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
The ferocity of passion that is engendered by people when they don't like what you've done is really tremendous. It's intense.
It's quite hard for people to just accept that they're very contradictory.
The best actors, I think, have a childlike quality. They have a sort of an ability to lose themselves. There's still some silliness.
If it's good art, it's good.
Two billion people watched the royal wedding. Clearly, they're interested in that - the outside of what appears to be lives that have a certain amount of privilege. They have gifts, they have history, they have a sort of unusual and separate position, which maybe involves paying a price.
There are some amazing stories from all over this country, where people's work and contribution has been acknowledged. To be part of that is an absolutely fantastic feeling.
I'm basically quite a cheerful person.
I wanted to have a place and a space, and a building, in which to create a season of work I am here because the idea of a theatrical home is very appealing to me
I don't feel one could even remotely touch the idea of intimidating others, but because I've understood the other side of the experience, I will occasionally, if I smell that could even be in the air for a few minutes, say to the director, "Please, you must tell me anything you want. Please say all the things you think might be terribly hurtful like, 'That was boring.'"
I think the best actors are the most generous, the kindest, the greatest people and at their worst they are vain, greedy and insecure.
We're self obsessed and mad and stupid - not that other people can't be the same way - but the extremes are kind of honest in some mad way. Anyway, I like them.
In the hands of a great poet, words have ways of affecting us in ways we don't understand.
Even when a film is finished, when I direct a film, sometimes it's a dark profession, but it requires a peculiar form of courage that I admire.
I feel more Irish than English. I feel freer than British, more visceral, with a love of language. Shot through with fire in some way. That's why I resist being appropriated as the current repository of Shakespeare on the planet. That would mean I'm part of the English cultural elite, and I am utterly ill-fitted to be.