Kenneth Branagh Biography
Summary
"Kenneth Charles Branagh" (born December 10 1960) is an Emmy Award-winning, Academy Award-nominated Northern Irish actor and film director.
Biography
Early life
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. He was educated at Grove Primary School. At the age of nine, he relocated with his family to Reading in England to escape the Troubles between Protestants and Catholics.
Career
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" series known as the Billy Plays, written by Graham Reid and set in Belfast. He has worked on both stage and screen. He received initial acclaim in the UK for his stage performances, including the title role in "Hamlet". More recently, in 2003, he starred 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 , to whom he was introduced by Bonham Carter in 1997.
In 1990, at age 30, Branagh authored an autobiography, which he entitled "Beginning", and has narrated several audio books such as "The Magician's Nephew" by C.S. Lewis.
In 1994, Branagh declined an appointment as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). 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".
Personal life
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. (... more)
He speaks Italian and is a lifelong supporter of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.
Filmography (actor)
"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
Filmography (director)
"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)
Narrator
"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)
Discography and audiobooks
Shakespeare's "Richard III" (complete) 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
Sources
Mark White: "Kenneth Branagh" faber and faber 2005 ISBN 0-571-22068-1
External links
(The Kenneth Branagh Compendium)
(Kenneth Branagh interview from Premiere) (1996)
(Information regarding Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet)
Credit
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article about Kenneth Branagh.
