Saint Paul Pioneer Press
July 2003

Practically the first thing Joseph Fiennes does in our phone chat is confess to a fib.

"I've just realized that I told a lie," are his exact words, spoken in an Irish-by-way-of-English accent so warm and classy, you almost don't mind it feeding you a whopper.

Especially since it's not much of a whopper. Fiennes had said that the animated Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, which opens Wednesday, is his first voice-over work, but he has remembered that he did an animated Welsh film many years ago and that he has done a lot of radio dramas, which also might count.

Anyway, Sinbad is his first voice-over work that a large audience is apt to hear, which may be why Fiennes (who is best known for playing the title character in Shakespeare in Love) approached the work so seriously. He plays Sinbad's friend, Proteus, a prince whom some might call a doormat.

When Sinbad is in danger of being executed, Proteus vouches for him, giving Sinbad (voiced by Brad Pitt) the opportunity to go on a journey to clear his name, a journey on which the charming Sinbad is accompanied by Proteus' fiancee (Catherine Zeta-Jones). If that's not self-sacrificing enough, consider this: If Sinbad does not return-if, for instance, he decides to go to Cabo San Lucas with his best bud's squeeze, instead-Proteus will be put to death in his place.

"I thought quite a lot about why Proteus does what he does, and it seemed to me that he is very much driven by his duty to his father and to his country. That is important to him, above all," Fiennes said, because, if Sinbad accomplishes his mission, it is to the benefit of Proteus' country. And, Fiennes said, Proteus wasn't in love with that stupid old fiancee, anyway.

A stage-trained veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Fiennes said one of the coolest things about acting in animated films is that they offer actors a broader range of choices. The 33-year-old would never be able to pull off playing an elderly character in a movie, for instance, but he could get away with it on stage or in a cartoon. And he'd welcome the opportunity.

"Acting in animated films is a wonderful imaginative exercise," Fiennes said. "I like to think that I'm capable of playing any part, but the truth is that there are physical limitations that keep me from doing some things. But in animation, you don't need to consider those limitations."

The other thing that struck Fiennes about working on an animated film was that it took him back to the voice work that was part of his theater training. English acting schools, to a much greater extent than American ones, emphasize the importance of vocal control, and that was helpful for Fiennes.

"It's such an important tool for an actor, and indeed, in animation, it's really the only tool," Fiennes said. (He never worked in the same room with Pitt or Zeta-Jones but had to invent relationships with them just the same.)

Because his work on the film was spread out over two years, Fiennes also had the unique opportunity to take a look at scenes he had completed and adjust his performance accordingly.

"It was a privilege to collaborate with the animators," he said. "They were very responsive to my ideas and, because the story was always being altered, it was as if we were finding our way to Proteus together."

Which, in a way, is what all acting is about, Fiennes said. With two other upcoming films - he plays a soldier in the World War II drama The Great Raid, and he nails up the 95 Theses, playing Martin Luther in Luther - Fiennes said the key to making good movies is to find sympathetic collaborators who help each other by telling each other the truth.