Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is a British actor and filmmaker.
70 Facts About Kenneth Branagh
2.
Kenneth Branagh has won an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Olivier Award.
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Kenneth Branagh was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours.
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Kenneth Branagh was made a Freeman of his native city of Belfast in January 2018.
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Kenneth Branagh has both directed and starred in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays, of which he is a devoted fan, including Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Hamlet, Love's Labour's Lost, and As You Like It.
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Kenneth Branagh was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Director for Henry V and for Best Adapted Screenplay for Hamlet.
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Kenneth Branagh directed Swan Song, which earned an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film nomination.
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Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in Dead Again, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile.
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Kenneth Branagh directed the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Thor as well as the Disney 2015 adaptation of Cinderella.
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Kenneth Branagh starred in the films Celebrity, Wild Wild West, The Road to El Dorado, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Valkyrie, The Boat That Rocked, My Week with Marilyn, Dunkirk, and Tenet.
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Kenneth Branagh has starred in the BBC1 series Fortunes of War, the Channel 4 series Shackleton, and BBC One series Wallander.
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Kenneth Branagh received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie and a International Emmy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of SS leader Reinhard Heydrich in the HBO film Conspiracy.
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Kenneth Branagh received a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award nomination for his role as Franklin D Roosevelt in the HBO film Warm Springs.
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Kenneth Branagh, the middle of three children, was born on 10 December 1960 in Belfast, the son of working-class Protestant parents Frances and William Kenneth Branagh, a plumber and joiner who ran a company that specialised in fitting partitions and suspended ceilings.
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Kenneth Branagh lived in the Tiger's Bay area of the city and was educated at Grove Primary School.
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In 1980, the Principal of RADA, Hugh Cruttwell, asked Kenneth Branagh to perform a soliloquy from Hamlet for Queen Elizabeth II, during one of her visits to the academy.
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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.
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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.
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Kenneth Branagh was part of the 'new wave' of actors to emerge from the Academy.
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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.
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In 2002, Kenneth Branagh starred at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield as Richard III.
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Kenneth Branagh directed The Play What I Wrote in England in 2001 and directed a Broadway production in 2003.
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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.
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Kenneth Branagh's performance was lauded as the "performance of the year" by several critics.
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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.
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Kenneth Branagh directed all but The Entertainer, in which he starred.
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Kenneth Branagh starred in The Winter's Tale, Harlequinade and The Painkiller.
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Kenneth Branagh is known for his film adaptations of William Shakespeare, beginning with Henry V, followed by Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Hamlet, Love's Labour's Lost and As You Like It.
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Notable non-Shakespeare films in which Kenneth Branagh has appeared include Dead Again and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, both of which he directed, Wild Wild West, provided the voice of Miguel, a con artist in the DreamWorks Animation film The Road to El Dorado, Rabbit-Proof Fence and as Major General Henning von Tresckow in Valkyrie.
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Kenneth Branagh starred as Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
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Kenneth Branagh played the Minister, Dormandy, in the film The Boat That Rocked.
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Kenneth Branagh has directed the thriller Sleuth, a remake of the 1972 film.
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At a film promotion for Valkyrie in 2008, Kenneth Branagh confirmed that he would be directing Thor, a film based on the Marvel superhero.
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In 2011, Kenneth Branagh portrayed Laurence Olivier in My Week with Marilyn, which won him a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the 84th Academy Awards.
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Kenneth Branagh played a Royal Navy Commander in Christopher Nolan's 2017 action-thriller Dunkirk, based on the British military evacuation of the French city of Dunkirk in 1940 during World War II.
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Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in a film adaptation of Agatha Christie's detective novel Murder on the Orient Express as Hercule Poirot.
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Kenneth Branagh directed the fantasy adventure film Artemis Fowl, which was released on Disney+ in June 2020.
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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.
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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.
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In March 2021, Kenneth Branagh signed on to direct a biopic of music group the Bee Gees.
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In March 2022, it was revealed that Kenneth Branagh left the project due to scheduling conflicts and was replaced by John Carney.
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Kenneth Branagh has frequently reused actors, including Brian Blessed, Judi Dench, Robin Williams, Derek Jacobi, Nonso Anozie, Nicholas Farrell, Richard Briers, Stellan Skarsgard, Helena Bonham Carter, John Gielgud, Josh Gad, Ian Holm, and Emma Thompson.
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The film received 16 Emmy nominations, winning five ; Kenneth Branagh did not win the award for his portrayal.
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Kenneth Branagh received an Emmy for his portrayal of SS leader Reinhard Heydrich in the TV film Conspiracy, a depiction of the Wannsee Conference, where Nazi officials decided on the Final Solution.
45.
In 2002, Kenneth Branagh starred in the two-part television movie Shackleton, a dramatization of the 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition's battle for survival, for which he was nominated for a BAFTA award and an Emmy.
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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.
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Kenneth Branagh is the star of the English-language Wallander television series, adaptations of Henning Mankell's best-selling Wallander crime novels.
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Kenneth Branagh plays the eponymous Inspector Kurt Wallander and serves as the executive producer of the series.
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Kenneth Branagh won the award for best actor at the 35th Broadcasting Press Guild Television and Radio Awards.
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Kenneth Branagh received his first BAFTA TV on 26 April 2009 for the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series.
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Kenneth Branagh has played the title role in BBC radio broadcasts of Hamlet and Cyrano de Bergerac, and the role of Edmund in King Lear.
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Kenneth Branagh has narrated numerous documentary series, including Cold War, Walking with Dinosaurs, The Ballad of Big Al, Walking with Beasts, Walking with Monsters, and World War 1 in Colour.
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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.
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From 1989 to 1995, Kenneth Branagh was married to actress Emma Thompson.
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Kenneth Branagh has said 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.
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Kenneth Branagh is a fan of English football club Tottenham Hotspur, the Northern Irish football club Linfield, and Scottish football club Rangers.
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Kenneth Branagh has said that he considers himself to be Irish.
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Kenneth Branagh has been nominated for eight Academy Awards and is the first individual to be nominated in seven different categories.
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Kenneth Branagh received similar BAFTA Award nominations for his film work, winning one for his direction.
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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.
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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.
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Kenneth Branagh received an honorary Doctorate in Literature from Queen's University of Belfast in 1990.
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Kenneth Branagh is a patron for the charity Over The Wall.
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Kenneth Branagh was the youngest actor to receive the Golden Quill in 2000.
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On 10 July 2009, Kenneth Branagh was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the RomaFictionFest.
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Kenneth Branagh was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to drama and to the community in Northern Ireland.
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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.
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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.
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In October 2017, it was announced that Kenneth Branagh would be conferred with the Freedom of the City of Belfast.
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Kenneth Branagh was awarded the Freedom of the Town of Stratford-upon-Avon on 22 April 2022.