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Kenneth Branagh
Birth name	Kenneth Charles Branagh
Born	December 10, 1960 (1960-12-10) (age 47) Belfast, Northern Ireland
Spouse(s)	Lindsay Brunnock (2003-present) Emma Thompson (1989-1995)
Awards Emmy Awards Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie 2001 Conspiracy

Kenneth Charles Branagh (born December 10, 1960) is an Emmy Award-winning, Academy Award-nominated Northern Irish actor and film director.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Career 1.3 Personal life 2 Filmography (actor) 3 Filmography (director) 4 Narrator 5 Discography and audiobooks 6 References 7 Sources 8 External links

Branagh was born in Belfast to working-class Protestant parents Frances (Harper) and William Branagh, a carpenter who ran a company that specialised in fitting partitions and suspended ceilings.^[1] He was educated at Grove Primary School.^[2] At the age of nine, he relocated with his family to Reading in England to escape the Troubles between Protestants and Catholics.^[3][4]

Branagh achieved some early measure of success in his native Northern Ireland for his role as the title character in the BBC's Play for Today^[5] series known as the Billy Plays, written by Graham Reid and set in Belfast. He has worked on both stage and screen.

He received acclaim in the UK for his stage performances, first winning the 1982 SWET Award for Best Newcomer, for his role as Judd in Julian Mitchell's Another Country, immediately after leaving RADA. He and David Parfitt founded the Renaissance Theatre Company in 1987, following success with several productions on the London 'Fringe', including Branagh's full-scale production of Romeo and Juliet at the Lyric Studio, co-starring with Samantha Bond. The first major Renaissance production was Branagh's Christmas 1987 staging of Twelfth Night at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, starring Richard Briers as Malvolio and Frances Barber as Viola, and with an original score by Scottish actor, musician and composer Patrick Doyle, who two years later was to compose the music for Branagh's film of Henry V.

Branagh became a major presence in the media and on the British stage when Renaissance collaborated with Birmingham Rep for a 1988 touring season of three Shakespeare plays under the umbrella title of Renaissance Shakespeare on the Road, which also played a repertory season at the Phoenix Theatre in London. It featured directorial debuts for Judi Dench with Much Ado About Nothing (starring Branagh and Bond as Benedick and Beatrice), Geraldine McEwan with As You Like It, and Derek Jacobi directing Branagh in the title role in Hamlet, with Sophie Thompson as Ophelia. Critic Milton Shulman for the Evening Standard wrote: "On the positive side Branagh has the vitality of Olivier, the passion of Gielgud, the assurance of Guinness, to mention but three famous actors who have assuaged the role. On the negative side, he has not got the magnetism of Olivier, nor the mellifluous voice quality of Gielgud nor the intelligence of Guinness."^[6].

A year later in 1989 Branagh co-starred with Emma Thompson in the Renaissance revival of Look Back in Anger. Judi Dench directed both the theatre and television productions, presented first in Belfast then at the London Coliseum and Lyric Theatre.

More recently, in 2002, Branagh starred in the Crucible Theatre , Sheffield as Richard III and in 2003 in the Royal National Theatre's production of David Mamet's Edmond.

Branagh is probably best known for his film adaptations of the works of William Shakespeare, beginning with Henry V in 1989, Much Ado About Nothing, Love's Labour's Lost, and Hamlet, with As You Like It following in 2006. As You Like It premiered in theatres in Europe, but was sent directly to television in the U.S., where it had its U.S. premiere on HBO in August of 2007. Although Branagh played the role of Iago on the 1995 Othello, he did not direct the film; it was directed by Oliver Parker. Othello is the one Shakespeare film that Branagh has appeared in which was directed by someone else.

Branagh has also been involved in several made-for-TV films. Among his most acclaimed portrayals is that of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) in the 2005 film Warm Springs. Though the film received sixteen Emmy nominations, winning five (including Best Made-For-Television Film), Branagh did not win the award for his portrayal. He did, however, receive an Emmy award for his performance in the 2001 TV Conspiracy, a depiction of the Wannsee Conference, where Nazi officials conceived the Final Solution. Branagh's award winning performance was for the part of Reinhard Heydrich.

Branagh has been nominated for four Academy Awards. His first two nominations were for Henry V (one each for directing and acting), then one for the 1992 film short subject Swan Song, and again for his work on the screenplay of Hamlet in 1996. Included amongst his many other accolades is a nomination for “worst” supporting actor Razzie in 1999 for his performance in the film Wild Wild West. Branagh has co-starred several times with actress Emma Thompson, to whom he was married from 1989 to 1995. They appeared together in Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Dead Again, and Peter's Friends. For several years he was in a well-publicised relationship with Helena Bonham Carter, with whom he also starred and directed in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In 2003 he married film art director Lindsay Brunnock ^[7] , to whom he was introduced by Bonham Carter in 1997.^[8]

In 1990, at age 30, Branagh authored an autobiography, which he entitled Beginning,^[9] and has narrated several audio books such as The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis.^[10]

In 1994, Branagh declined an appointment as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).^{[citation needed]} Branagh was the youngest actor to receive the Golden Quill (also known as the Gielgud Award) in 2000.

Branagh began his directing career with Henry V at the age of 29, and from 1989 to 1996 appeared mostly in films he also directed. The commercial failure of Love's Labours Lost in 2000 temporarily ended Branagh's career behind the camera, but he has recently begun directing features again, most recently the thriller Sleuth.

Branagh is Honorary President of NICVA (the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action.) He received an honorary doctorate in Literature from Queen's University of Belfast in 1990. He is also a patron for the charity Over The Wall.[1]

He speaks Italian and is a lifelong supporter of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.^[11] He was married to Emma Thompson until 1995.

• To the Lighthouse (1983) (television)
• Ghosts (1986) (television)
• Fortunes of War (1987) (television)
• A Month in the Country (1988) as James Moon
• Henry V (1989) as Henry V
• Dead Again (1991) as Mike Church, P.I.
• Peter's Friends (1992)
• Swing Kids (1993) as Herr Knopp, Gestapo (uncredited)
• Much Ado About Nothing (1993) as Benedick
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) as Dr. Victor Frankenstein
• Othello (1995) as Iago
• Hamlet (1996) as Hamlet
• The Gingerbread Man (1998)
• The Theory of Flight (1998)
• Alien Love Triangle (1998) (short)
• The Proposition (1998)
• The Dance of Shiva (1998) (short)
• Celebrity (1998) as Lee Simon
• Wild Wild West (1999) as Dr. Arliss Loveless
• The Periwig-Maker (1999) (short) (voice)
• The Road to El Dorado (2000) (voice)
• Love's Labour's Lost (2000) as Berowne
• Conspiracy (2001) (television) as Reinhard Heydrich
• Schneider's 2nd Stage (2001) (short)
• Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) as A. O. Neville
• How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog (2002)
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) as Professor Gilderoy Lockhart
• Shackleton (television) (2002) as Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton
• Five Children and It (2004) as Uncle Albert
• Warm Springs (television) (2005) as Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Valkyrie (2008) as Henning von Tresckow

• Henry V (1989)
• Dead Again (1991)
• Swan Song (1992, short) starring John Gielgud
• Peter's Friends (1992)
• Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)
• A Midwinter's Tale (1996)
• Hamlet (1996)
• Love's Labour's Lost (2000)
• Listening (2003 short)
• The Magic Flute (2006), based on the Mozart's opera Die Zauberflöte
• As You Like It (2006)
• Sleuth (2007)

• Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood (Six-part TV special) (1996)
• Great Composers (TV mini-series) (1997)
• Cold War (CNN TV series) (1998)
• The Making of Walking with Dinosaurs (UK version) (TV series) (1999)
• Walking with Dinosaurs (UK version) (TV series) (1999)
• The Making of Walking with Dinosaurs (UK version) (TV series) (1999)

• The Science of Walking with Beasts (Australia) (Two-part TV special) (2001)
• The Ballad of Big Al (UK version) (TV special) (2001)
• Walking with Beasts (UK version) (TV series) (2001)
• Walking with Monsters: Life Before Dinosaurs (TV series) (2005)
• Goebbels-Experiment, Das (Documentary) (2005)

• Shakespeare's Richard III (complete) for Naxos Audiobooks
• In the Ravine & Other Short Stories by Anton Chekhov (unabridged) for Naxos Audiobooks
• Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream (recitant) live recording for Sony Classical, conducted by Claudio Abbado
• The Diary of Samuel Pepys 1660-1669 (abridged) for Hodder Headline Audio Classics

• Mark White: Kenneth Branagh faber and faber 2005 ISBN 0-571-22068-1
• Theatre Record and its annual Indexes

• Kenneth Branagh at the Internet Movie Database
• The Kenneth Branagh Compendium
• Kenneth Branagh interview from Premiere (1996)
• Information regarding Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet

v • d • e Shakespearean films directed by Kenneth Branagh
Henry V (1989) • Much Ado About Nothing (1993) • Hamlet (1996) • Love's Labour's Lost (2000) • As You Like It (2006)

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