwittingly sends shudders of lust through the heroine Natalya in Turgenev's A Month In The Country, which opens at the Albery Theatre tomorrow night. Mirren is faultless as besotted matron Natalya and he is boyishly flattered to be chosen by her.
"Heart-throb? Not at all, not at *all*," he protests. "If I had enough influence, I'd keep myself well away from all that and just do what I love, which is the work. There's a danger of the work being overwhelmed if you get too much attention when you're still new."
"This is a marvellous production and I'm grateful to be a part of it. Watching people like Helen Mirren and John Hurt refine their performances every night is like watching singers perform opera. They are *so* good at what they do. And I'm really very green."
Not green enough to prevent comparisons with his older brother. They look vaguely similar, but Joseph is sturdier. There are seven years and four other artistically-inclined siblings between them.
"Obviously I'm very lucky to have someone with an insight into the business because I think it has given me a more realistic picture of what it is about," he says.
"Ralph was a great helping me look at speeches for drama school and he's a good friend, but he had no direct influence on making me want to act. It was my parents and family as a whole, rather than just him."
"We moved all the time as children, to 14 houses in all. I'm not sure why, except to get away from London and then move closer again because it was better for work. That forced me to communicate because, if you're arriving in different schools as an outsider, you have to make friends quickly."
The Fiennes family shuttled between Suffolk, Ireland and the West country in what sounds like a cheerfully Bohemian procession behind their photographer father Mark. All but Joseph's non-identical twin brother Jake, a gamekeeper in Wales, have since landed in the entertainment industry.
Their mother Jini, a writer and painter, died in December and the mention of her name is enough to make him look up in the way people do when they want to prevent tears. "She was always encouraging us, pushing us to express our most creative aspect. I miss her all the time, of course I do. But, in a different sense, she's ever present because of the books and the warmth she has left behind."
When A Month In The Country finishes its limited run on May 28, Joseph says there's nothing waiting for him but a P45 and more auditions.
He and his 25-year-old actress girlfriend Sara Griffiths are currently moving from London's Kennington to the swankier postcode of SW3 and he seems more pre-occupied with packing tea chests than plotting his career.
"Sara's wonderful. Every morning I fall in love with her all over again," he trills with such exuberance that soppy smirk creeps across our female photographer's face. "He's not all *actory*. He's quite sweet," she whispers.
If there's one description men hate, it's "sweet." But he should accept the compliment. He has plenty of time yet to develop a mean streak.
