After several years in British theatre,
Joseph Fiennes rose to international fame in roles such as Will Shakespeare in the Academy Award-winning Shakespeare in Love, for which he won a Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Most Promising Actor and a SAG award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast. He was also nominated for a SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role and a BAFTA Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role. For his role as Sir Robert Dudley in Elizabeth, directed by
Shekhar Kapur, he earned a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Breakthrough Artist. His recent film credits include Bille August's Goodbye Bafana, with
Dennis Haysbert,
Finn Taylor's The Darwin Awards, with
Winona Ryder, Ryan Murphy's Running with Scissors, with
Brian Cox,
Annette Bening,
Gwyneth Paltrow and
Evan Rachel Wood, and The Escapist, directed by Rupert Wyatt. He will soon be seen in Against the Current, directed by Peter Callahan. His additional film credits include The Merchant of Venice, starring opposite
Al Pacino and
Jeremy Irons,
John Dahl's The Great Raid, Regis Wargnier's Man To Man,
Eric Till's biopic Luther,
Jean-Jacques Annaud's Enemy At The Gates,
Paul Schrader's Forever Mine, Milcho Manchevski's Dust, which premiered at the 2001 Venice Film Festival, and Edward Thomas V's thriller Rancid Aluminium. Fiennes also voiced the character of Proteus in the DreamWorks animated film
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas.
Prior to making his screen debut in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty and subsequently in The Very Thought of You, Joseph spent three seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company performing leading roles in plays, including Troilus And Cressida, The Herbal Bed, Les Enfants du Paradis, As You Like It and Dennis Potter's Son Of Man, in which he played Jesus. In 2001, he returned to the Sheffield stage in the critically acclaimed Edward II. In 2003, Fiennes debuted at the Royal National Theatre playing Berowne in William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. His other stage work includes the West End production of A Month In The Country and as Rudolfo in A View From The Bridge. He also starred as George in Comedy Theatre's Epitaph For George Dillon and performed in the Royal Court's highly successful production of Real Classy Affair. His professional stage debut was as The Actor in The Woman In Black. His most recent performance was at the Chichester Festival Theatre, where he starred in Cyrano de Bergerac to rave reviews. Born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, Joseph attended art school in Suffolk for a year before joining the Young Vic Youth Theatre. He subsequently trained for three years at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama, graduating in 1993.
