Spanish Woman Magazine
October 1999
Translated from Spanish by Tamara
His performance as a young Shakespeare in love in the middle of a creative crisis raised his price. Supported by a brilliant theater curriculum, Joseph Fiennes is already a star.
Q: Do you mind always being compared with your brother Ralph?
JF: On the contrary. I'm proud of being his brother, because he's a better actor than me. Ralph is more versatile due to his experience with theater, not only classic, but contemporary as well, like Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller. The audience and press spend all day talking about actors that have no familiarity at all, so I don't bother being compared to my brother.
Q: Did his own experience with theater help you to go deeply into your character in "Shakespeare in Love"?
JF: I worked two seasons for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Putting on tights and high-heeled shoes was easier for me than, for example, wearing a nazi soldier uniform, like my brother did in "Schindler's List".
Q: If it weren't for Bernardo Bertolucci, you wouldn't have debuted in the cinema, would you?
JF: Right. I was representing "Hamlet" in London [our note: he never played Hamlet] , and the company director, who is a friend of Bertolucci's, invited him to the general rehearsal. After the rehearsal, Bertolucci came into my dressing room and asked me to work in his next film with Jeremy Irons and Liv Tyler. Since then, scripts started to arrive.
Q: Why did you refuse Jason Patric's role in "Speed 2"?
JF: At that moment I didn't feel like jumping while shooting somebody. This doesn't mean that in the future I won't be interested in making a good action movie, but at the moment they offer all those roles to Harrison Ford!! [he laughs].
Q: Press considers you like a new Errol Flynn. What's your opinion?
JF: Stupid, very stupid. But the press needs this kind of qualifiers. I don't think I take after Errol Flynn at all. He was an action movie expert, and I'm a period movie one. If Flynn were still alive, he would be dressed as a militare and killing the Japanese in the jungle.
Q: Do you like to be among Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Edward Norton, in the group of actors considered as the future of Hollywood?
JF: I'm a very good friend of Ben and Matt's, but I don't think we are part of a lobby or pressure group like somebody even got to write. It is true that in a short time some actors lately unknown have worked in the most successful movies of the moment, but we don't constitute any special group.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
JF: I've just filmed two movies, "Forever Mine" by Paul Schrader, and "Rancid Aluminum", directed by Edward Thomas. Now I really want to relax and waste some of the money I've earned.
