Kenneth Branagh Quotes

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Kenneth Branagh

Profession : Actor

Birth : December 10, 1960

So many plays with magic in them that would be a terrific invitation to an imaginative animation team.

Kenneth Branagh

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.

Kenneth Branagh

In the hands of a great poet, words have ways of affecting us in ways we don't understand.

Kenneth Branagh

If you've done a brilliant version it becomes something else.

Kenneth Branagh

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.

Kenneth Branagh

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.

Kenneth Branagh

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.

Kenneth Branagh

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.

Kenneth Branagh

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.

Kenneth Branagh

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.

Kenneth Branagh

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.

Kenneth Branagh

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.

Kenneth Branagh

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.

Kenneth Branagh

I remember the first book I bought, when I was about 11... Dad said, 'What have you got that for? What are libraries for?'

Kenneth Branagh

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?'

Kenneth Branagh

I did not expect to be allowed to be an actor, to be allowed to eventually direct things.

Kenneth Branagh

I only got 'War and Peace' on the third attempt.

Kenneth Branagh

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.'

Kenneth Branagh

A brother who is unhappy is a dangerous relative to have.

Kenneth Branagh

I'm by no means an opera buff.

Kenneth Branagh