Joseph Fiennes

Joseph Fiennes
Joseph Alberic Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennesis an English film and stage actor known for his portrayals of William Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love, for which he was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role, Sir Robert Dudley in Elizabeth, Commisar Danilov in Enemy at the Gates, and Monsignor Timothy Howard in the second season of the TV series American Horror Story...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionActor
Date of Birth27 May 1970
When I was offered the part in ShakespeareIn Love a voice in my head said 'not another tights role!
Yes, in a way. Film is a by-product of my love of theatre. Theatre is for me the greater challenge. In many ways it requires more skill.
I love life. I'm fascinated by human behavior because that feeds back into my work.
I've always believed that you shouldn't want to mend a broken heart, because that's someone you don't want to forget. Scars can be good.
He [Merlin] is slightly from another world and place, so it's about having fun and presenting it in a new way. He's more of a politician, and slightly Machiavellian, but there's also a lovely relationship going on between Merlin and Arthur. There's so much to be had, really.
I fall in love with contradictions without understanding. I can't really portray them unless I do. So in a roundabout way I have to fall in love, it's my duty. If love is about understanding and understanding is compassion and compassion is love, I have to have compassion towards the world.
I'd like to be a passion fruit. Not because it's passionate, but because someone I know is mad about them and has got me onto them.
Miramax and Disney were collaborators, and then during the film's release, they jumped out of bed and it got caught up in a political holding pattern.
There are a few remarkable directors who have a great creative streak and then simply go on streaking ... Today we have another remarkable director in our midst.
Yeah, I guess that's fair, ... And in a weird way my childhood was a great precursor to where I am now. Every year I had to learn how to interact in a new schoolyard, reinventing myself if one character didn't work. In hindsight I can see that it was great actor's training. But it was just the art of survival, really. Trying not to get beaten up in the playground.
So there was a sense that we were always quite interchangeable.
So getting that balance between what is honoring scripture and the Word and also acknowledging the fact that by the virtue of putting it on film there's going to be a variation and adaptation, I mean, it's a fine dance and a balance. Our producers and directors have worked so hard to get that right and I'm really proud. I think it's a pretty good job.
Youth is a predominant factor. We are seeing a young King Arthur, and thereby a young-ish - as I'm into my 40s - Merlin. It was about how to tackle it, from that point view.
I also wanted to have fun with it. I wanted to have the scope, which I felt Merlin has, in his Machiavellian bi-polar way. He's not to be trusted, yet he is fighting for this great power and is really a master, to some degree, in orchestrating Camelot and King Arthur. He's a strange, dark devious character, and I just wanted to have fun, and get away from the cloak and long beard and pointy hat.