Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is a Northern Irish actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. He is the son of working class Protestant parents Frances and William Branagh. Branagh trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. In 2015 he succeeded Richard Attenborough as its president.
About Kenneth Branagh in brief
Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is a Northern Irish actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. Branagh trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London; in 2015 he succeeded Richard Attenborough as its president. He has been nominated for five Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards; he has won three BAFTAs and two Emmy Awards. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours and knighted on 9 November 2012. In 2020, he was listed at number 20 on The Irish Times list of Ireland’s greatest film actors. He is the son of working class Protestant parents Frances and William Branagh, a plumber and joiner who ran a company that specialised in fitting partitions and suspended ceilings. At the age of nine, he moved with his family to Reading, Berkshire, England, to escape the Troubles. He received acclaim in the UK for his stage performances, first winning the 1982 SWET Award for Bestcomer, Judd Mitchell’s Another Country, after leaving RADA. In 1984, he appeared in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Henry V, directed by Adrian Noble. In 1989, he co-starred in the full-scale production of Romeo and Juliet at the Lyric Theatre, London. He co-founded the Renaissance Theatre Company in 1987, following success with several productions on the London ‘Fringe’, including Romeo and Romeo. He also directed and starred in the romantic thriller Dead Again, the horror film Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the action thriller Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.
He narrated numerous documentary series, including Cold War, Walking with Dinosaurs, The Ballad of Big Al, Walking with Beasts, Walking With Monsters, and World War 1 in Colour. On his identity today he has said, \”I feel Irish. I don’t think you can take Belfast out of the boy\”, and he attributes his ‘love of words’ to his Irish heritage. In 1980, the Principal of RADA, Hugh Cruttwell, asked Branagh to perform a soliloquy from Hamlet for Queen Elizabeth II, during one of her visits to the academy. He directed such films as Swan Song, which earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Live Action Short Film, The Magic Flute, Sleuth, the Marvel superhero film Thor, and the live-action adaptation of Disney’s Cinderella. He starred as Hercule Poirot in the mystery drama adaptations of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. He won an International Emmy Award for Wallander and a Primetime Emmy Award for Conspiracy, and was nominated for the Academy Award for best supporting actor for My Week with Marilyn. He appeared as SS leader Reinhard Heydrich in Conspiracy, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Warm Springs, as Major General Henning von Tresckow in Valkyrie, The Boat That Rocked, and as Sir Laurence Olivier in My Week With Marilyn, Dunkirk, and Tenet.
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