Top 100 Branagh Quotes
#1. I'm no Kenneth Branagh or Ben Stiller. I'm not that single-minded, 'I'm producing it, directing it, and starring in it' kind of person; that's not me.
Tom Hollander
#2. Doing Shakespeare on stage with Kenneth Branagh, I don't think it gets better than that.
Richard Madden
#3. To work with Ken Branagh was amazing; it was always a dream of mine to work with a man as creative and talented as that.
Josh Dallas
#4. He [Kenneth Branagh] is the nicest guy. He is absolutely fantastic. Hes really down to earth, really friendly, and he has a great sense of humor. I really liked working with him. Hes a fantastic actor as well. Theres such a presence about him.
Emma Watson
#5. British people might wonder 'What the hell is Kenneth Branagh doing directing 'Thor?' but the person asking that the most was Kenneth Branagh. I think he was more surprised than anyone else to find himself doing this kind of film.
Tadanobu Asano
#6. It's such a pleasant surprise when you come on set and you find someone in charge like Ken Branagh or James Ivory. You know that you're going to do a day's work and at the end of it, it's going to be good.
Anthony Hopkins
#7. 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
#8. Kenneth Branagh. There was a time in my life when people would tell me constantly that I look like him. I could do a lot worse than that.
Jonathan Dee
#9. I started to watch 'Play for Today' and plays like 'Cathy Come Home,' and Kenneth Branagh's 'Billy' trilogy in the 1980s, which took us into the world of the Belfast family. As a kid in Luton, how was I ever going to know that world otherwise?
Colin Salmon
#10. Acting's incredibly enjoyable, but sometimes it doesn't feel quite enough. I've also written a script about the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine. This will make me sound like a female Kenneth Branagh, but I can't think of anything nicer than directing myself from a script I wrote.
Honeysuckle Weeks
#11. People talk a lot about, 'You're a Disney princess! You're Cinderella!' and this and that. But for me, it's all about the fact that I worked with Cate Blanchett and was directed by Kenneth Branagh. That's the 'Cinderella' story for me.
Lily James
#12. My greatest desire was to be in a sandbox with Kevin Kline or Kenneth Branagh - to be with the people I admired - and I have.
Robert Sean Leonard
#13. To go from Jon Favreau for Iron Man 1 and 2 to Kenneth Branagh for Thor and the very different world of Thor, it's about how to adapt to Coulson in a different setting and a different world while, at the same time, still have him be a part of the same world.
Clark Gregg
#15. Even in the case of a god, audiences - paradoxically - enjoy recognizing the human traits.
Kenneth Branagh
#17. I liked the fact that 'My Week With Marilyn' wasn't a biopic.
Kenneth Branagh
#18. I had a friend who introduced me to a meditation practice which involves a couple of half-hours a day of meditation, where essentially you try to achieve a stillness that allows you to just be there in the moment.
Kenneth Branagh
#19. A creative and artistic home is what I've been looking for in the theatre.
Kenneth Branagh
#20. At the end of every stage performance, the audience all applaud me for doing my job, but I have friends who work in offices who don't get that.
Kenneth Branagh
#21. '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
#22. Lighten up, just enjoy life, smile more, laugh more, and don't get so worked up about things.
Kenneth Branagh
#23. Even if people are all from the same place, there can be very, very different approaches. It's one of the things I'm fascinated by. It's why I like directing. I like to see how different people approach trying to be truthful, on camera or in the theater, and whether you can make them match up.
Kenneth Branagh
#24. When I'm acting, I'm in the director's hands. I'm very happy to be. I like to be focused on what I'm doing.
Kenneth Branagh
#25. I think television goes through phases, like other creative arts, where suddenly a group of people are producing exciting work all at once.
Kenneth Branagh
#26. You go to the airport and look at the bookstand, and you feel the titles are similar, the covers are similar, and you wonder how they can be different.
Kenneth Branagh
#27. I was studying at the Royal Academy of Arts, and I was playing the role of Dr. Ivan Chebutikin in Chekov's 'Three Sisters.' I was about 50 years too young for the part.
Kenneth Branagh
#28. It's very strange that the people you love are often the people you're most cruel to.
Kenneth Branagh
#29. What happens is that with difficult processes on a film, they get very intensely compressed because a clock is ticking.
Kenneth Branagh
#30. 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
#31. I think in the wake of the domination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, everyone is now looking for a grand plan.
Kenneth Branagh
#33. 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
#34. 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
#36. 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
#37. I live in the English countryside, so I'm surrounded by magpies.
Kenneth Branagh
#38. 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
#39. Probably 90 percent of the stuff I make has inevitably been done before ... Whether it's playing Hamlet, which has been on the go for 400 years, or pieces from the cinematic world that also have been essayed before, I feel released by that.
Kenneth Branagh
#40. Sir Derek Jacobi has been an inspiration to so many actors and audiences throughout his brilliant career. To see him in Shakespeare is an event in itself.
Kenneth Branagh
#41. Helena Bonham-Carter and I sat down to talk about [Cinderella movie] and she said, 'I really want to do it but only one thing I insist on and that's wings.' She had to have wings and [costume designer] Sandy Powell didn't want wings to begin with but had to be talked around, but that was fun.
Kenneth Branagh
#42. The Chinese say, 'It's good to live in interesting times.'
Kenneth Branagh
#43. 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
#44. It's no accident that Cinderella has been in the culture for thousands of years, and in cross cultures. I've traveled a bit recently, and in Russia, they completely believe they own this tale. And in Italy, they feel it absolutely is part of who they are. There is a timeless web to it.
Kenneth Branagh
#45. Shakespeare is rhythmic; he is musical in the sense that he likes poetry, and he's musical because he constantly refers to settings where there's singing and dancing.
Kenneth Branagh
#46. 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
#47. A brother who is unhappy is a dangerous relative to have.
Kenneth Branagh
#48. I did 'Celebrity' by Woody Allen. I did 'The Gingerbread Man' with Robert Altman. These were big talents.
Kenneth Branagh
#49. Even when a film is finished, when I direct a film, sometimes it's a dark profession, but it requires a peculiar form of courage that I admire.
Kenneth Branagh
#50. In any given project, there are a few moments where there is the usual disappointment, as it were, when you look in the mirror, and you realize you're not 23 and looking like Brad Pitt.
Kenneth Branagh
#52. I read the final Wallander novel, 'The Troubled Man,' not long after it was published.
Kenneth Branagh
#53. I went to a comprehensive school and didn't go to university.
Kenneth Branagh
#54. The director needs to be in command on set because everything crumbles if that's not the case.
Kenneth Branagh
#55. In the case of 'Jack Ryan,' it was a huge collaboration, and I enjoyed it very much, and most of all, I want the audience to enjoy it, too. I want them to feel immersed in this world.
Kenneth Branagh
#58. I don't find myself so exercised by a desperation to be new.
Kenneth Branagh
#59. Friendship is one of the most tangible things in a world which offers fewer and fewer supports.
Kenneth Branagh
#60. 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
#63. 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
#64. The glory of 70mm is the sharpness of the image it offers.
Kenneth Branagh
#65. 'Frankenstein' feels like an ancient tale, the kind of traditional story that appears in many other forms.
Kenneth Branagh
#66. For all the cynicism that the world contains, people are a little more open to those things that maybe are to do with returning you to some kind of simpler, happier state.
Kenneth Branagh
#67. Don't stand up when you can sit down and don't sit down when you can lie down.
Kenneth Branagh
#68. In Northern Ireland, I truly, effortlessly, knew who I was. I knew where I belonged. I felt completely and utterly secure.
Kenneth Branagh
#69. The BAFTA is both absolutely fantastic and sort of meaningless at the same time.
Kenneth Branagh
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. I'm a devotee of Stephen Sondheim. I think he's a genius.
Kenneth Branagh
#73. 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.
Kenneth Branagh
#74. In the course of my lifetime, that world went from violence to a kind of peace.
Kenneth Branagh
#75. I am a long-time hide-behind-the-sofa-in-the-early-Doctor Who-in-the-1960s fan.
Kenneth Branagh
#76. 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
#77. I've lived a lot of my life in London, so I often feel that I am a Londoner.
Kenneth Branagh
#78. I think we love the escapism of something like 'Cinderella,' and I think we do with 'Thor.'
Kenneth Branagh
#79. 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
#81. Hamlet and Victor Frankenstein are each obsessed with death. Hamlet's whole story is a philosophical preparation for death; Victor's is an intellectual refusal to accept it.
Kenneth Branagh
#83. If you've done a brilliant version it becomes something else.
Kenneth Branagh
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. There's always something to think about in terms of problems that are dark and important and immediate and scary.
Kenneth Branagh
#88. For what it's worth, I enjoy 'Dexter,' 'Modern Family,' 'True Blood' and 'Breaking Bad.' I've enjoyed the wonderful 'The Pacific.'
Kenneth Branagh
#89. 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
#91. Mozart had a tremendously fertile and creative ear for a catchy tune.
Kenneth Branagh
#92. 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
#93. 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.
Kenneth Branagh
#94. My parents are the reason I wanted to make Shakespeare available to ordinary people.
Kenneth Branagh
#95. What I've found about 'Cinderella' is that what it provokes in an audience is really extraordinary. It appears to be a deceptively simple tale, but I've heard nothing but people drawing all different things out of it.
Kenneth Branagh
#96. I don't know that the Brits have the monopoly on being organized, but they do have a way of working with which I'm familiar. It's not necessarily the best way, but it's a way.
Kenneth Branagh
#97. When you cast someone like Natalie Portman, the character can't just be the love interest.
Kenneth Branagh
#98. I think that Shakespeare himself raided fairy tales and chronicle writers, and he always looked to people who worked in the mythic genres, whether it was folk tales or popular novels.
Kenneth Branagh
#99. As soon as someone I don't respect tells me I can't do something, it just makes me want to do it even more.
Kenneth Branagh
#100. 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
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
