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Kenneth Branagh [1960-0] Irish

Rank: 101
Actor

Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor, director, producer, and screenwriter originally from Belfast who was raised in England. Branagh trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

Chance, Courage, Experience, Friendship, Humor, Leadership, Life, Saint Patrick's Day, Smile

Quote	Tags	Rank
Lighten up, just enjoy life, smile more, laugh more, and don't get so worked up about things.	Life, Smile	101
Friendship is one of the most tangible things in a world which offers fewer and fewer supports.	Friendship	102
Being Irish, I always had this love of words.	Saint Patrick's Day	103
Many of us live in dysfunctional families, and so even if it's in a fairy tale, or perhaps because it's in a fairy tale, we have a chance to look at that side of our reflected lives differently.	Chance	104
I think that music is crucially important in Shakespeare - and, clearly, was an important part of the Elizabethan theatre. And, it's always been something that was a profound element of the experience of Shakespeare that I have been drawn to - and interpreters have, as well.	Experience	105
So many plays with magic in them that would be a terrific invitation to an imaginative animation team.		106
I don't find myself so exercised by a desperation to be new.		107
I fondly remember good times working on 'Thor.'		108
There is some mysterious thing that goes on whereby, in the process of playing Shakespeare continuously, actors are surprised by the way the language actually acts on them.		109
The best actors, I think, have a childlike quality. They have a sort of an ability to lose themselves. There's still some silliness.		110
One of the things that makes Hamlet unique among Shakespeare's characters is his courage to face up to the darker elements of his personality.	Courage	111
Music and language are a vital element. We, as actors and directors, offer it to people who want to experience it. Sometimes the actual meaning is less important than the words themselves.		112
Sometimes I used to think to myself, 'Have I lost a sense of humor?' but I don't think that I have. I think one can be as snarky and sarcastic as lots of people, but I have never found that it makes me particularly happy.	Humor	113
I think we love the escapism of something like 'Cinderella,' and I think we do with 'Thor.'		114
I've lived a lot of my life in London, so I often feel that I am a Londoner.		115
You go to the airport and look at the bookstand, and you feel the titles are similar, the covers are similar, and you wonder how they can be different.		116
The elasticity of Shakespeare is extraordinary.		117
How many times do you read about 'the Cinderella story,' the story of the underdog, the story of the ordinary human being, often subjected to cruelty and ignorance and neglect, who somehow triumphs?		118
In 'Henry V,' the story of the assumption of true and responsible leadership by Henry I think is hard-won. He has to lose friends; he has to risk his life.	Leadership	119
My definition of success is control.		120
We're self obsessed and mad and stupid - not that other people can't be the same way - but the extremes are kind of honest in some mad way. Anyway, I like them.		121
It's very strange that the people you love are often the people you're most cruel to.		122
If it's good art, it's good.		123
I certainly have been guilty of trying to sweep things under the carpet.		124
Actors are the best and the worst of people. They're like kids. When they're good, they're very very good. When they're bad they're very very naughty.		125
I started being interested in acting when I heard the voices of Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud and Sir Alec Guinness. I've had the great privilege of working with Sir Derek Jacobi and Sir Anthony Hopkins. These are people who inspire the work that I do.		126
It's quite hard for people to just accept that they're very contradictory.		201
If you've done a brilliant version it becomes something else.		202
I only really cast people who are desperate to be in it - who were dying to be in it, whose talent I believed in and were dead ready to do the work that was necessary.		203
I don't know that there is too far, actually. I think there's only too bad. If it's bad you've gone too far.		204
I did not make this a long film for its own sake. I wanted to make an entertaining film and offer it out there for those who want to see it. If word of mouth suggests there is an audience out there, hopefully their cinema will show it.		205
Variety is very, very good. Going from medium to medium, if you get the chance to do it, from theater to television to film, which are all distinctly different, keeps me sharp. What works in one doesn't work in the other, and you have to be looking for the truth of the performance, whatever way that medium might demand.		206
I feel more Irish than English. I feel freer than British, more visceral, with a love of language. Shot through with fire in some way. That's why I resist being appropriated as the current repository of Shakespeare on the planet. That would mean I'm part of the English cultural elite, and I am utterly ill-fitted to be.		207
I'm basically quite a cheerful person.		208
There are some amazing stories from all over this country, where people's work and contribution has been acknowledged. To be part of that is an absolutely fantastic feeling.		209
I think the best actors are the most generous, the kindest, the greatest people and at their worst they are vain, greedy and insecure.		210
The long version of the play is actually an easier version to follow. In all of the cut versions the intense speeches are cut too close together for the audience and the actors.		211
The glory of 70mm is the sharpness of the image it offers.		212
In the hands of a great poet, words have ways of affecting us in ways we don't understand.		213
I think A Midsummer Night's Dream would be terrific because of the transformations that occur. Or The Tempest, things like that. Extraordinary larger than life or supernatural element.		214
I like to cast actors I admire, one's that are talented. Each one will bring something new to the part. This play has been done thousands of times and now certain characters are too familiar.		215
I don't think Hamlet is mad, nor is he predisposed to be a gloomy or tragic figure.		216
I do think that, for instance, we've been very lucky to have theatrical careers and be associated with Shakespeare which sometimes gives you a kind of bogus kudos.		217
I choose to be inspired by things that have been done well in the past. So, I don't worry about being compared, because I think that does paralyze you.		218
I remember the first book I bought, when I was about 11... Dad said, 'What have you got that for? What are libraries for?'		219
My dad, for the first 15 years of my career, on every visit he made to a play or a film set, would find the oldest person on set and say, 'Do you think my son has a future?'		220
The BAFTA is both absolutely fantastic and sort of meaningless at the same time.		221
My parents are the reason I wanted to make Shakespeare available to ordinary people.		222
I did not expect to be allowed to be an actor, to be allowed to eventually direct things.		223
I only got 'War and Peace' on the third attempt.		224
I have a pathetic urge at some stage in my life to be able to pull out my wallet and pull out a little card on which it would say, 'Kenneth Branagh, artistic director.'		225
A brother who is unhappy is a dangerous relative to have.		226
I think that short films often contain an originality, a creative freedom, an energy and an invention that is inspiring and entertaining. I think they are, as Shakespeare put it, a good deed in a naughty world.		301
I'm by no means an opera buff.		302
Mozart had a tremendously fertile and creative ear for a catchy tune.		303
I'm very conscious of the fact the directing career has taken some odd turns. Maybe there's enough bulk where I'm now pigeonholed in the 'eclectic box.'		304
I think in the wake of the domination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, everyone is now looking for a grand plan.		305
I did 'Celebrity' by Woody Allen. I did 'The Gingerbread Man' with Robert Altman. These were big talents.		306
I've always loved the Bond films.		307
In Northern Ireland, I truly, effortlessly, knew who I was. I knew where I belonged. I felt completely and utterly secure.		308
The idea of accumulating ambitions or achievements didn't get much further than wanting to do the next exciting thing. I really haven't set out with any list of achievements.		309
I had a friend who introduced me to a meditation practice which involves a couple of half-hours a day of meditation, where essentially you try to achieve a stillness that allows you to just be there in the moment.		310
I was stuck in a wheelchair playing this deranged villain. I felt this mass amount of rage at being so confined. I thought, 'What can I do that is the direct opposite of this situation?' The only thing I could think of was that I could sing and dance.		311
For a nanosecond in the pre-Internet pre-digital age, I was a hot young actor, in the sense of popular, and then it passed.		312
I'm involved in Northern Ireland Screen and have been for a long time, so I keep my eyes open and ears to the ground.		313
'The Painkiller' is a remarkable play.		314
Sir Derek Jacobi has been an inspiration to so many actors and audiences throughout his brilliant career. To see him in Shakespeare is an event in itself.		315
Probably 90 percent of the stuff I make has inevitably been done before... Whether it's playing Hamlet, which has been on the go for 400 years, or pieces from the cinematic world that also have been essayed before, I feel released by that.		316
I think what you're always looking for as artists is to be honest and to continue to be honestly driven by that which you are passionately engaged with. It should need not be forced.		317
Life is surreal and beautiful.		318
I am a long-time hide-behind-the-sofa-in-the-early-Doctor Who-in-the-1960s fan.		319
I liked the fact that 'My Week With Marilyn' wasn't a biopic.		320
I was studying at the Royal Academy of Arts, and I was playing the role of Dr. Ivan Chebutikin in Chekov's 'Three Sisters.' I was about 50 years too young for the part.		321
I'm always interested in contemporary fiction.		322
I was a big admirer of F.D.R. He saved Britain.		323
What happens is that with difficult processes on a film, they get very intensely compressed because a clock is ticking.		324
Carrying a movie is both a great privilege, it's a great opportunity, but it can be a great pressure, and sometimes that can make people behave very oddly.		325
Do you know what I feel about Dr. Who's? I feel the same way as I do about the Bonds. I love them all. I love them all! I don't have favorites.		326
I would say my voice is actor-neutral.		401
I saw Derek Jacobi play Hamlet when I was 17, and he directed me as Hamlet when I was 27, and I directed him as Claudius in 'Hamlet' when I was 35, and I'm hoping we meet again in some other production of Hamlet before we both toddle off.		402
The records - what little we know about Shakespeare, including the records of the plays in his playhouse - were often the story of how quickly they came off if they didn't work. They had to move on. They were absolutely led by box office.		403
You can't live in nostalgia-land.		404
A creative and artistic home is what I've been looking for in the theatre.		405
I come from the theatre; my bones are in the theatre. It's as natural as breathing to want to be in the theatre.		406
I'm interested in creating new work.		407
I live in the English countryside, so I'm surrounded by magpies.		408
It's funny to be in rooms where you were originally referred to as 'The Shakespeare Guy' and to suddenly be in the position where you're 'The Blockbuster Guy.' That's a pretty unusual turnabout, I must say.		409
I think that Shakespeare himself raided fairy tales and chronicle writers, and he always looked to people who worked in the mythic genres, whether it was folk tales or popular novels.		410
Shakespeare's always on my dance card if it can be.		411
I'm a devotee of Stephen Sondheim. I think he's a genius.		412
What I've found about 'Cinderella' is that what it provokes in an audience is really extraordinary. It appears to be a deceptively simple tale, but I've heard nothing but people drawing all different things out of it.		413
I'm just a normal working class boy from Belfast.		414
I went to a comprehensive school and didn't go to university.		415
'Frankenstein' feels like an ancient tale, the kind of traditional story that appears in many other forms.		416
In the course of my lifetime, that world went from violence to a kind of peace.		417
I've always loved pure, silly slapstick comedy. It always makes me laugh.		418
The Chinese say, 'It's good to live in interesting times.'		419
I suppose, at 50, you value things in a different way. So you value connections, you value your friendships, you value your health, and you are much more aware of time passing.		420
In the case of 'Jack Ryan,' it was a huge collaboration, and I enjoyed it very much, and most of all, I want the audience to enjoy it, too. I want them to feel immersed in this world.		421
A lot of the films I've done have links to other movies that I've directed in the past.		422
I love thrillers, and I always have.		423
I went to Moscow and met some slightly powerful and scary people.		424
I suppose that was my first bit of acting, the acquisition of an English accent. It was really just an attempt to be understood.		425
I am very much looking forward to new adventures - including, I hope, Broadway - sooner rather than later.		426
To look out of a car in Scania, you see a painting on the horizontal - one windmill, one tiny farmhouse, acres of beet or grass.		501
I read the final Wallander novel, 'The Troubled Man,' not long after it was published.		502
There's always something to think about in terms of problems that are dark and important and immediate and scary.		503
I'll tell you what I'm grateful for, and that's the clarity of understanding that the most important things in life are health, family and friends, and the time to spend on them.		504
'Thor' has got several big battles in it, a reckless, headstrong young hero who has to confront his past and deal with a complicated relationship with his father, it has lots of savage Europeans hacking each other to death at various points, and all of this sounded very much like 'Henry V.'		505
I think television goes through phases, like other creative arts, where suddenly a group of people are producing exciting work all at once.		506
Life is about making plans from which you deviate, almost always. If you are lucky, you do come up with a plan.		507
Certainly, I'm excited by epic subjects. It doesn't particularly frighten me.		508
One of the problems with Shakespeare is that you can never give him a ring.		509
Even in the case of a god, audiences - paradoxically - enjoy recognizing the human traits.		510
When you cast someone like Natalie Portman, the character can't just be the love interest.		511
I don't know that the Brits have the monopoly on being organized, but they do have a way of working with which I'm familiar. It's not necessarily the best way, but it's a way.		512
I think I do have a way of predicting - not always accurately - what is a nerve-wracking day for actors, what may be a difficult scene or a difficult moment, how small - and it may be down to one line - a thing maybe that is upsetting or undermining a performance.		513
What you want is the opportunity to work and an audience. Prizes after that are just a great big bonus.		514
Variety is very, very good. Going from medium to medium, if you get the chance to do it, from theater to television to film, which are all distinctly different, keeps me sharp.		515
'Jack Ryan' is a very fast-paced, very contemporary, very action-driven thriller.		516
I did 'Love's Labour's Lost' in the theater and found it to be riotously funny.		517
Shakespeare is rhythmic; he is musical in the sense that he likes poetry, and he's musical because he constantly refers to settings where there's singing and dancing.		518
The director needs to be in command on set because everything crumbles if that's not the case.		519
My experience of great storytelling, working with classics, is just finding a way to present it simply but let the story do its own work, or be an invite to the audience's imagination.		520
I loved 'Kundun.'		521
At the end of every stage performance, the audience all applaud me for doing my job, but I have friends who work in offices who don't get that.		522
For what it's worth, I enjoy 'Dexter,' 'Modern Family,' 'True Blood' and 'Breaking Bad.' I've enjoyed the wonderful 'The Pacific.'		523
In any given project, there are a few moments where there is the usual disappointment, as it were, when you look in the mirror, and you realize you're not 23 and looking like Brad Pitt.		524

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