Hero Fiennes Tiffin, the nephew of acclaimed stars Ralph and Joseph Fiennes, has offered a refreshing take on being a nepo baby – admitting he would never have been an actor “if it wasn’t for my family being in the industry”.
The 28-year-old is set to star as the titular character in Guy Ritchie’s Prime Video series Young Sherlock and openly admits his famous family has given him an advantage in the entertainment world.
One of Fiennes Tiffin’s first roles was in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, in which he played a young Tom Riddle, while Ralph Fiennes starred as Lord Voldemort. His parents are also in the film world; his mother is director Martha Fiennes and his father is cinematographer George Tiffin.
Addressing the “nepo baby” label, Fiennes Tiffin told Tatler: “I don't feel any sense of it getting my back up. I think it's so fair.”
“I would never be an actor if it wasn't for my family being in the industry and I'm extremely lucky that they were, and nepotism is the appropriate word for why I do what I do,” he continued.
“If someone told me that I don't deserve it, then I definitely would defend myself,” he added. “But no, I'm so lucky to have had the opportunities.”
Young Sherlock will premiere on 4 March and this time around, Fiennes Tiffin is starring alongside Joseph Fiennes, who will play the detective’s father, Silas Holmes.
The series is an adaptation of Andrew Lane’s Young Sherlock Holmes books.
Celebrity nepo babies aren’t always so keen to acknowledge their privilege, with Lily Rose Deep once disputing that her parentage had helped her secure roles. “I can definitely say that nothing is going to get you the part except for being right for the part,” she told Elle magazine in 2022.
More recently, Kate Winslet drew criticism after wading into the debate with a passionate defence of her 21-year-old son Joe, who wrote the screenplay for her recent movie, Goodbye June. “I don’t like the nepo baby term because these kids are not getting a leg up,” she insisted.
Winslet added that Joe, who has Oscar winners for parents in the form of the Titanic star and her ex-husband, Sir Sam Mendes, “would say to me, ‘I don’t want people to think that this film is just being made because you’re my mum’.”
“The film would have been made with or without me, the script is so, so good,” she said.
