Following Franz Kafka
Running with Scissors' JOSEPH FIENNES has been a star
since
Shakespeare in Love. But in
Prague, with its castle
and labyrinth of shops and cafés, he can be something even better:
a Franz Kafka character. • Photograph by Stephen Danelian
This month,
Joseph Fiennes joins an ensemble cast in the film
version of Augusten Burroughs's dark, funny, and emotional memoir,
Running with Scissors, in which a young man (Joseph Cross)
from a very strange family is sent to live with his mother's
psychiatrist and that doctor's eccentric and extended clan. It's
somewhat familiar territory for the 36-year-old Fiennes. After all,
he's been part of an ensemble cast, not to mention an eccentric and
extended clan, since he was born. Because he grew up with a
novelist/painter mother, a photographer father, and five siblings
and lived a nomadic existence in England and
Ireland, it wasn't a
stretch when
In Style UK magazine referred to the brood as
"the von Trapps of the art world." Joseph's older brother is, of
course,
Ralph Fiennes, star of
Schindler's List and
The
Constant Gardener. Most of his other siblings are involved in
the arts as well: His sister Martha is a filmmaker; his other
sister,
Sophie, is a film and documentary maker; and his brother
Magnus is a music producer and a writer. (Only Jacob, his
fraternal twin, has strayed from the family business - he's a
gamekeeper and a conservationist.) But Joseph has stood out among
the talented Fiennes pack ever since - after several years in the
London theater community - he broke out as young Will Shakespeare
in the Oscar-winning
Shakespeare in Love. Fiennes also
stands out among the talented
Running with Scissors cast,
which includes Annette Bening,
Gwyneth Paltrow,
Alec Baldwin, and
Evan Rachel Wood. But it was another film - the historical epic
The Red Baron, in which he plays Roy Brown, the Canadian
pilot credited with shooting down the Teutonic top gun during the
final months of World War I - that brought him back to the city he
loves, Prague. "It's one of the most beautiful cities in
Europe to
work in," he says. Here's why.