Kenneth Branagh is an award-winning actor and director known for his productions of Shakespeare plays. He was born in Belfast, Ireland, and moved to England at age 9. He was inspired to act at 15 and graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1982. He founded his own Shakespeare company, the Renaissance Theater Company, and gained recognition for his excellent productions. He released his feature film directorial debut, Henry V, in 1989 and won the BAFTA Award for Best Director. He worked with actress Emma Thompson on several films before divorcing in 1995. He has since worked on several miniseries and received critical attention for his portrayal of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Warm Springs.
Kenneth Branagh is an award-winning actor and director, whose most significant contributions to cinema have been his productions of several Shakespeare plays. As an actor, he received critical attention for his portrayal of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the HBO production Warm Springs, and received an Emmy for his role in 2006.
Branagh was born in Belfast, Ireland, where he spent the first nine years of his childhood. In 1970, his family moved to England. He quickly picked up on an ‘English’, as opposed to the Northern Irish accent, in order to fit in with his school mates. His ease with accents is to be noted, as he has performed with many different types of accents in his film and stage career.
He says he was first inspired to act at 15, when he saw a performance of Hamlet with Derek Jacobi. This interest would direct his early adult years when he was accepted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts at 18. Graduating in 1982, he quickly became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Academy, where his performances brought him rave reviews. Branagh became disillusioned with the Academy and founded his own Shakespeare Company, the Renaissance Theater Company (RTC) five years later.
Although the RTC struggled initially, it soon gained recognition for its excellent productions and its ability to attract some of the UK’s best-known actors. Dame Judy Dench and Derek Jacobi both starred in early RTC productions and would work with him on Henry V.
In 1989, Branagh released his feature film directorial debut, Henry V, in which he plays the title role. He received Academy Award nominations as director and actor and won the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Award for Best Director. That same year he married actress Emma Thompson.
The couple worked together on several films, before divorcing in 1995. Branagh’s next film, Dead Again in 1991 had Thompson in the lead female role and was a tribute to Hitchcock. Her Hollywood debut is a thriller, loaded with foreshadowing and the use of black and white photography for half of the film. She also plays the film as two characters, and neither has a British accent.
In 1992 he directed Peter’s Friends, which received criticism and praise. 1993 brought a return to Shakespeare with the production of Much Ado About Nothing. Several insignificant films followed the success of Much Ado, most notably Frankenstein and Branagh as Iago in Othello, which he did not direct. He was most praised for 1996’s Hamlet, which was not a box office hit, as most moviegoers were impatient with the four-hour production.
Public opinion had also turned against Branagh after his divorce from Emma Thompson, and a string of films released in the late 1990s that earned him little, with the notable exception of A Midwinter’s Tale, which is about a cast that tries to put on a production of Hamlet. The film is darkly funny with plenty of “jokes” for those involved in theatre.
2002 marked a resurgence when he played the quirky Professor Lockhart in the second Harry Potter film. He has also lent his voice to several narrated documentaries, including Walking with Dinosaurs. More recently he has worked on several miniseries and his work on him in Warm Springs.
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