Joseph Fiennes: my family values

People call my family a dynasty, but I’m not sure what a dynasty actually is. And I don’t feel part of one. It belies the truth of my real upbringing, which wasn’t grand at all; and it flies in the face of the fact that, at root, I’m just a jobbing actor.

My background is certainly very rich and diverse though, and it is full of interesting characters. I think everyone around me played a part in raising me; there isn’t one individual I could pick out – it was more a case of it taking the whole village to raise the child. Also, I am much more interested in the process than the outcome and family life, of course, is always a process, always evolving.

We were a big family. I’m one of six, and I have a foster brother as well. There was a strong sense of discipline as we were growing up: people seem to imagine we were raised in some kind of bohemian, Waltons-style setup, but it wasn’t like that at all. There was creativity, for sure, but it always went hand in hand with discipline.

I was baptised a Catholic and, although I’m not a churchgoer now, I do have a strong sense of the integrity of doing what you believe to be true.

I am a twin, but my brother and I aren’t identical so it’s not such a big deal. But when you share bunk beds and birthdays and a womb with someone, you have a special connection. It definitely feels different from the relationship I have with my other siblings – my twin and I are more connected. Jacob is a conservationist.

We moved around a great deal: it was either 14 houses and 12 schools or the other way round, I can’t quite remember. Anyway, I was always the new kid in the playground. And the playground is a tough place for a child, more so if you are the new arrival. But I think I took something away from all that about how to collaborate and get along with people from different mindsets and backgrounds. As an actor, you are plunged into different worlds and you have to make it work. So when I arrive on a new set or a new production, I’m drawing on those skills I learned as the new boy, yet again, in the playground.

Where does all this high achieving come from? [His eldest brother is the actor Ralph Fiennes; his sisters, Sophie and Martha, are both film director/producers; another older brother, Magnus, is a composer; his foster brother, Michael, is an archaeologist] I don’t know. There must be some malformed gene there or something, I don’t know. Are we rivals? Absolutely not – we all get on very well indeed. Now, we are all very conscious of the next generation coming along. I have two daughters, my siblings have children and there is a sense of them being at the centre of things.

Becoming a father has changed me in all sorts of ways, as it would anyone. It has changed me as an actor. There is this wonderful, irrevocable moment when you realise that nothing is ever going to be the same again. And there are all these new challenges; and you realise that the focus isn’t you any more, it’s them now. It’s about giving up your ego in the face of something greater; being part of something bigger.

Becoming a parent has made me more aware of the role my parents [now dead] played in my life, in all our lives. It seems impossible to believe that what my wife and I are doing for two children, they were doing for six; as time goes on, I feel greater and greater respect for them, for all they did for us, for pulling us through the way they did.