A biography for Kenneth Branaghhasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“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.”
“I've always loved pure, silly slapstick comedy. It always makes me laugh.”
“When you cast someone like Natalie Portman, the character can't just be the love interest.”
“I did 'Love's Labour's Lost' in the theater and found it to be riotously funny.”
“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.”
“What you want is the opportunity to work and an audience. Prizes after that are just a great big bonus.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I suppose that was my first bit of acting, the acquisition of an English accent. It was really just an attempt to be understood.”
“I remember the first book I bought, when I was about 11... Dad said, 'What have you got that for? What are libraries for?'”
“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.”
“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.”
“I went to Moscow and met some slightly powerful and scary people.”
“It's very strange that the people you love are often the people you're most cruel to.”
“Certainly, I'm excited by epic subjects. It doesn't particularly frighten me.”
“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.”
“In the hands of a great poet, words have ways of affecting us in ways we don't understand.”
“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.”