Top 164 Quotes & Sayings by Kenneth Branagh

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Irish actor Kenneth Branagh.

Last updated on December 23, 2024.

Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is a British actor and filmmaker. Branagh trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and has served as its president since 2015. He has won an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, and a Golden Globe Award. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours and knighted on 9 November 2012. He was made a Freeman of his native city of Belfast in January 2018. In 2020, he was listed at number 20 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.

Irish - Actor | Born: December 10, 1960

Source: Wikipedia

The BAFTA is both absolutely fantastic and sort of meaningless at the same time.

Kenneth Branagh

We're self obsessed and mad and stupid - not that other people can't be the same way - but the extremes are kind of honest in some mad way. Anyway, I like them.

Kenneth Branagh

Friendship is one of the most tangible things in a world which offers fewer and fewer supports.

Kenneth Branagh

It's very strange that the people you love are often the people you're most cruel to.

Kenneth Branagh

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

Kenneth Branagh

I think that short films often contain an originality, a creative freedom, an energy and an invention that is inspiring and entertaining. I think they are, as Shakespeare put it, a good deed in a naughty world.

Kenneth Branagh

Sometimes I used to think to myself, 'Have I lost a sense of humor?' but I don't think that I have. I think one can be as snarky and sarcastic as lots of people, but I have never found that it makes me particularly happy.

Kenneth Branagh

My experience of great storytelling, working with classics, is just finding a way to present it simply but let the story do its own work, or be an invite to the audience's imagination.

Kenneth Branagh

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

Kenneth Branagh

The long version of the play is actually an easier version to follow. In all of the cut versions the intense speeches are cut too close together for the audience and the actors.

Kenneth Branagh

My parents are the reason I wanted to make Shakespeare available to ordinary people.

Kenneth Branagh

How many times do you read about 'the Cinderella story,' the story of the underdog, the story of the ordinary human being, often subjected to cruelty and ignorance and neglect, who somehow triumphs?

Kenneth Branagh

I went to a comprehensive school and didn't go to university.

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

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

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 got 'War and Peace' on the third attempt.

Kenneth Branagh

There is some mysterious thing that goes on whereby, in the process of playing Shakespeare continuously, actors are surprised by the way the language actually acts on them.

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 come from the theatre; my bones are in the theatre. It's as natural as breathing to want to be in the theatre.

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.

Kenneth Branagh

There are some amazing stories from all over this country, where people's work and contribution has been acknowledged. To be part of that is an absolutely fantastic feeling.

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

Being Irish, I always had this love of words.

Kenneth Branagh

I fondly remember good times working on 'Thor.'

Kenneth Branagh

I am very much looking forward to new adventures - including, I hope, Broadway - sooner rather than later.

Kenneth Branagh

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.

Kenneth Branagh

Life is about making plans from which you deviate, almost always. If you are lucky, you do come up with a plan.

Kenneth Branagh

I went to Moscow and met some slightly powerful and scary people.

Kenneth Branagh

I'm basically quite a cheerful person.

Kenneth Branagh

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.

Kenneth Branagh

I'm very conscious of the fact the directing career has taken some odd turns. Maybe there's enough bulk where I'm now pigeonholed in the 'eclectic box.'

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

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.

Kenneth Branagh

My definition of success is control.

Kenneth Branagh

I certainly have been guilty of trying to sweep things under the carpet.

Kenneth Branagh

'Jack Ryan' is a very fast-paced, very contemporary, very action-driven thriller.

Kenneth Branagh

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.

Kenneth Branagh

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

Kenneth Branagh

The Chinese say, 'It's good to live in interesting times.'

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

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 did not make this a long film for its own sake. I wanted to make an entertaining film and offer it out there for those who want to see it. If word of mouth suggests there is an audience out there, hopefully their cinema will show it.

Kenneth Branagh

I'm just a normal working class boy from Belfast.

Kenneth Branagh

I'll tell you what I'm grateful for, and that's the clarity of understanding that the most important things in life are health, family and friends, and the time to spend on them.

Kenneth Branagh

'Thor' has got several big battles in it, a reckless, headstrong young hero who has to confront his past and deal with a complicated relationship with his father, it has lots of savage Europeans hacking each other to death at various points, and all of this sounded very much like 'Henry V.'

Kenneth Branagh

The elasticity of Shakespeare is extraordinary.

Kenneth Branagh

I think the best actors are the most generous, the kindest, the greatest people and at their worst they are vain, greedy and insecure.

Kenneth Branagh

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

Kenneth Branagh

I was stuck in a wheelchair playing this deranged villain. I felt this mass amount of rage at being so confined. I thought, 'What can I do that is the direct opposite of this situation?' The only thing I could think of was that I could sing and dance.

Kenneth Branagh

If it's good art, it's good.

Kenneth Branagh

The glory of 70mm is the sharpness of the image it offers.

Kenneth Branagh

I don't find myself so exercised by a desperation to be new.

Kenneth Branagh

I did 'Celebrity' by Woody Allen. I did 'The Gingerbread Man' with Robert Altman. These were big talents.

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

Lighten up, just enjoy life, smile more, laugh more, and don't get so worked up about things.

Kenneth Branagh

The best actors, I think, have a childlike quality. They have a sort of an ability to lose themselves. There's still some silliness.

Kenneth Branagh

I don't think Hamlet is mad, nor is he predisposed to be a gloomy or tragic figure.

Kenneth Branagh

For what it's worth, I enjoy 'Dexter,' 'Modern Family,' 'True Blood' and 'Breaking Bad.' I've enjoyed the wonderful 'The Pacific.'

Kenneth Branagh

It's quite hard for people to just accept that they're very contradictory.

Kenneth Branagh