This is London
16 February, 2003
By Patrick Marmion

After Shakespeare in Love and a string of film hits, Joseph Fiennes is back on stage playing one of Shakespeare’s love-lorn young bucks.

‘My legacy is pants in the National Theatre,’ intones Joe Fiennes solemnly. He refers to the time before drama school when he worked as a dresser backstage, helping actors in and out of sweaty undergarments. But now, as big brother Ralph bounds about in the Cottesloe production of The Talking Cure, Joe is appearing in Love’s Labour’s Lost at the Olivier. The occasion is Trevor Nunn’s last stand as artistic director at the National.

‘Its nice to be back,’ says the unshaven Fiennes, swivelling playfully on an office chair. ‘There’s a history with me in this theatre, but I’m laying that to rest and finding justice.’ Poker faced, he is joking about revenge, but you can never be sure. Fiennes always acts innocent, but he was once dubbed ‘a very, very naughty man’ by Cate Blanchett, his co-star in the 1998 film, .

This naughty side is liable to be heavily drawn upon by Trevor Nunn in Love’s Labour’s Lost. Here he plays one of a group of young bucks taking a monastic vow to abjure the company of woman and devote themselves to the pursuit of knowledge instead. Fiennes describes his character, Berowne, as ‘murcurial, attractive, outspoken and witty to the point of terrorising people’. He adds that his character is ‘taught a lesson through love which at some point in our lives we all are taught’.

The bell of rueful experience seems to toll as he speaks. So maybe there is truth in reports of Fiennes settling down with Natalie Mendoza- an Australian looker who he met in Australia last year while filming his forthcoming American POW flick, The Great Raid. Before this, he’s had his fair share of glamorous lovers including actresses Sara Griffiths, Catherine McCormack and, most recently, make-up artist Fiona Jolly.

Certainly he has never tried to abjure the company of woman. Not even for lent. ‘Like Berowne,’ he says, ‘I wouldn’t get anywhere fast.’ Significantly, he goes on to make a Freudian slip when he says ‘love is my theatre’. Naturally he really means that theatre is his love and not that he likes making a drama out of his Romance. However, Fiennes’ private life is as jealously guarded as the stony ramparts of Isengard in Lord of the Rings. Theatre is the only love whose name he will dare speak.

After attending art college in Lowestoft in 1987, he went on to the Young Vic Youth Theatre while working backstage at the National before graduating from Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1993. He then did two seasons at the RSC and most recently in March 2001 played the title role in Edward II at the Sheffield Crucible. So, despite international notoriety in film, this production at the National isn’t a celebrity vanity vehicle. Indeed, Fiennes contests his own star status, saying he doesn’t feel famous.

‘I’m aware of the publicity machine when a film does well, but the majority of the time I don’t notice. My life is very quiet.’ So there’s no big rumpus when he pops out for a pint of milk? ‘No hassle whatsoever,’ he confirms. Except, to be honest, the first week or so after Shakespeare in Love. But it dies down and goes away.’ When you listen to his voice, gentle almost as a lamb, it’s not hard to believe he enjoys a quiet existence in Shepherd’s Bush. With a novelist mother who died from cancer in 1993, he is also a part-time bookworm. ‘I consider all writers and poets my friends. You have a library of friends in your home and you just go and spend time with them. Like mates you see for ten minutes.’

Even though he’s 33 on 27 May this year no camera has ever found folds of career-threatening cellulite on the much-lensed, six-foot birthday suit of the lad from Salisbury. He has a variety of tools for keeping in shape, listening yoga, fencing and football among his interests. He also manages to square supporting Chelsea with an interest in Buddhism. But there is another passion and that is rock climbing. This he took up after preparing for the 2002 film Killing Me Softly in which his character was a mountaineer.

‘I learned to climb and since then I’ve been climbing in Scotland and Wales, but never leading it. I came close to tears. It’s frightening 2,000 feet up on a very exposed ledge. Your fingers are numb and you’re thinking, what the f*** am I doing here? These are moments that you call out to God, hoping he exists and that you make it.’ It sounds not unlike the first night terrors for many actors. In fact, Fiennes quotes the old myth that on a first night an actor is said to endure the trauma equivalent to ‘a mild car accident’. You wonder who worked that out and how. But if anyone knows, it’s Fiennes-from the moisture of the shirts he had to handle backstage all those years ago. Now he’s back at the National, all he’s got to do is keep his pants dry.