KENNETH BRANAGH

'Kenneth Charles Branagh' (born December 10 1960) is an Emmy Award-winning, Academy Award-nominated Northern Irish-born actor and film director.

Contents

Biography

Early life

Career

Personal life

Filmography (actor)

Filmography (director)

Television

Narrator

Discography

References

Sources

External links

Biography

Early life

Branagh was born in Belfast to working-class Protestant parents Frances (Harper), a homemaker, and William Branagh, a carpenter who ran a company that specialised in fitting partitions and suspended ceilings.^[1] He was educated at Grove Primary School ^[2]. At age nine, he relocated with his family to Reading in England to escape the Troubles between Protestants and Catholics.^{[3] [4]}

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''^[5] 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'', ''Othello'', ''Love's Labour's Lost'', ''Hamlet'', with ''As You Like It'' following in 2007.
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—Branagh did not win the award for his nomination. 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, for direction in the 1992 film ''Swan Song'', two for ''Henry V'' (one each for directing and acting), 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 ^[6] , to whom he was introduced by Carter in 1997.^[7]
In 1990, at age 30, Branagh authored an autobiography, which he entitled ''Beginning'',^[8] and has narrated several audio books such as ''The Magician's Nephew'' by C.S. Lewis.^[9]
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.

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.
Branagh is a patron for the charity Over The Wall, www.otw.org.uk
He speaks Italian and is a lifelong supporter of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.^[10]
Both he and two of his ex-partners Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter have had, or currently have, roles in the Harry Potter movie franchise: Branagh as Gilderoy Lockhart, Thompson as Sybill Trelawney, and Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange.

Filmography (actor)

★ ''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)

★ ''Celebrity'' (1998) as Lee Simon

★ ''Wild Wild West'' (1999) as Dr. Arliss Loveless

★ ''The Road to El Dorado'' (2000) (voice)

★ ''Love's Labour's Lost'' (2000) as Berowne

★ ''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

★ ''Five Children and It'' (2004) as Uncle Albert

★ ''Warm Springs'' (2005) as Franklin D. Roosevelt

★ ''Valkyrie'' (2008)

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)

Television

★ ''To the Lighthouse'' (1983)

★ ''Ghosts'' (1986)

★ ''Fortunes of War'' (1987)

★ ''Conspiracy'' (2001) as Reinhard Heydrich

★ ''Shackleton'' (2002) as Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton

★ ''Warm Springs (2005) as Franklin D. Roosevelt

Narrator

★ '' (Six-part TV special) (1996)

★ ''Cold War'' (TV series) (1996)

★ ''Great Composers'' (TV mini-series) (1997)

★
★ ''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)

★ ''Walking with Monsters: Life Before Dinosaurs'' (TV series) (2005)

★
★ ''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)

Discography

★ 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

References

1. http://www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment/film/biographies/kenneth_branagh_biog.html
2. White, p.2
3. http://www.branaghcompendium.com/conspiracy.html
4. White p.3
5. White p.17
6. White p.271
7. Kenneth Branagh Biography
8. Beginning, , Kenneth, Branagh, W W Norton & Co Inc, 1990,
9. Kenneth Branagh Book Search
10. Kenneth Branagh on Tottenham Hotspur

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

★ The Periwig Maker (One-off animation) (2000)

★ Kenneth Branagh interviewed by Ginny Dougary (1992)