Everything's just Fiennes

Actor Joseph Fiennes must be the envy of every hot-blooded male in the country. He's shared steamy on-screen clinches with some of the most beautiful blondes in Hollywood, including Cate Blanchett and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Now he's set to send temperatures soaring again with his most erotic role to date, alongside yet another stunning blonde, Heather Graham, in the psychological thriller Killing Me Softly.

In the film, based on the best-selling novel by Nicci French, the 32-year-old star plays Adam, a mysterious young man who falls passionately in love at first sight with Alice (Graham), a beautiful American living with her English boyfriend in London.

Knowing nothing about one another the pair embark on a torrid affair with tragic consequences.

Fiennes who made his name in romantic comedies such as Shakespeare In Love and Martha, Meet Daniel, Frank And Laurence, admits he was attracted to the darker passion of his latest role.

"My character meets Alice on a crowded street. It's one of those rare occasions of total chemistry when the impact they have on each other leads to passion very quickly," he explains.

"This starts as a passionate love story and develops into a thriller. Somehow you only remember the stories of great passion which self-destruct, you remember the tragedy of lost love."

Although the movie is Fiennes's most sexually explicit to date, the actor says Graham helped calm his nerves about the bedroom scenes.

"It has been just sheer joy working with her and it's so important to get that aspect right," he smiles.

"For me that boils down to her brilliance. She's incredibly generous and a great sparring partner within a scene."

In fact far more nerve-wracking than his sex scenes was the fact that Fiennes's character plays a mountaineer in the movie - which meant the actor had to scale a few heights of his own.

He trained first at a London climbing centre and then travelled to Glencoe in Scotland to tackle the real thing.

"I felt I had to do it because part of working on this and making it real to me and making Adam real was looking at what motivates and drives a climber.

What is the obsession behind this passion to climb hundreds of thousands of feet and in certain circumstances that are inhospitable," he explains. "In order to get near that I had to go climbing myself."

Now the enterprising star says he's been well and truly bitten by the mountaineering bug.

"It's a strange solitary occupation and a mixture of love and hate," he ponders. "Parts of the climb can be sheer terror - extreme conditions, perched on a high ledge - followed by an immense sense of exhilaration when you complete the climb."

Of course, these days, Fiennes is used to being at the top. He's one of the most successful actors around and is no longer living in the shadow of his brother Ralph.

It was Ralph who trailblazed to Hollywood with his roles in the multi-Oscar winning movies Schindler's List and The English Patient, but the pair now both have a clutch of smash hit films between them and, contrary to popular belief, have never been in competition with one another.

"He gave me a lot of encouragement during drama school," says Joseph of his elder brother.

"The name gets the door open but you still have to pass through it. And at the end of the day you're on your own. Everything boils down to the individual."

The younger Fiennes has more than proved he can make it on his own merit. Both Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth won Oscars and, as a result, the star found himself hugely in demand on Hollywood. However he turned down most of the offers that came his way.

"They were all men in tights," he says of the roles that were on offer. "I decided to go straight back to the theatre, back to what I love best, to a sort of calmness, which was great."

The low-key theatre roles also meant he could pull back from the spotlight, which he dislikes.

Notoriously tight-lipped about his private life, he's been linked to a string of beautiful women including Natalie Imbruglia and Naomi Campbell, but in fact has a long-term relationship with make-up artist Sarah Griffiths.

The pair live in London and have been together for seven years but Fiennes is adamant they won't be snapped at the usual round of premieres and glitzy, show business parties.

"It would be naïve to think journalists aren't going to ask me about myself," he says. "You have a job to do I'm OK with it and I just try to be honest."

It's hard not to take notice of the Fiennes brood, however, as they're such a talented bunch.

His uncle is the celebrated explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes and he has seven brothers and sisters - five of them in the musical or dramatic arts.

And it's this close knit family which Fiennes credits for keeping his feet firmly on the ground - that and, bizarrely, his new-found love of mountaineering.

"Hanging upside down at 2,000 feet works wonders for one's perspective," he reasons. "You don't give a thought to your career at that point."

(Killing Me Softly opens at UK cinemas on Friday, June 21.)