Putting himself forward

Joseph Fiennes said he 'frighteningly loved' wielding a pistol in FlashForward. Photo / Supplied by TVNZ

There's something unusual about Joseph Fiennes' latest character.

"The main difference is that I'm not on a sweaty horse in a flouncy shirt," laughs the British actor, on the set of his new show FlashForward.

"I'm in a muscle car with a Glock and a Kevlar vest. And I tell you nothing comes better than that."

FlashForward is flash indeed. The TV series is the biggest of the new season and Fiennes has the lead role, playing an FBI agent called Mark Benford.

This guy isn't your typical Glock-toting cop chasing serial killers. When the entire population blacks out and sees the future, it's Benford who leads the investigation.

Not exactly a job for any old agent. And not an acting gig for any old TV star.

Except Fiennes isn't one. He's spent the best part of his 39 years shunning what most actors crave - opportunities to be a screen star. He is best known for his role as the blocked young playwright in Shakespeare in Love. The romantic comedy won Best Picture at the 1999 Oscars and netted Gwyneth Paltrow a gold trophy. It also proved that his older brother Ralph wasn't the only one of the seven Fiennes kids to inherit serious acting talent.

After that, the Weinstein Company offered him a chance of a lifetime: a five-picture deal that would very likely have established him as an A-list movie actor. Fiennes turned it down. Shakespeare in Love the film might have exposed him to the world but it was Shakespeare's plays where Fiennes' true passion lay. When he wasn't treading the boards, he tended towards historical film roles, playing Sir Robert Dudley in Elizabeth, Commissar Danilov in Enemy at the Gates and the Protestant reformer Martin Luther in Luther.

"I guess a lot of my walking away from projects is more to say, listen, I come from theatre," he says, his blue eyes lighting up.

"I did 10 years or more before I did film. I never thought of film when I went to drama school, I only thought of theatre. In theatre you get to do all sorts: age up, age down, change sex, whatever, it is vastly different. There is so much, the imagination of theatre allows you to open up a much bigger range.

"And suddenly you do wonderful films, but they put you in a very particular place."

When casting Mark Benford, FlashForward creator David S. Goyer says he was looking for a great actor who hadn't been exposed to American audiences for a while.

"Joe was the first name on the list."

But why on earth did he agree to do it? This new venture represents everything Fiennes has avoided in the past: a lead role as an action hero, a contract with no foreseeable end (if the show is anywhere as popular as Lost, for instance, he could be locked into six more years), a huge global following likely to invite intense interest in his private life (much of which he has kept from the public) and a world of sci-fi that sends him headlong into the future.

He was once told he was a "character actor in the body of a leading man", so perhaps that explains it.

"This is leading man in many respects, but I share that responsibility with an ensemble cast," Fiennes says, leaning forward as if spring-loaded.

"I don't feel I'm caring or being responsible like I might do for a certain theatre production. I just did Cyrano de Bergerac. You are the leading man if you are Cyrano; you've got a huge nose and everyone is going to be looking at you. Plus I felt like there was this whole new move where television is like the new cinema and the iPhone is the new TV."

He was a fan of TV's The Sopranos and The Wire, critically acclaimed series that put the emphasis back on great writing and multidimensional characters.

In the fantastical FlashForward, Mark Benford is a character dealing with the enormity of a global catastrophe - he must try to understand what quantum physicists would have a hard time getting their heads around. In his own flashforward he sees himself working on the Mosaic Collective, a website that invites people to send in details of their futuristic visions.

Benford is also a doting husband and father trying to maintain a sense of normality within his family life as the world grapples with the life-changing event.

His wife, a surgeon (played by fellow Brit Sonya Walger), sees herself in a romantic tryst with another man in her flashforward. His daughter sees something nightmare-inducing. Mark sees a return to his days as an alcoholic.

This American agent may not be as gallant or well-spoken as the bard but he is brave, sensitive and intelligent. He's a thinking man, a family man, an action man. Fiennes is playing a man trying to save the world but in starring in such a high-concept show, the actor plays second fiddle to the show's themes of destiny and time travel and must share the limelight with a big ensemble cast.

"Mark is a conduit to get people to see things from his angle," agrees Fiennes.

"The mosaic is a good metaphor for the approach for the actor - how do I work out where I am? In theatre and film you have a definite structure of the piece: Act 1, 2, 3.

"In television, you get a script a week before you shoot and you get rewrites on the day. So things are always changing. It is a bit like jazz, you know there is a form but you are having to change and improvise. So I'm finding it really exciting."

FlashForward is actually not Fiennes' first foray into television. In 2006 he starred in the black comedy Running with Scissors (also with Paltrow), the cinematic adaptation of writer Augusten Burroughs' memoirs about his dysfunctional childhood and coming of age as a gay man. Fiennes played Neil Bookman, a troubled 30-something with a handlebar moustache who has a love affair with the 13-year-old Burroughs.

Fiennes was hilarious without resorting to seediness; he made it easy to empathise with a disturbed young man who on paper looks repugnant.

After that, director Ryan Murphy asked Fiennes to shoot a TV pilot called Pretty Handsome, about a guy who has a sex change. The show was considered too risque and not picked up. "I really loved it. And it was so brave," says Fiennes.

"I think that maybe they felt they couldn't have that as a central character.

"But it introduced me to great writing, great production value. And so when I got this script my appetite had been whetted because I worked with Ryan and knew good quality when I saw it - and the same with David [Goyer]."

Like Fiennes, Goyer had made his name as a film writer, producer and director. His credits include Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and the Blade series. Fiennes says he was just as drawn to FlashForward's sometimes humorous writing as its existential conundrums.

After the mass blackout, a kangaroo hops across the inner-city carnage.

"The kangaroo will come back. You think I jest. I do jest maybe," he says, sounding Shakespearean. "I love the inexplicable nature of downtown LA, cars, helicopters, half-naked man, Mark running to catch his wife and a kangaroo. And it's great when 20 million people have died."

The character actor in a leading man's body has also been shocked to find he loves wielding a gun. Could it be he harbours more boyish fantasies than he realised?

"I loved it. Frighteningly loved it. I mean, it's terrifying. I like to think that I'm really Zen but give me a gun and it's great. It lets off a lot of the steam. It is horribly empowering. So that was a bit scary. But it was good fun."

LOWDOWN

Who: Joseph Fiennes, one-time Bard of Avon turned G-man

What: Lurch-in-time series FlashForward

When & where: Starts TV2, Wednesday 8.30pm