Scary. It isn't exactly the word one normally attributes to Shakespeare, unless one's seen the 1973 opus Johnny Hamlet. But it is the one word that sums up the feeling of actually having to play the Bard, at least to Shakespeare in Love's Joseph Fiennes.

"He has been sacred ground to so many people that it was daunting to bring him to life," explains Fiennes. "I tried to do a little research, but it was a can of worms. So many academics have differing views on who Shakespeare was and wahat he was like that it drives you mad. Mainly, I relied on Ton Stoppard's {Oscar Winning} script. He did a wonderful job mixing the realms of fact and fancy so that you get this wonderful explosion." Moreover, the 29-year old brother of Schindler's List's Ralph Fiennes doesn't think it's going too far to suggest that Shakespeare might actually have found the inspiration for Romeo and Juliet in a grand passion of his own. "He must have been touched by the pain of love and the complexity that love creates," he says. "That's a part of human experience."

Although Shakespeare in Love fictionalizes the impact of romance on the playwright's struggle with writer's block, Fiennes' concurrent apperance last year in Elizabeth as the duplicitous Lord Dudley, is more firmly based on historical fact--even if some experts have challenged the authenticity of one particular scene in which he deflowers the "Virgin Queen."

Be that as it may, each of the films were defined for Fiennes by his leading ladies. "Cate Blanchett is an extraordinary actress and she was absolutely lumious as Elizabeth," he gushes. As for Gwyneth Paltrow, with whom he has a passionate romance in Shakespeare in Love, he just smiles, "Gwyneth is so cool and totally professional. We were basically naked when we were in bed together ans I was sort of like a little teenage girl going 'I don't want to take off my clothes.' She just sort of calmed me down, But I am definiyely shy. I'll take a sword fight any day."

But Fiennes, who'll next be seen in Paul Shrader's Forever Mine, is ambivalent about the talent that has made him as damous as his older brother. "Fortunetaly, Ralph and i haven't been compared that much, " he says. "He's the oldest of seven childre in our family. I'm the youngest, and we're vastly different. But I've learned something about being a celebrity from him, about how that publicity machine kicks in. You've got to keep focused on your work. You've got to keep some sort of equilibrium between acting and being an item for the press.

"It's a weird science," Fiennes adds reflectively. "You can never really nail it down. You sort of fly off and you might fall flat on your face or you might see the stars." Or star crossed lovers.