Kenneth Branagh

Biography

Celebrated as a 'wunderkind' of the British stage and one of his country's leading film figures, Kenneth Branagh has often been referred to (not always complimentarily) as his generation's Laurence Olivier or Orson Welles. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he moved to England with his family at ten and began his love affair with Shakespeare, reading 25-cent paperback volumes of the Bard as an escape from the schoolyard bullies who taunted him for his Irish accent. A standout at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he won the Bancroft Gold Medal for his "Hamlet", Branagh became a familiar face on British TV as star of the acclaimed 1984 BBC trilogy "Too Late to Talk to Billy", "A Matter of Choice for Billy" and "A Coming to Terms for Billy". After making a name for himself on stage in his West End debut, "Another Country" (1982), he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at age 23, opening its 1984 season at Stratford as the youngest "Henry V" in the troupe's history. He also wrote and directed his first play, "Tell Me Honestly" (1985), presented as part of the inaugural season of "Not the RSC".

Deeming the RSC too large and impersonal, Branagh co-founded the Renaissance Theatre Company with David Parfitt (with Prince Charles as a royal patron). Though it disbanded in 1994, Branagh successfully played "Hamlet", staged his original play "Public Enemy" (which nearly bankrupted the company before it began) and mounted an acclaimed interpretation of "King Lear" under its banner all before the age of 30. He continued acting in high quality British TV ventures such as the 1986 small screen version of Henrik Ibsen's "Ghosts" and the BBC's acclaimed seven-part drama "Fortunes of War" (1987), which teamed him for the first time with frequent co-star and future wife Emma Thompson. Finding time for two features, he played a bungling British agent posing as one-half of the archetypal English tourist couple in the weak-scripted "High Season" but fared far better in his first leading role as a homosexual tormented by his World War I experiences in the plush period drama "A Month in the Country" (both 1987).

Branagh gained international recognition and dual Oscar nods as the director and star of the 1989 screen adaptation of "Henry V". Strikingly dark and atmospheric, this pared down film contrasted sharply with the lavishness and optimism of Laurence Olivier's 1945 version, which reflected England's enthusiasm for the war effort. He traveled to the USA to helm his next feature, a contemporary would-be Hitchcockian thriller, "Dead Again" (1991), in which he played a dual role opposite Thompson. Dismissed by many reviewers for its overly complex story and a general emphasis on style over substance, the film was a commercial success, but Branagh did not fall in love with Hollywood on his initial exposure, returning home to make "Peter's Friends" (1992), a fey and overbearing British variation on "The Big Chill" that managed to make the intelligent Thompson appear shrill. That same year, Branagh also directed "Swan Song", an Oscar-nominated short based on a Chekhov short story, starring John Gielgud.

In his autobiography, written at age 28 in part to raise funds for his theater company, Branagh described himself as a "short-assed, fat-faced Irishman." Lacking the matinee idol looks of the young Olivier, his somewhat plebeian features (pug nose, weak chin, and slightly jowly countenance) brought an earthy reality to his roles which did not always enhance the films. For instance, the 1940s segment of "Dead Again" would have benefited from more old-fashioned glamour and star power. In contrast, Branagh vividly recreated "Henry V" for modern audiences. His theater and TV work (i.e., his Jimmy Porter in a telecast of John Osborne's play "Look Back in Anger" airing on Bravo in 1993) has consistently demonstrated that he is just as comfortable with modern types as with classic characters.

Branagh went back to his first love adapting "Much Ado About Nothing" (1993) as a big-screen, all-star romp through Tuscany with Thompson, Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves. As he had for "Henry V", he largely dispensed with the traditional declamatory style in favor of more naturalistic line readings, and the art-house hit enhanced his reputation as a canny popularizer of Shakespeare for modern movie audiences, paving the way for such things as Baz Luhrmann's version of "Romeo and Juliet" in 1996 and "Shakespeare in Love" (1998). He then took on a big budget, special effects, a name producer (Francis Ford Coppola) and a major star (Robert De Niro) in hopes of snaring a potentially wider audience with his "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" (1994), even transforming himself into a long-haired, muscled hunk for his portrayal of Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Critical and popular responses were less than enthusiastic for this somewhat indulgent take on the classic novel.

Returning to Shakespeare, Branagh won critical acclaim for his turn as Iago to Laurence Fishburne's "Othello" (1995) and also won praise for writing and directing "A Midwinter's Tale" (also 1995). Filmed in black and white, the latter followed the travails of a troupe of actors attempting to mount a production of "Hamlet" with generally comic results. Branagh appeared in Al Pacino's documentary drama "Looking for Richard" (1996), about acting Shakespeare, and followed with his own big screen version of "Hamlet" (1996), setting it in the 19th Century and playing the tortured, (and in his interpretation) over-the-top Dane amidst an all-star cast including Charlton Heston, Julie Christie, Kate Winslet, Jack Lemmon, Rosemary Harris, Derek Jacobi and many, many others. For his "Hamlet", the first film to use the complete Shakespearean text, Branagh won his fourth Oscar nomination (Best Adapted Screenplay), but unlike the profitable "Much Ado", the four-hour film failed to make back even half of its investment.

Branagh collaborated with director Robert Altman, working from an original screenplay by John Grisham on "The Gingerbread Man" (1998), and though its January release was a box-office kiss of death, critics marveled at his dead-on Savannah accent and convincing portrayal of a lawyer who gets in hot water when he tries to protect a woman (Embeth Davidtz) he has just met. He then signed on with another legend and gave a performance that brought to mind the stuttering, neurotic persona of Woody Allen in Allen's "Celebrity" (also 1998). Unfortunately, most people felt him hopelessly miscast as the messed-up New York magazine writer and that Allen was simply coasting, recycling ideas about infidelity dating back to his 70s pictures. That year also saw Branagh in "Theory of Flight", acting opposite his then-love Helena Bonham Carter. Its story of the uneasy friendship between a con man trying to construct his own backyard airplane and a motor-neuron disease sufferer who wants to lose her virginity before she dies resolves itself in a funny, touching way, with the airplane serving as a metaphor for escape from earthly afflictions.

Taking a ride on the Hollywood merry-go-round, Branagh embarked on his biggest picture yet, portraying the villainous, legless Dr. Arliss Loveless, nemesis to Will Smith's James West and Kevin Kline's Artemus Gordon in "Wild Wild West" (1999). Despite the gargantuan investment, the flick turned out to be an embarrassment, all concept, no content (and definitely no laughs). He reteamed with Kline, though, to provide the voices for the leading characters in the animated film "The Road to El Dorado" and then contributed his distinctive vocals as the narrator of the Oscar-nominated animated short "The Periwig-Maker" (both 2000),

In 1998, Branagh had announced plans to film three Shakespeare adaptations under the new banner of the Shakespeare Film Company, established in partnership with Intermedia and Miramax. He delivered the first of these in 2000, recasting "Love's Labour's Lost" as a breezy, 93-minute Hollywood musical, taking out some of the more impenetrable verse and substituting classic songs by George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. While he clearly had not lost his touch for making Shakespeare accessible and whetted appetites for his "Macbeth" and "As You Like It", the dismal box-office returns made it unlikely that the other proposed films would appear.

Instead, Branagh tackled a variety of acting roles. He was well-cast as a quick-tempered, chain-smoking playwright in the comedy "How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog" (screened at Toronto in 2000) and offered a neat cameo as an English bureaucrat in the based-on-fact "Rabbit Proof Fence" (2001), about three Aboriginal girls who walked to freedom in 1930s Australia. On the small screen, Branagh was mesmerizing in an Emmy-winning performance as Reinhard Heydrich, the man who led the notorious Wannsee Conference in the HBO original "Conspiracy" (2001), a role which earned him an Emmy for outstanding performance by an actor in a miniseries. He portrayed British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton in a Channel 4/A&E jointly produced miniseries "Shackleton." (2002), another part for which he won much critical praise . Branagh next stepped into the fantasy realm as the vainglorious Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor Gilderoy Lockhart in the much anticipated family feature "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (2002). Branagh next made for a convincing Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the HBO telepic "Warm Springs" (2005), which chronicled the U.S. president's life from his diagnosis with polio at age 39 through his fruitless quest for a miracle cure before pursing the high office. His compelling performance earned the actor an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie.