Interview

Joseph Fiennes

by Phil Willmott
03/11/2005

Shakespeare In Love star Joseph Fiennes was delayed when I went to meet him backstage at the Comedy Theatre where he's currently appearing in the play Epitaph for George Dillon so while I waited I chatted to Company Manager Helen Barratt and her team about the production's much admired set (see this week's Theatre News).

At first meeting Fiennes isn't as sexy as his heartthrob status promises but, I must confess, his famous smouldering eyes melted me pretty quickly. If I'm honest I was also expecting some dim "himbo" riding the opportunities that being brother of Ralf has brought him but, face-to-face, he's an obviously intelligent man who takes his actor's craft very seriously.

Family gossip has been the subject of many interviews elsewhere so I encouraged him to talk about the nuts and bolts of preparing to play George Dillon.

Q: What was it like working with the director Peter Gill? He has a reputation for being fastidious. I've just looked around your set. Were rehearsals as detailed?

A: He really encouraged me to dig away at the text. There's real poetry in the big speeches.

Q: Poetry in John Osborne? I think lots of people would be surprised to hear you say that.

A: Definitely, if you look at the rhythms of the sentences, the use of repeated words, it really surprised me too but it's there. What's unusual too is you get scenes like the incredible duologue which my character has with Francesca Annis's character, very obviously I think written by Osborne, but you also get the wonderful family comedy scenes, almost Italian, which I think we can assume are by his co-writer Anthony Creighton.

Q: There's been a lot of speculation about how close to John Osborne the character of the arrogant yet lonely George Dillon is. Did you read Osborne's biography when you were preparing to play the part?

A: No, I'm only just getting around to reading it now. I think if I'd read it in rehearsals it might have restricted me too much. I needed to find George's character myself, make him real for me rather then trying to do some kind of impersonation of the author.

Q: How much rehearsal did you get?

A: Only four weeks.

(For the first time he rolls his beautiful eyes and, thrown, I find myself blurting out -)

Q: "Only"! Lots of theatre company's would be glad of that.

A: Oh yes, but I'm used to six, which is what we used to have at the Royal Shakespeare Company. And the other thing is we also didn't have the luxury of a pre London run somewhere to really fine-tune our performances. We went straight into the West End and were in front of the press really quickly. They would see a much better show now. It's really deepened in the way productions do after four weeks or so.

Q: Could you take us through the shape of rehearsals? What went on in the first week?

A: Well we didn't even read the play. We spent a whole week rehearsing the period, finding out about the politics of the time when it was written, the effect that first ownership of a TV had on peoples lives, wages, that kind of thing.

Q: Weren't you screaming inside "For God's sake, lets get on with rehearsing, we open in three weeks"?

A: Oh no, for me that week is a vital part of rehearsals. It's so important to understand the world in which your character operates.

Q: But if you work a lot on film, which you do, presumably none of that research happens. Don't you just have a few meetings, turn up in costumes, smoulder a bit on camera and hope for the best?

A: I suppose there's some truth in that but it's a different process. The closeness of the camera means that what the audience follow is the characters psychological journey as reflected in things like facial expressions. That's what you're trying to capture as an actor. The film's art directors create the world. In theatre the audience always observes the actors within the context of his surroundings so it's more important that the performance is related to the environment. Having said that we did actually have two weeks rehearsal for Shakespeare In Love, which is very unusual, but as most of the cast came from a theatre background it was very reassuring.

Q: Back to "George Dillon". How would you rehearse, say that central scene you have with Francesca Annis?

A: It's quite a gentle process of exploring the text, working out what's important to each character, what prompts them to behave the way they do and then standing the scene on it's feet. You discover so much by just trying to release the character's emotions and responding to what the other actor is doing.

Q: You're obviously feeling very positive about the production, I've just been chatting to a very happy backstage team, why is everyone enjoying themselves so much?

A: We are a happy company, that isn't always the way things turn out, as you know, but for me there's a great pleasure in being back on stage. I try and do one play a year. Not always possible with filming commitments but you learn so much from working on great plays. And the real pleasure of this one is that even though it's a classic no one really knows the play so that you don't have to measure your own performance by what someone else famously did with the part. I'm having a great time.

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