Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh
Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is a Northern Irish actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. Branagh trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He has directed or starred in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays, including Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Hamlet, Love's Labour's Lost, and As You Like It...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth10 December 1960
CityBelfast, Northern Ireland
CountryIreland
Carrying a movie is both a great privilege, it's a great opportunity, but it can be a great pressure, and sometimes that can make people behave very oddly.
I like to cast actors I admire, one's that are talented. Each one will bring something new to the part. This play has been done thousands of times and now certain characters are too familiar.
I do think that, for instance, we've been very lucky to have theatrical careers and be associated with Shakespeare which sometimes gives you a kind of bogus kudos.
I think A Midsummer Night's Dream would be terrific because of the transformations that occur. Or The Tempest, things like that. Extraordinary larger than life or supernatural element.
When you cast someone like Natalie Portman, the character can't just be the love interest.
What you want is the opportunity to work and an audience. Prizes after that are just a great big bonus.
What happens is that with difficult processes on a film, they get very intensely compressed because a clock is ticking.
To look out of a car in Scania, you see a painting on the horizontal - one windmill, one tiny farmhouse, acres of beet or grass.
There's always something to think about in terms of problems that are dark and important and immediate and scary.
The director needs to be in command on set because everything crumbles if that's not the case.
The Chinese say, 'It's good to live in interesting times.'
The BAFTA is both absolutely fantastic and sort of meaningless at the same time.
Shakespeare's always on my dance card if it can be.
One of the problems with Shakespeare is that you can never give him a ring.