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So it came as rather a shock to discover that Ralph Fiennes, the man who has just pulled off the coup of playing both these ultra-sexy part on screen is rather small and quiet.
Yet he plunges into the charismatic role of Lawrence on ITV this Saturday, in David Puttnam's production for Anglia of A Dangerous Man. Then in the autumn we will see him play Heathcliff in Peter Kosminsky's new cinema version of Wuthering Heights. Surely this is a sex symbol in the making?
Up till now he has been a respected but little known stage actor on the Shakespearian circuit. He was impressive at the Royal Shakespeare Company last season playing Troilus in Troilus and Cressida, Edmund in King Lear and Berowne in Love's Labour's Lost.
Good stuff, but not enough to pay for a washer and drier, as he is keen to point out. "I still have to go to the laundrette," he says, "Or, rather, I did have to go before I could afford a washing machine thanks to Wuthering."
Such domestic preoccupations seem strange for a man poised on the brink of major success. When Olivier played Heathcliff in 1939 and O'Toole played Lawrence in David Lean's 1962 epic, both became instant screen idols. Double that up and you might have an idea of the future that might lie in store for 27-year-old Fiennes.
It seems to have overwhelmed the monosyllabic young man in the crumpled red courduroy shirt who sits hunched at the table, his every movement sending out signals of shyness and introversion.
How he landed the parts still remains a mystery to him. "Both roles were a gift. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have never dreamed it possible. Now it has happened and it still doesn't seem real."
He puts his chance to play Lawrence down to pure luck, based on time and location.
During the filming last June, he started working on the Lawrence set at 7 am, finished at 6:30 pm to get to the Barbican to play Troilus in time for the curtain call at 7:30 pm. "It was a matter of timing. I was working nearby and I was available in the daytime to play the part."
It seems unlikely that this was foremost in the mind of his producer Puttnam, the man who in the past 10 years has put forward the names of Jeremy Irons, Kenneth Branagh and Daniel Day-Lewis to Warner Brothers studio as up-and-coming British actors.
As Lawrence, Fiennes is hugely photogenic -- his cheekbones, blue eyes and ultra-English coolness all make him a natural for the camera.
In Wuthering Height, too, he achieves a certain flintiness which is extremely compelling.
Perhaps it has something to do with his artistic background -- his father was a landscape photographer and his mother a novelist who encouraged all her six children to read Shakespeare.
In fact, he auditioned for Edgar Linton before Heathcliff. "People saw me more as a lyrical actor and more as an Edgar Linton."
People make assumptions about actors and I, too, never saw myself as a Heathcliff. But when they offered me an audition for the role I wasn't going to say no."
You would never get an established star to give such an admission, but Fiennes has an odd combination of naivety and blunt practicality.
He has none of the panache and sexual confidence that should go with a romantic lead actor, but his lack of movie star pretension lends charm.
"It's all rather strange being in the eye of the media," he confesses. "I always think professional actors should not talk about themselves but just go out there and do the job."
"The media is creating this image of me from which I feel totally divorced. I feel the same person today as I did before the filming."
And Fiennes is indeed in limbo -- on the brink of stardom, yet out of work. He finds it hard to imagine what being famous is like and even harder to believe it's going to happen to him.
He has no idea where his career is going. His days are spent waiting for scripts to drop through his letterbox.
"Although I've always hoped the big break would happen, I suppose I'm just not ready for it. It could be a big disaster," he admits.
"I often worry that the reaction to the films is going to be terrible, when Olivier and O'Toole have done so much better. I sometimes think I should have stuck to the RSC."
But he has not tried to live up to Olivier and O'Toole, and has moulded his own personality into the characters and made them his own.
He was helped in this by the fact that both films have taken a different slant from the originals.
A Dangerous Man covers a 12-month period about Lawrence after Arabia, and Wuthering Heights is regarded as being more faithful to Emily Bronte's novel. "I was never conscious of having to live up to these two great actors, whom I could never hope to better. For me it was the characters of Lawrence and Heathcliff I had to live up to."
Fiennes savoured Lawrence's own Seven Pillars Of Wisdom and numerous biographies and essays, as well as visiting the legend's Dorset home to delve deeper into his character.
So what next? "I've had a few offers for small TV roles, but nothing which really appeals."
"I would quite like to do a play," he says cautiously. It's likely to be only a matter of time before he is snapped up by Hollywood directors so, for the record, his name is pronounced 'Rafe'. But I doubt he will ever be tainted by the big egos of Tinseltown and lose his unassuming charm.
Timothy Dalton played Heathcliff in a 1970 remake before going on to play James Bond. Does this sort of role appeal?
"Only if it was set in the Fifties -- but I don't think I would make a very good James Bond."
Meanwhile, how is a film star on the brink of international stardom
going to spend the rest of the day? "I'm going to read a few scripts
and put on the washing machine."
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© EL STEPHO
Added to the RF Reading Room on September 7, 1998
EL STEPHO