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Since then he's had stage success both in London and Broadway as Hamlet but it's on the big screen that Fiennes has made his name - notably with Oscar -nominated performances in Schindler's List and The English Patient.
He really is one of those actors who seem more alive on screen or stage than in person. Although he's less hesitant, less buttoned up that he used to be in interviews, the feeling remains that talking about himself has all the appeal of sitting in a bath of cold baked beans.
But this time it's personal. His new movie Onegin, based on Alexander Pushkin's epic novel, is a family affair. Fiennes not only stars but is executive producer while sister Martha directs and brother Magnus has composed the music.
Fiennes first came across the novel as a drama student. Not only was he attracted to the story, he nurtured the idea of one day playing Eugene Onegin, a bachelor boy in 1820s Russia who rejects the woman he eventually realises he loves.
"It just stayed in my head. So I went to Martha to see if she thought it might be something we could work on and develop into a screenplay," he explains.
Neither of them fully appreciated quite how highly Pushkin is regarded in his homeland. "He's so sacred in Russia and the Russians are appalled anyone should film anything by him Our ignorance was a blessing because we were free of any sense of 'we must not touch Pushkin because he's sacred', which allowed us just to chuck ideas at each other."
Martha, a top commercials and pop video director, responded immediately to the novel when her brother gave it to her and was keen to make it her first feature film as a director. They enlisted the help of producer Ileen Maisel, who had worked with Ralph on Wuthering Heights. "She believed in the project and took it up. Her support has been crucial in allowing us to make it," says Fiennes.
The page-to-screen process has been a long one. The Fiennes first started talking about the film in 1992 but shooting didn't begin until the beginning of 1998.
The cast includes a rollcall of British actors including Toby Stephens, Lena Headey, Alun Armstrong and Harriet Walter although the leading lady is American actress Liv Tyler, from Armageddon and Plunkett And Macleane.
She was suggested by casting director Mary Selway and both Fiennes brother and sister agreed on the "exciting and unusual choice" to play beautiful Tatyana.
"She has a naturalness that's quite extraordinary. I learnt a lot because she's so natural. She has an awareness of the camera in the same way an actor senses an audience in the theatre. That, combined with an inner quality," says Fiennes.
The actor himself sees no problem playing another period role. No pressure to do the Hollywood thing either. "If I choose to feel that, I suppose I could. In my own head I put that pressure there earlier on and I feel now I have it less.
"I find it hard to make choices because of some supposed map of a career - that something is a good bet because of the budget, the studio and will add to your profile.
"I don't find that a helpful approach. I want to feel a strong instinctive reaction to a director or screenplay or a part or the other actors attached to a film."
He admits he's been lucky in that the film he's made in America or with American money had strong directors like Steven Spielberg (Schindler's List) and Robert Redford (The Quiz Show).
The actor can understand those who accuse him of playing the same sort of characters in films like Onegin and The English Patient. "What you are talking about is the resistance to emotion. Having resisted, it leaks into them and implodes in them.
"That, I can see, is a similarity. In my own head they are very different people. I'm drawn to parts that go on a big journey of change that starts off in one way, then there's a catalyst in their lives and they are changed.
"I'm not always trying to do something for the sake of being different. If the idea interests me I see no reason why an actor can't explore again in a different way."
As for only doing period films, he says that's only a coincidence. He's taken the role because he's responded to the script, story, character or director. They happen to be period films but I can't explain it, except it's a coincidence. I'm open to anything contemporary but haven't received anything that made me go 'yes, yes, yes!'."
One thing everyone wants to know is if brother and sister had any disagreements on the set. The answer appears to be a qualified yes. "When you know anybody really well, you have moments of tension and resistance and irritability - but you have those with other people too," says Martha.
"One day Ralph stormed in and didn't like the props on set and stormed out again. There was a shuffling of feet and awkwardness among the crew but I knew he'd come back shortly."
Her brother adds: "The disagreements were only about the work, about what would make a better film. We resolved those things. Maybe one of us is living with a choice we would have made differently but in the big scale of making a film 99 per cent of choices were made in harmony".
Onegin opens in cinemas across the region tomorrow
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© EL STEPHO
Added to the RF Reading Room on November 26, 1999
EL STEPHO