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
I fondly remember good times working on 'Thor.'
I don't find myself so exercised by a desperation to be new.
Being Irish, I always had this love of words.
Lighten up, just enjoy life, smile more, laugh more, and don't get so worked up about things.
Many of us live in dysfunctional families, and so even if it's in a fairy tale, or perhaps because it's in a fairy tale, we have a chance to look at that side of our reflected lives differently.
I watched a lot of musicals growing up.
This is a very exciting departure for me as a filmmaker,
I was a big admirer of F.D.R. He saved Britain.
I am very much looking forward to new adventures - including, I hope, Broadway - sooner rather than later.
I made a bargain with myself. If I hadn't done it by 35, I'd walk away. Hamlet is at a crisis at this point in his life. This is a young man's play.
If you've been to Moscow, it's a really exciting and great city, but it still feels like you should be a little careful about which way you're going to step.
Helena Bonham-Carter and I sat down to talk about [Cinderella movie] and she said, 'I really want to do it but only one thing I insist on and that's wings.' She had to have wings and [costume designer] Sandy Powell didn't want wings to begin with but had to be talked around, but that was fun.
I noted about Cate Blanchett was her very positive lack of concern for how she turns out in [Cinderella]. She is happy to be a villainess and very pleased to be encouraged as I did with her to reveal this backstory and feel as though this was very human, that this broken heart of hers, if you might regard it that way, would be visible, but she never played for sympathy and I really admired that about her, so she's just there, she just is and uncompromisingly.
I guess I've done a couple of boys-y movies and on the whole you get bracketed into things you've just done, so it was an imaginative surprise from my Disney family to pull me out of the hat, as it were [in Cinderella].