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Four of them recently worked together on one film - Onegin, an adaptation of Eugene Onegin, the classic 1833 novel in verse by the Russian writer Alexander Pushkin. The eldest sibling, Ralph Fiennes - an Oscar nominee for Schindler's List and The English Patient - has the title role. As St Petersburg's most eligible and cynical bachelor, he spurns the advances of Tatyana Larina (Liv Tyler). Ralph's sister Martha makes her directorial debut, while brother Magnus has composed the score - and another sister, Sophie, has a small role.
I meet Ralph and Martha Fiennes at the San Sebastioen film festival. They have the same shyness of nature. Both talk in impassioned bursts and then slump back to reconsider. She has a strength and a fervour that demand attention. He can be tongue-tied, a trait that has more to do with a desire to avoid platitudes and sound-bites than a lack of articulacy.
Onegin is Ralph's baby. For several years, the actor has dreamed and schemed about making this film happen. His soaring profile and critical standing eventually proved sufficient to get the project the green light, while his industry clout ensured that his younger sister (34 to his 36) would direct.
"Ralph gave me Pushkin's poem to read seven or eight years ago," says Martha, who shares sharply defined features with her brother. "I loved it immediately and found something of myself in it. He was strongly attracted to Onegin and it all stemmed from there. He wrote a primitive storyboard and a rough treatment and brought it to me - and as he became more and more successful as an actor, parts of it started to come together. We actually got the whole of the money assigned the year after The English Patient.
"Our relationship is based on a lot of mutual respect and endless discussion. I mean, 27 phone calls from him at any time of the day or night is the norm. So, actually, when you get out there on your first day of shooting, it feels like a continuation of something that you started a long time ago. It is incredibly normal to work with a sibling - completely second nature. We are all quite close in age and we have all tended to move towards similar areas of work in the media, film, television and music. There are a lot of advantages. If there were any sibling rivalries, we certainly couldn't afford to let them get in the way."
For a brief, mad moment, Ralph and Martha flirted with the idea of casting their younger brother, 28-year-old Joseph - the star of Shakespeare in Love - in the role of Onegin's close friend Vladimir Lensky. "But it would have been too much to have two brothers playing friends," says Martha. "It doesn't have the right dynamic. We went 'Yeah!' and then 'No!"'
Once shooting began, Ralph tried to keep the relationship between himself and Martha on a strictly professional basis, but he suggests there were times when he felt an added sense of responsibility. "After all, I had suggested the idea and persuaded her to do it, and the financing was done on the basis of my commitment. But I didn't really like all that burden. I wanted simply to be an actor and feel my way into the part.
"Because I loved the original so much, the transition from page to screen was particularly painful. We knew we had to keep the roots of the film in Pushkin's work and not let it dilute into something that audiences are supposed to like."
In the end, the shoot passed off without any family feud. While Ralph found his own way into the lead character, Martha worked intensely with Liv Tyler, who plays Tatyana.
What Martha liked about Tatyana was that Pushkin had created a very modern woman. "She doesn't sink into despair and depression when the man she loves rejects her, but goes on with her life. That makes for a much more interesting dynamic between the two leads. And I became quite infected by Ralph's passion for Onegin. He's not an easy character. He's dark and unpredictable, but also amusing and sardonic. In many ways he's the classic Byronic figure, but he also has the Chekhovian sense of unfulfilment and emotional immaturity."
There is an air of inevitability about the Fiennes family deciding to pool their talents and work together. Their upbringing in the West Country, London and Ireland was marked by an atmosphere of caring and creativity. Their mother, Jennifer Lash, was a novelist who became a charismatic, perceptive and dominant figure in their lives. Father Mark is a tenant farmer turned landscape photographer. Lash died six years ago after a struggle with cancer, but she remains a focal point for her brood.
According to Ralph, their mother saw "the individual and the possibility in each of us". He adds: "She gave us all confidence. I keep her as a beacon. What she always understood was that, in everything you did, the imaginative spirit had to be flexible and free - but in the framework was punctuality and preparation, which gave you the freedom to let it happen and let it go. And she believed in the redemptive power of life."
Martha is quick to diffuse impressions of a totally bohemian background. "Mummy was actually a very strict disciplinarian. We tidied our rooms and there was no getting away with being rude. But she encouraged us and complimented us and made us all feel able to do things."
The Fiennes children all came along in rapid succession. Their parents even found time to adopt a foster son, Mick, who is now an archaeologist. Joseph has described their upbringing as "a mad, messy, noisy, chaotic adventure". He considers his family close friends as much as siblings, and rejects the idea of an artistic dynasty in embryo. "We don't go to each other's houses and swap notes and, when we do, it's less talking shop and more the joys of domesticity."
Cate Blanchett - who worked with Joseph on Elizabeth and also with Ralph on Oscar and Lucinda - describes the differences and similarities of the brothers: "Ralph is very complex and intense but with a wicked sense of humour. Joseph is open, direct, focused and a secret trickster. Both are incredibly beautiful to look at and gifted beyond belief."
Of the other Fiennes children, Magnus is a composer and has created the score for Onegin, while Sophie is a producer and actress and made a documentary about the Danish film director Lars Von Trier. She also has a tiny part in Onegin. Jacob Fiennes, Joseph's twin, was obviously inoculated against the cinema bug. He is a gamekeeper.
Until Onegin, Martha was best-known in the industry as a director of music videos and commercials. She has helped to promote products as varied as Strepsils, Yardley soaps, Galaxy chocolates and what she describes as "a horrible sickly sweet liqueur", which she diplomatically refuses to name.
She was more than ready to spread her talents, although she readily admits liking the experience of making commercials. "They can be very creative and exciting and you can use lots of visual styles. But your wings are clipped by the constraints - and they're all about selling a product. Otherwise, film -making is not a million miles apart. There are the same pressures and processes, dealing with heads of department and the post-production. You can be using the same sound stage at Shepperton with creative people and huge sets. There is plenty of crossover.
"I had been doing commercials and music videos for 14 years before Onegin. I'm the wrong side of 30 and I keep remembering that Steven Spielberg made Jaws when he was 26. But I had enough experience to give confidence to the people who had to release the funds."
Martha had tried to get into serious film-making many years before. When she came out of film school, she tried to get a bursary to develop a short film. She tried various scripts over a period of eight years, all without success. "Because I was working on the commercials, the British Film Institute considered I was not struggling enough to qualify," she says.
"For Onegin, Ralph simply told Ileen Maisel, the producer, that he wanted me to direct. Maisel said we had to handle it carefully because it just looked as if he was bringing in his sister to direct as a favour. I can see the pitfalls and the anxieties of the whole machinery that is marketing and perception, but the bottom line is that Ralph is my brother, I respect him, and we have done this project together. And, for me, that's it."
In any case, Ralph has never let the demands or perceptions of the movie -going public interfere with his career choices. Just as Schindler's List, The English Patient and an acclaimed stage Hamlet had firmly established him as an extremely serious thespian, he chose to star in the 1997 film Oscar And Lucinda because he loved the character - an oddball Anglican cleric who believes a run of luck on the horses is God's way of providing financial support.
"People thought it was an odd choice," he admits. "But I'm lucky enough to be able to make choices, and I'll just wait and try to make the right one when it comes along. I cannot think about whether it is perceived to be successful. It might not be in commercial terms but it might be critically - or it might be just the feeling between myself and the producer and the director."
This approach is no guarantee of quality control, and Ralph has already starred in one legendary turkey. Looking back on the debacle of The Avengers, he agrees there was a fundamental flaw in trying to be too faithful to the original. "Uma Thurman and I were trying to be Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee. We should have dressed it up completely differently. We were so worried about offending The Avengers lobby that we ended up offending them more than anyone else."
Fiennes has found no film projects to tempt him in the immediate future. He has been concentrating on new stage productions of Shakespeare's Richard II and Coriolanus - to be directed by Jonathan Kent, with whom he worked on Hamlet. They will be staged under the Almeida Theatre banner in London next year.
"We wanted to take the plays out of a traditional theatre setting and out of the West End and allow audiences to encounter them in a different venue," he says. "That way they will have freshness and a new dimension."
Onegin is released on November 19
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© EL STEPHO
Added to the RF Reading Room on November 17, 1999
EL STEPHO