Kenneth Branagh
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| Kenneth Branagh | |||||||||||
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| Born | Kenneth Charles Branagh December 10, 1960 Belfast, Northern Ireland |
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| Spouse(s) | Lindsey Brunnock (2003-present) Emma Thompson (1989-1995) |
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Kenneth Charles Branagh (born December 10, 1960) is an Emmy Award-winning, Academy Award-nominated Northern Irish actor and film director.
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[edit] Personal life
Branagh, second of three children, was born in Belfast to working-class Protestant parents Frances (née Harper) and William Branagh, who was a plumber and carpenter, and ran a company that specialised in fitting partitions and suspended ceilings.[1][2] He was educated at Grove Primary School.[3] At the age of nine, he relocated with his family to Reading in England to escape "the Troubles".[4][5]
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.[6]
He speaks Italian and is a lifelong supporter of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.[7] He was married to Emma Thompson from August 20, 1989 until 1995. For several years after divorcing Thompson he was in a well-publicized 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,[8] to whom he was introduced by Bonham Carter in 1997.[9]
[edit] Career
[edit] Stage work
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[10] 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 essayed 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."[11]
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 directed The Play What I Wrote in England in 2001[12] and directed a Broadway production in 2003.[13][14]
[edit] Film work
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.
Notable non-Shakespeare films that Branagh has appeared in include Dead Again and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, both of which he also directed, Wild Wild West, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and the yet-to-be-released Valkyrie, about the 1944 attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler.
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.
In 1990, at age 30, Branagh authored an autobiography, which he entitled Beginning,[15] and has narrated several audio books such as The Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis.[16]
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 has begun filming three films based on Henning Mankell's best-selling Wallander crime novels for the BBC. Branagh will also serve as the executive producer of Wallander. The three 90-minute crime dramas are to be filmed this summer on location in Ystad in southern Sweden, home of fictional detective Kurt Wallander. Mankell's series of books on the life of the enigmatic police inspector have achieved great international success, selling 25 million copies worldwide.[17]
[edit] Filmography
[edit] Actor
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[edit] Director
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[edit] Narrator
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[edit] Discography and audiobooks
- 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
- The Magician's Nephew by C.S Lewis for Harper Books
[edit] Further reading
- Mark White: Kenneth Branagh faber and faber 2005 ISBN 0-571-22068-1
- Theatre Record and its annual Indexes
[edit] References
- ^ Kenneth Branagh Biography
- ^ Kenneth Branagh Biography (1960-)
- ^ White, p.2
- ^ The Kenneth Branagh Compendium: Conspiracy
- ^ White p.3
- ^ Over The Wall official website
- ^ Kenneth Branagh on Tottenham Hotspur. Guardian Unlimited (May 23, 2000). Retrieved on 2007-01-11.
- ^ White p.271
- ^ Kenneth Branagh Biography. Tiscali UK. Retrieved on 2007-01-17.
- ^ White p.17
- ^ Quoted in The London Stage in the 20th Century by Robert Tanitch, Haus (2007)
- ^ Branagh ready for the next stage - Telegraph
- ^ The Play What I Wrote, a CurtainUp London and New York review
- ^ Talkin' Broadway Review: The Play What I Wrote
- ^ Branagh, Kenneth (1990). Beginning. New York: W W Norton & Co Inc. ISBN 0393028623.
- ^ Kenneth Branagh Book Search. AddALL.com. Retrieved on 2007-01-15.
- ^ BBC - Press Office - Kenneth Branagh stars in Wallander for BBC One
[edit] External links
- Kenneth Branagh at the Internet Movie Database
- Biography
- The Kenneth Branagh Compendium
- Kenneth Branagh interview from Premiere (1996)
- Information regarding Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet
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