(Transcribed by Vicky)

What's been Joseph Fiennes' favourite role? How about the eponymous Will in Shakespeare in Love? Or Elizabeth's spineless Earl of Dudley? Maybe he's even got a soft spot for yet another titular part in the London romance Martha - Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence (he was Laurence, by the way.)

Actually, it's none of the above. "The most memorable thing was a Dennis Potter play called Son of Man," answers Fiennes after a few moments. "It was the most wonderful experience. Great company, a brilliant piece of writing and quite a good part playing Jesus Christ. The way the audience was affected, it was something bizarre, something special and strange."

It's easy to forget that by the time he appeared as a fully-formed star in the three films mentioned above, the now 29 year old Fiennes had been a professional actor for most of the decade. After leaving RADA, he worked on a number of big productions in London before spending two years with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Ralph's younger brother has definitely put his time in. "The overnight success tag doesn't bother me at all. If someone doesn't know my body of work, that I've been slogging away in the theatre for years.I don't get irked by it."

In fact, Fiennes is refreshingly frank about fame. He doesn't own a computer, so claims ignorance of the fluttering-eyelash Web sites dedicated to him. Once he gets any spare time, he zooms off alone to the remotest places he can find. And things like Elle's Most stylish Man of the Year award are "good fun, but kind of empty."

"I think we all know just how it works, the whole publicity machine. I'm hugely cynical and sceptical about it all, to tell you the truth. I've seen enough, I feel like I've been around enough, just to recognise how hollow it all is and to separate what I do from the hype that goes with it. It's kind of nice but it's not really representative of the way I feel I am or what I'm here to do. It's important always to question and not to go along with the wave of success just for the sake of it," he continues, then smiles. "It'll probably backfire on me, though, and I'll never work again."

There seems little chance of that now. Since wrapping Shakespeare in Love 18 months ago, he's returned to the stage, finished two films (Rancid Aluminium and Forever Mine) and is shooting a third (Enemy at the Gates) in Germany.

There's no UK release date for Paul Schrader's Miami-set Forever Mine just yet, but the first film Fiennes made after Shakespeare, Rancid Aluminium, is set to open here this month. A British-made thriller, it centres on an English entrepreneur persuaded by his accountant friend that the only way to save his company is doing business with the Russian Mafia. Oddly, Fiennes isn't the one playing Pete Thompson, the English businessman. That falls to Notting Hill's professionally Welsh Rhys Ifans. Fiennes, meanwhile, is his Irish accountant buddy, Sean Deeley.

"I'm there doing an Irish accent, and Rhys Ifans is there doing an English accent, while Tara Fitzgerald's doing Russian," laughs Fiennes. "People will be perplexed. But that's part of our business, tackling people removed from our walks of life. Deeley is someone whose ambition gets the better of him. He was slimy and charming and vain. Everything I'm not. He was great."

Different again is Enemy at the Gate. Ticking another European director off the checklist (Fiennes' first film role was a stint in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty), this one sees him working with Seven Years in Tibet director Jean-Jacques Arnaud. Set during The Battle of Stalingrad, the World War Two drama also stars Jude Law, Ed Harris and Rachel Weisz.

"The story is about a character played by Jude Law, a Russian shepherd who's a sharpshooter. I think the average life expectancy on the front in Stalingrad was about 2 days, and he survived about 40, so he became a hero. My character's a political commissar who writes propaganda . He makes the shepherd into a hero to rally the troops and they become best friends. One of Hitler's bodyguards - an incredible sharpshooter - was sent to stop this shepherd, who wqs taking out all the high-ranking German officials. So this dual ensued. They say that it was the turning-point of the battle, the bullet that killed the German sniper. It may be partly myth. At any rate, the Russians believe it's true, even if the Germans say it's myth."

As with all his films, Fiennes prefaced his role with an alarmingly detailed amount of research. Ask him about Stalingrad circa world War Two and he rattles off an account of how the German bombing turned the city into a rabbit warren of tunnels and craters, dropping the names of various writers into the conversation without a hint of boasting. Reading around Communism, Stalin's Russia and the war is vital to "steeping" himself in the character, he says.

Although other Europe-based projects are now lining up for Fiennes, he's wary of talking too much for fear of jinxing them. But is there any chance he'll work with other family members? The recent Onegin starred Ralph, was helmed by sister Martha, and scored by brother Magnus.

"I saw Onegin in St Petersburg," he says. "I thought it was a superb film. It's difficult for me to say, but I was very moved by it. My sister's got a great feel for cinematic syntax. I was very proud." And would he like to work with her in the future? Or Ralph? "Not immediately. They've just done that. I think we'll give it a few years."