After criticism greeted his casting as Michael Jackson for a British TV show, Joseph Fiennes is back on the big screen taking aim at another sacred cow. Picture: AP / Domenico Stinellis

Fiennes doesn’t play Jesus in Risen— that role goes to Kiwi actor Cliff Curtis — rather a Roman soldier tasked with overseeing the crucifixion, then, in the days after, quelling ‘rumours’ that this so-called messiah has walked from his grave.

“There is great drama in the Bible — or else it wouldn’t have been made into films for so long as it has,” says Fiennes. “Whether you’re a Christian, a believer, or not, you can’t deny that the stories are incredibly engaging and arresting. They can serve up themes which don’t have to be religious — as in the great theme of redemption here (in Risen).”

Fiennes went to gladiator school in Italy to prepare for his role in Risen. Picture: Sony PicturesSource:Supplied

Risen is being pitched with the tagline “The greatest manhunt in history” and indeed, its Biblical meets CSI investigation style puts a new spin on a musty genre.

“The angle of this film, the success of it, is seeing the story from an oblique, left field angle, from a nonbeliever, from a brutal Roman soldier who is in the industry of death,” Fiennes says.

“He’s an intelligent guy but I love that his conditioning butts up against another form of thought and he is undone by that.”

To find that CSI: Ancient Rome vibe, Fiennes went both to “gladiator school” in Italy and met with a homicide detective. The latter was sorely needed, he says, because he wouldn’t know how to interrogate anyone: “I’m not even good with my kids when they’re naughty.”

While in Rome to promote Risen, Fiennes, his wife Maria Dolores Dieguez and their two daughters met Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square. Picture: L'Osservatore Romano /Pool Photo via APSource:AP

Fiennes has shaken off the surprise and indignation that greeted news of his casting in the TV show about Michael Jackson’s post-September 11 road trip with Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando by saying “it’s just a 20-minute satire ... a sketch about a story that could have been legend or could have been true” and that he was as shocked as anyone that the makers would come to him for the role of Jackson.

It’s fair to say, however, that as a screen actor Fiennes, 45, has consciously taken the road less travelled — refusing, for instance, to jump on the Hollywood heart-throb express that pulled up at his door after the success of Shakespeare in Love.

In fact, movies were a bit of an afterthought for the actor, whose first professional job came in a London theatre production of The Woman In Black in 1993.

Fiennes with Gwyneth Paltrow in the Oscar-winning 1999 romp Shakespeare in Love. Picture: AP / Miramax / Laurie / SparhamSource:Supplied

“I only thought I would ever do theatre, but I got a break early on into film through Bernardo Bertolucci coming to see a production of A View From the Bridge,” Fiennes explains. Bertolucci cast him in his 1996 film, Stealing Beauty.

He’ll be back on stage in his homeland shortly, in Terence Rattigan’s play about Lawrence, formerly of Arabia, returning to Britain and having a breakdown.

It gets him out of the desert, at least: Production on Risen came straight after Fiennes’ time in Australia making the drama Strangerland with Nicole Kidman and Hugo Weaving. That meant going from the dusty outback of Broken Hill to a Spanish desert doubling for the sands of Judea.

The vistas and the co-stars were incredible, but Fiennes could have done without the flies while making Strangerland with Nicole Kidman. Picture: SuppliedSource:Supplied

“The difference was there were no flies in the Judaean desert,” Fiennes chuckles. “So that was a relief.”

That’s not to say this pale Englishman didn’t enjoy his time in Broken Hill.

“To tell you the truth, getting out of the (indoor) sets and into that incredible vista is just a delight. I could spend much more time there. I absolutely adored it.”

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