Stage's cerebral star

Joseph Fiennes wants to know if we have met before. We haven't. But for a moment, I'm not sure if the actor is being charming or deliberately disconcerting. He has a reputation for not holding journalists in the highest regard. I feel a bit nervous.

Nonetheless, we sit down comfortably enough in a corner of a vast, bright rehearsal room to discuss the neglected John Osborne play, Epitaph For George Dillon, in which Fiennes is starring opposite his brother Ralph's girlfriend, Francesca Annis.

Written before Osborne's seminal 1956 drama Look Back In Anger, it examines the stifling environment of British postwar suburbia through the thwarted ambitions of the eponymous character, played by Fiennes.

George aspires to be a playwright but his poverty forces him to live off the claustrophobic generosity of an older, lower middle-class woman, while his natural talent is constantly stymied by his inability to believe in it. 'In many respects, George is Osborne,' says Fiennes slowly.

'He's also a sketch for Jimmy Porter [the frustrated protagonist of Look Back In Anger]. You could say the play is a description of the artist and the creative mind. What makes him more loveable and more complex is his constant doubt. His isn't just the voice of an angry young man.'

Fiennes, larger than you might expect but still with those famous molten, too-close-together brown eyes, is an unusually articulate interviewee. His voice might be as smooth as dark melted chocolate but his thoughts are sharp and carefully considered.

He talks at length about his fascination with the dank social milieu of the play and the way it gradually sucks George in. 'If you focus too much on everything you despise and hate, it's almost as though you attract those forces. It becomes gripping. You are left with this horror.'

This cerebral quality hasn't always benefited Fiennes' public profile. He is still best remembered for the film Shakespeare In Love - despite being almost the only person associated with it not to win an Oscar. Yet as he points out: 'People haven't seen a lot of my film work. Often it doesn't come out over here. Luther, for example [a biopic of Martin Luther], didn't get a British release.'

But it's also because Fiennes tends to produce his best work in the theatre. Successes include a critically acclaimed Edward II with Michael Grandage at the Sheffield Crucible and a turn as Berowne in Trevor Nunn's swansong production of Love's Labour's Lost at the National.

There's always been the suspicion that Fiennes is a frustrated, even a failed, movie star but, in fact, theatre has always been his first love.

'My film work is a by-product of my love of theatre,' he says wearily, with a slight flicker of irritation. 'It's what inspired me to do two years of youth theatre, then two years working at the National to make money, followed by three years at drama school then five straight years working.

'During that time, film didn't come into my mind. I've always loved the syntax of theatre and the way it enables an audience to see a narrative or a character without being forced through a frame. It's such a dynamic medium.'