Kenneth Branagh
Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh (/ˈbrænə/ BRAN-ə; born 10 December 1960) is a British actor and filmmaker. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Reading, Berkshire, Branagh trained at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and served as its president from 2015 to 2024. His accolades include an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Olivier Award. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours,[1] and was given Freedom of the City in his native Belfast in 2018.[2] In 2020, he was ranked in 20th place on The Irish Times' list of Ireland's greatest film actors.[3]
Kenneth Branagh
He has directed and starred in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays, including Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello (1995), Hamlet (1996), and As You Like It (2006). He was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Director for Henry V, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Hamlet. He directed Swan Song (1992), which earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. He also directed Peter's Friends (1992), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), Thor (2011), and Cinderella (2015). For his semi-autobiographical film Belfast (2021), he was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, and won Best Original Screenplay.
Branagh directed and starred as Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express (2017), Death on the Nile (2022), and A Haunting in Venice (2023). He has also acted in Celebrity (1998), Wild Wild West (1999), The Road to El Dorado (2000), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), and Valkyrie (2008). His portrayal of Laurence Olivier in My Week with Marilyn (2011) earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He played supporting roles in Christopher Nolan's films Dunkirk (2017), Tenet (2020), and Oppenheimer (2023).
Branagh has starred in the BBC1 series Fortunes of War (1987), the Channel 4 series Shackleton (2002), and BBC One series Wallander (2008–2016). He received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie and an International Emmy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of SS leader Reinhard Heydrich in the HBO film Conspiracy (2001). He also received a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award nomination for his role as Franklin D. Roosevelt in the television film Warm Springs (2005).
Early life and education
Kenneth Charles Branagh was born in Belfast on 10 December 1960,[4] the son of working-class Protestant parents Frances (née Harper) and William Branagh. His father was a plumber and joiner who ran a company that specialised in fitting partitions and suspended ceilings.[5][6] He is the middle of three children, with an older brother and a younger sister, and lived in the Tigers Bay area of Belfast. He was educated at Grove Primary School.[7][8] In early 1970, at the age of nine, Branagh moved with his family to England to escape the Troubles; they settled in Berkshire, where Branagh grew up in Reading[9][10] and attended Whiteknights Primary School and Meadway School in Tilehurst.[11][12] He appeared in school productions such as Toad of Toad Hall[13] and Oh, What a Lovely War![14]
At school, Branagh learned to speak with an RP accent to avoid bullying. Discussing his identity, he later said, "I feel Irish. I don't think you can take Belfast out of the boy."[15] He also attributes his "love of words" to his Irish heritage.[16] He attended the amateur Reading Cine & Video Society (now called Reading Film & Video Makers)[17] and was a keen member of Progress Theatre, of which he is now the patron. After disappointing A-level results in English, history, and sociology,[18] he went on to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.[19] In 1980, RADA's principal Hugh Cruttwell asked Branagh to perform a soliloquy from Hamlet for Queen Elizabeth II during one of her visits to the academy.[20]