For starters . . . and to state the blindingly obvious . . . he's not American. He might have the Hollywood career, the whiff of glamour and his name above the titles, but Fiennes is the kind of Englishman usually billed as 'quintessential'.

Which means that where The Gate is concerned, he's neither in shock nor awe. For a theatre that has done Brian Friel such impeccable service down the years, it also means it's less of a stretch for Fiennes to be Frank Hardy, the tortured faith healer returning to his native Donegal after years ministering in Scotland and England.

But what really sets Fiennes apart from the troupe of A-list movie stars who tread the boards in a frequently misguided and belated attempt to pay some sort of imagined dues is the fact that he never went away, you know. He has had two Oscar nominations but it is a Tony that sits on his mantelpiece, the first ever won for a portrayal of Hamlet on Broadway. He has said that box office doesn't matter to him, that it is little more than a means to a successful and prolonged career.

The play's the thing, though;

the reason he's in Dublin and the reason he's committed himself to a Broadway run in May with the revival of Friel's 1979 hit. "The feeling of a company . . . that's what I miss doing films, " he says. "The sense of ensemble. After a couple of years, I miss it."

If not quite quintessential, his childhood was the kind that lends itself easily to a creative career. He is the eldest of six siblings . . . a musician, a film producer, an actor, a gamekeeper and an archaeologist make up the rest of the Fiennes ensemble. His father, Mark, was a photographer and his mother, Jini, an artist and novelist who wrote under the name Jennifer Lash. His cousin, in a supporting role, is the explorer Ranulph Fiennes, while he can also claim a Benedictine monk for a great-uncle and the Queen of England as a distant cousin.

Originally set in Suffolk, the family made daily ends meet by doing up houses for resale and was constantly on the move; by the time Ralph went to college, he'd lived in 15 places, including an extended stay in west Cork towards the end of the 1960s. "I still remember the smells, and the endless shades of green.

And the rain, of course."

When they were on the move, they were usually homeschooled by their mother. More formal education came via Bishop Wordsworth Boys School in Suffolk and, briefly, from St Kieran's College in Kilkenny. From an early age, he wanted to act. "Going to the movies was a big event in my youth. My father was the initiator . . . he'd have me put on a jacket to see a film."

But it was theatre that won his early allegiance. He went to Rada in 1982 after completing an art foundation course at Chelsea School of Art and immersed himself in stagecraft. "I never studied anything about film technique in school, " he has said. "Eventually, I realised theatre and film are not so different: from the gut to the heart to the head of a character is the same journey for both."

After graduating, he worked at the National Theatre and for a prolonged spell at the RSC before making his film debut in Wuthering Heights playing Heathcliff to Juliette Binoche's Cathy. His big break came in 1993 when Stephen Spielberg cast him as the sadistic Nazi Amon Goeth in Schindler's List. His performance earned him an Oscar nomination and a permanent place in the Greatest Film Villains lists.

Real-life notoriety was to follow. A year later, back on stage in an acclaimed production of Hamlet, he met and fell for the actress Francesca Annis, 18 years his senior and playing his mother. His brief marriage to ER actress Alex Kingston fell apart and Fiennes and Annis set up home together to a backdrop of tabloid giddiness and more sober papers speculating on whether the death of Fiennes' mother, a year earlier, had conspired with method acting to create the mother of all Oedipus complexes. Small wonder that, more than a decade later, Fiennes still refuses to discuss his relationship in the media.

An acclaimed performance in Robert Redford's Quiz Show and a second Oscar nomination for Anthony Minghella's statuette-laden The English Patient suggested Fiennes as a particularly classy leading man, but in the years since, his films have either registered as critical successes but commercial flops (Oscar and Lucinda, Strange Days and Onegin) or been risible popcorn-fodder (Maid In Manhattan and The Avengers).Neil Jordan cast him as the jealous lover in The End of The Affair . . . "a wonderful film" . . . and he was positively bullied into playing Voldemort, Harry Potter's nemesis, in the most recent film in the series.

Suddenly, again, box office success . . . but it wasn't until this year and The Constant Gardener that Fiennes has enjoyed a real return to form on screen. It might have been overlooked by the Academy, but the adaptation of the John Le Carre novel has drawn almost unanimous praise for the intense performance of its star. He has, critics say, been a leading man in search of a niche . . . tortured and driven mightn't suit the Tom Hankses of this world, but the plaudits demonstrate that on the big screen, they consistently work for Fiennes.

But the theatre remains his first, his last, almost his everything. Spielberg once said of him: "If he picks the right roles and doesn't forget the theatre, I think he can eventually be Alec Guinness or Laurence Olivier." He hasn't always chosen well in film but his theatrical CV is impeccable: more than a decade on from Spielberg's prediction, his name sits comfortably in the company of England's theatrical greats.

So far from being the afterthought it might have been for other box officers . . . or even for the actor Spielberg anticipated . . . The Faith Healer and The Gate are at the core of Fiennes career plan. "I enjoy making movies and you always hope that each one you make will find its audience, but there are times when I think I really should just retreat to the theatre full-time. The air is far cleaner there."

Ralph Fiennes

Occupation: Actor
Born: 22 December 1962, London
Educated: Chelsea College of Art and Design; Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Married: To Alex Kingston, 1993, divorced 1997; partner, Francesca Annis, since 1994
In the news: He opens in Brian Friel's The Faith Healer at The Gate this week