1. Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is a British actor and filmmaker.
92 Facts About Kenneth Branagh
1. 2.
Kenneth Branagh's accolades include an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Olivier Award.
3.
Kenneth Branagh was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 2012, and was given Freedom of the City in his native Belfast in 2018.
4.
Kenneth Branagh has directed and starred in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays, including Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Hamlet, and As You Like It.
5.
Kenneth Branagh was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Director for Henry V, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Hamlet.
6.
Kenneth Branagh directed Swan Song, which earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.
7.
Kenneth Branagh directed Peter's Friends, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Thor, and Cinderella.
8.
Kenneth Branagh directed and starred as Hercule Poirot in the eponymous film series.
9.
Kenneth Branagh has acted in Celebrity, Wild Wild West, The Road to El Dorado, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and Valkyrie.
10.
Kenneth Branagh played supporting roles in Christopher Nolan's films Dunkirk, Tenet, and Oppenheimer.
11.
Kenneth Branagh has starred in the BBC1 series Fortunes of War, the Channel 4 series Shackleton, the television film Warm Springs, and the BBC One series Wallander.
12.
Kenneth Branagh received a Primetime Emmy Award and an International Emmy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of SS leader Reinhard Heydrich in the HBO film Conspiracy.
13.
Kenneth Charles Branagh was born in Belfast on 10 December 1960, the son of working-class Protestant parents Frances and William Branagh.
14.
Kenneth Branagh's father was a plumber and joiner who ran a company that specialised in fitting partitions and suspended ceilings.
15.
Kenneth Branagh is the middle of three children, with an older brother and a younger sister, and lived in the Tigers Bay area of Belfast.
16.
In early 1970, at the age of nine, Kenneth Branagh moved with his family to England to escape the Troubles; they settled in Berkshire, where Kenneth Branagh grew up in Reading and attended Whiteknights Primary School and Meadway School in Tilehurst.
17.
At school, Kenneth Branagh learned to speak with an RP accent to avoid bullying.
18.
In 1980, RADA's principal Hugh Cruttwell asked Kenneth Branagh to perform a soliloquy from Hamlet for Queen Elizabeth II during one of her visits to the academy.
19.
Kenneth Branagh achieved early success in his native Northern Ireland for his role as Billy, the title character in the BBC's Play for Today trilogy known as the Billy Plays, written by Graham Reid and set in Belfast.
20.
Kenneth Branagh 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, after leaving RADA.
21.
Kenneth Branagh was part of the new wave of actors to emerge from the academy.
22.
The company's debut season included Public Enemy, a play written by Kenneth Branagh set in his native Belfast.
23.
Kenneth Branagh instead spends most of his time looking for Saxon treasures.
24.
The film is set in a 1920s rural Yorkshire village, where Kenneth Branagh's character meets a character played by Colin Firth, in his first major role.
25.
Kenneth 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 played a repertory season at the Phoenix Theatre in London.
26.
Notable non-Shakespeare films in which Kenneth Branagh has acted in and directed include the neo-noir romantic thriller Dead Again starring Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Andy Garcia, and Derek Jacobi.
27.
Kenneth Branagh is known for his film adaptations of William Shakespeare, beginning with the critically acclaimed Henry V, later followed by Shakespeare's romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing.
28.
Kenneth Branagh has taken a Shakespearean romantic comedy, the sort of thing that usually turns to mush on the screen, and made a movie that is triumphantly romantic, comic and, most surprising of all, emotionally alive.
29.
However, Kenneth Branagh had a commercial misstep with his adaptation of the horror film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
30.
Kenneth Branagh then directed the minor British romantic comedy In the Bleak Midwinter to positive reviews.
31.
Also in 1995, Kenneth Branagh portrayed Iago in Oliver Parker's Othello acting opposite Laurence Fishburne as Othello.
32.
Kenneth Branagh returned to directing, in the acclaimed adaptation of Hamlet.
33.
Kenneth Branagh's version moved me, entertained me and made me feel for the first time at home in that doomed royal court.
34.
Post-Hamlet, Kenneth Branagh took a break from directing choosing to act in films directed by auteur directors.
35.
Kenneth Branagh starred in Robert Altman's legal thriller The Gingerbread Man, Paul Greengrass' dramedy The Theory of Flight and Woody Allen's celebrity satire Celebrity.
36.
Kenneth Branagh narrated the BBC documentaries Walking with Dinosaurs, World War I in Colour, Walking with Beasts and Walking with Monsters, and the BBC miniseries Great Composers.
37.
Kenneth Branagh found commercial and critical failure with Love's Labour's Lost, which paused his directorial career.
38.
Kenneth Branagh earned critical acclaim for his performance as well as the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.
39.
In 2002, Branagh played A O Neville in the drama film Rabbit-Proof Fence and portrayed a humorous role as Professor Gilderoy Lockhart in the film adaptation of JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
40.
Kenneth Branagh portrayed Sir Ernest Shackleton in the Channel 4 television film Shackleton.
41.
That same year Kenneth Branagh starred at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield as Richard III.
42.
Kenneth Branagh directed The Play What I Wrote in England in 2001 and directed a Broadway production in 2003.
43.
The film received 16 Emmy nominations, winning five ; Kenneth Branagh did not win the award for his portrayal.
44.
In 2006, Kenneth Branagh directed the film version of As You Like It starring Romola Garai, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Kevin Kline.
45.
Kenneth Branagh has directed the thriller Sleuth, a remake of the 1972 film starring Jude Law and Michael Caine.
46.
Kenneth Branagh then took the role of Major General Henning von Tresckow in Valkyrie and played the Minister, Dormandy, in the film The Boat That Rocked.
47.
Kenneth Branagh is the star of the English-language Wallander television series, adaptations of Henning Mankell's best-selling Wallander crime novels.
48.
Kenneth Branagh plays the eponymous Inspector Kurt Wallander and serves as the executive producer of the series.
49.
Kenneth Branagh won the award for best actor at the 35th Broadcasting Press Guild Television and Radio Awards.
50.
Kenneth Branagh received his first BAFTA TV on 26 April 2009 for the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series.
51.
From September to November 2008, Kenneth Branagh appeared at Wyndham's Theatre as the title character in the Donmar West End revival of Anton Chekhov's Ivanov in a new version by Tom Stoppard.
52.
Kenneth Branagh's performance was lauded as the "performance of the year" by several critics.
53.
In 2011, Kenneth Branagh directed Thor, a film based on the Marvel superhero.
54.
Kenneth Branagh received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination at the 84th Academy Awards losing to Christopher Plummer for Beginners.
55.
Kenneth Branagh participated in the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony portraying Isambard Kingdom Brunel during the Industrial Revolution segment "Pandemonium" where he performed one of Caliban's speeches from Shakespeare's The Tempest.
56.
Kenneth Branagh repeated his performance and directorial duties opposite Ashford and Kingston when the production moved to New York City's Park Avenue Armory in June 2014.
57.
Kenneth Branagh directed all but The Entertainer, in which he starred.
58.
Kenneth Branagh starred in The Winter's Tale, Harlequinade and The Painkiller.
59.
In 2014 Kenneth Branagh directed and acted in the action thriller Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit starring Chris Pine, Keira Knightley, and Kevin Costner.
60.
Kenneth Branagh started his first collaboration with Christopher Nolan portraying a Royal Navy Commander in the World War II action-thriller Dunkirk, based on the British military evacuation of the French city of Dunkirk in 1940.
61.
Kenneth Branagh starred alongside Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, and Tom Hardy.
62.
That same year Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in a film adaptation of Agatha Christie's detective novel Murder on the Orient Express as Hercule Poirot.
63.
Kenneth Branagh directed the fantasy adventure film Artemis Fowl, which was released on Disney+ in June 2020.
64.
In May 2019, Kenneth Branagh was cast in Christopher Nolan's Tenet in which he portrayed the villain Andrei Sator and was praised for his performance.
65.
Kenneth Branagh acted alongside Robert Pattinson, John David Washington, and Elizabeth Debicki.
66.
In 2021, Kenneth Branagh directed the semi-autobiographical film Belfast starring Jude Hill, Catriona Balfe, Jamie Dornan, Ciaran Hinds, and Judi Dench.
67.
Kenneth Branagh won the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Film.
68.
Kenneth Branagh reprised his role as Hercule Poirot in 2022's Death on the Nile, a sequel to Murder on the Orient Express which he directed.
69.
In March 2021, Kenneth Branagh signed on to direct a biopic of music group the Bee Gees.
70.
In March 2022, it was revealed that Kenneth Branagh left the project due to scheduling conflicts and was replaced by John Carney.
71.
Kenneth Branagh reunited with Christopher Nolan, portraying the Danish physicist Niels Bohr in the war epic Oppenheimer.
72.
That same year Kenneth Branagh returned to the West End stage directing and acting in the title role in a stage adaptation of William Shakespeare's King Lear at the Wyndham's Theatre in London.
73.
Arifa Akbar of The Guardian wrote of the production, "Although Kenneth Branagh delivers his Lear with slick, almost playful efficiency, it is not his towering achievement".
74.
In May 2024, it was announced Kenneth Branagh would write and direct the psychological thriller film The Last Disturbance of Madeline Hynde, starring Jodie Comer; the film is expected to enter production in August 2024.
75.
From 1989 to 1995, Kenneth Branagh was married to English actress Emma Thompson, who appeared with him in Fortunes of War, Look Back in Anger, Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Dead Again, and Peter's Friends.
76.
Kenneth Branagh has said that he became "much more religious" after listening to Laurence Olivier's dramatic reading of the Bible every morning in preparation for his role as Olivier in My Week with Marilyn.
77.
Kenneth Branagh has been nominated for eight Academy Awards and is the first individual to be nominated in seven different categories.
78.
Kenneth Branagh received similar BAFTA Award nominations for his film work, winning one for his direction.
79.
Kenneth Branagh received two other Academy Award nominations for the 1992 film short subject Swan Song and for his work on the screenplay of Hamlet in 1996.
80.
Kenneth Branagh thereby became the first person to have been nominated in seven different categories of the Academy Awards, surpassing Walt Disney, George Clooney, and Alfonso Cuaron, each of whom have received nominations in six categories.
81.
Kenneth Branagh received an honorary Doctorate in Literature from Queen's University of Belfast in 1990.
82.
Kenneth Branagh is a patron for the charity Over The Wall.
83.
Kenneth Branagh has served on the Board of Governors of the British Film Institute.
84.
Kenneth Branagh was the youngest actor to receive the Golden Quill in 2000.
85.
On 10 July 2009, Kenneth Branagh was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the RomaFictionFest.
86.
Kenneth Branagh was listed on the Radio Times's TV 100 power list in 2023.
87.
Kenneth Branagh was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to drama and to the community in Northern Ireland.
88.
Kenneth Branagh received the accolade at Buckingham Palace on 9 November 2012; afterwards, Branagh told a BBC reporter that he felt "humble, elated, and incredibly lucky" to be knighted.
89.
In October 2015, it was announced that Kenneth Branagh would be the new President of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, succeeding the late Richard, Lord Attenborough.
90.
In October 2017, it was announced that Kenneth Branagh would be conferred with the Freedom of the City of Belfast.
91.
Kenneth Branagh was awarded the Freedom of the Town of Stratford-upon-Avon on 22 April 2022.
92.
Kenneth Branagh stepped down as president of RADA in February 2024 and was succeeded by David Harewood.