Heather Hodson meets Joseph Fiennes, a force for Ralph to reckon with; Harpers & Queen, July 1996

What Joseph Fiennes can't stand are agents only interested in his surname. They make him really sick. He says that even when he was at drama school Hollywood studios would send him scripts and he would wonder why on earth they bothered. 'Then I would think, "Well, I know why. Well I won't even read it then. I won't even meet these people. I thought look, no way.' So when he left Guildhall Drama School three years ago he ignored them and headed instead for the theatre. 'I went straight out and did the camp gothic ghost story The Woman In Black. It was eight shows a week for six months. I don't think there is anything quite so gruelling as the West End. It is relentless.'

Joe, 24, does not look the type to stomach relentlessness. He looks pale and a bit under the weather, and talks a lot about his cold (he is worried it might mess up the final run-through in the afternoon of As You Like It). But then you cotton on about his presence, which on stage can be menacing or moving, depending on the part, and off-stage is a sort of overwhelming personal glamour easily the equal to his brother Ralph's.

That alone will no doubt ensure him a future on the screen. In the meantime, his clear-sightedness following Guildhall has paid off. He has turned in a series of critically acclaimed performances: Belyaev in A Month In the Country, alongside Helen Mirren and John Hurt; Lacenaire in Simon Callow's adaptation of Les Enfants du Paradis - one of the few highlights of that dull production; and, last autumn, Jesus Christ in the RSC's production of Dennis Potter's Son of Man. Potter's very human Christ demanded a full-throttle performance, and Joe gave it. 'I was exhausted after that. If the part was just divine I guess I could have just got away with being divine, but because he was a bloke you had to go through all that upheaval.' Anyway, the RSC must have been impressed because it has since cast him in The Herbal Bed (as Rafe), in As You Like It (as Silvius), and, to great fan-fare, opposite newcomer Victoria Hamilton in Troilus and Cressida. Troilus, directed by Ian Judge, opens this month in Stratford, four weeks before he makes his film debut in Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty, alongside Jeremy Irons, Sinead Cusack, and Liv Tyler.

Ian Judge is thrilled with himself about the way things have turned out. 'I think Peter Hall is very envious. When he heard, he said 'Oh my God, how wonderful." The last time a staging of Troilus was so highly anticipated was when Ralph played the lead with the RSC in 1990. Joe, who was in his first year at Guildhall, saw the play twice he loved it so much. Is he worried about playing the same role as his brother? 'There are so many different ways of playing the part, and even if you play it close to what you've seen before - not that I would - it's like a fingerprint.' Judge, who decided on Joe after seeing him 'prowling round the Green Room one evening looking like Jesus Christ and astonishing ,' believes his self confidence is innate. 'I don't think he even begins to be fazed by his brother, because he's all animal. Ralph is about the cool, intellectual probing of passion. But with Joe, cynicism has passed him by. His acting personality is more that of a theatre animal.' He appears to be the opposite of Ralph on the screen, too. Bertolucci puts it this way:

'Joe has a really extraordinary lightness. His brother wants to be there, while Joe has with a kind of almost Zen absence, this kind of invisible strong presence.' According to their father, there may come a time when Ralph is 'Joe's brother.' Mark Fiennes believes that his children get their sense of purpose from their late mother, Jini. 'Jini made them believe that they could do it.' She was a novelist and painter who, says a friend, was 'a natural encourager and nurturer' who never stopped teaching them the relevance of the arts. Their career paths bear this out: following Ralph, the oldest is Martha, a commercials director; Magnus, a musician; Sophie, a commercials producer; and the twins, Joe and Jacob. Only Jacob ('Jake the Rake,' Joe says affectionately) has chosen a different route, moving to Wales where he works as a gamekeeper. To supplement his sporadic income as a photographer, Mark Fiennes renovated houses and sold them on, in the process moving his hooray gypsy family all over Ireland and south-west England. Their childhood, according to Joe, 'was everywhere. I can remember moving house thirteen of fourteen times. It was one school a year.' He seems to have enjoyed it, but says that for his parents "It was always the battle between trying to realise the dream and moving back to reality.'

In 1993, the year Joe graduated from drama school, Jini died from cancer. Her children buried her themselves, in an electric blue coffin - the colour of Silencia, the symbol of strength in Tristram and the Power of Lights, a children's book she had written. Mark Fiennes has said he can still feel her presence. They continue to be close-knit, meeting up on birthdays and at Christmas when 'the first thing and last thing we do is talk shop.' Family dynamics is probably the main reason that Joe has avoided being overwhelmed by Ralph's international success. 'It doesn't daunt me, because we're so different as six brothers and sisters, so I don't actually feel it. The only paranoia I had was *imagine if I am crap*, how embarrassing that would be for my brother, let alone the family. But I've kind of got rid of that.' He seems very happy in his skin and not at all in awe of Ralph, and at one point says, rather ambiguously, 'The youngest and the oldest are very different in every respect.' He currently lives in 'a grotty flat' with his girlfriend, the actress Sara Griffiths, whom he complains he 'doesn't see enough of' because of their flat-out work schedules. He says he will consider Hollywood 'When I'm ready for it, and it's ready for me.' Meanwhile, Ian Judge knows he has a winner on his hands. 'I was in a rehearsal room with Adrian Noble, and after Joe had done his piece, I turned to Adrian and said, "I know you've worked with the brother, but this one's the star."'

The RSC's 'Troilus and Cressida' opens on 24 July; 'As You Like It' runs until 5 October; both at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford; 'Stealing Beauty' opens on 25 August.