Top 100 Branagh's Quotes
#1. 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
#2. If you've done a brilliant version it becomes something else.
Kenneth Branagh
#3. 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
#5. 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
#7. 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
#8. I think we love the escapism of something like 'Cinderella,' and I think we do with 'Thor.'
Kenneth Branagh
#9. I've lived a lot of my life in London, so I often feel that I am a Londoner.
Kenneth Branagh
#10. 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
#11. I am a long-time hide-behind-the-sofa-in-the-early-Doctor Who-in-the-1960s fan.
Kenneth Branagh
#12. In the course of my lifetime, that world went from violence to a kind of peace.
Kenneth Branagh
#13. 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
#14. I'm a devotee of Stephen Sondheim. I think he's a genius.
Kenneth Branagh
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. The BAFTA is both absolutely fantastic and sort of meaningless at the same time.
Kenneth Branagh
#18. In Northern Ireland, I truly, effortlessly, knew who I was. I knew where I belonged. I felt completely and utterly secure.
Kenneth Branagh
#19. Don't stand up when you can sit down and don't sit down when you can lie down.
Kenneth Branagh
#20. 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
#21. 'Frankenstein' feels like an ancient tale, the kind of traditional story that appears in many other forms.
Kenneth Branagh
#22. The glory of 70mm is the sharpness of the image it offers.
Kenneth Branagh
#23. 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
#25. 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
#28. Do you know what I feel about Dr. Who's? I feel the same way as I do about the Bonds. I love them all. I love them all! I don't have favorites.
Kenneth Branagh
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. It's quite hard for people to just accept that they're very contradictory.
Kenneth Branagh
#34. The ferocity of passion that is engendered by people when they don't like what you've done is really tremendous. It's intense.
Kenneth Branagh
#35. Actually I think 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' could sit very very perfectly in the middle of a Disney world I think.
Kenneth Branagh
#36. 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
#37. I did 'Love's Labour's Lost' in the theater and found it to be riotously funny.
Kenneth Branagh
#38. 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
#39. It doesn't mean old or younger. I've learned a lot from people much younger than me as well as people much older than me. So I think it's about honesty and generosity.
Kenneth Branagh
#40. 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
#41. 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.
Kenneth Branagh
#42. Carrying a movie is both a great privilege, it's a great opportunity, but it can be a great pressure, and sometimes that can make people behave very oddly.
Kenneth Branagh
#43. It's funny to be in rooms where you were originally referred to as 'The Shakespeare Guy' and to suddenly be in the position where you're 'The Blockbuster Guy.' That's a pretty unusual turnabout, I must say.
Kenneth Branagh
#44. If you've been to Moscow, it's a really exciting and great city, but it still feels like you should be a little careful about which way you're going to step.
Kenneth Branagh
#45. Sometimes it comes out in what I call tricksy behavior. That's not always easy to deal with, but it's fascinating. The key thing is to make sure that somebody's tricks don't trip up somebody else.
Kenneth Branagh
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. For what it's worth, I enjoy 'Dexter,' 'Modern Family,' 'True Blood' and 'Breaking Bad.' I've enjoyed the wonderful 'The Pacific.'
Kenneth Branagh
#49. There's always something to think about in terms of problems that are dark and important and immediate and scary.
Kenneth Branagh
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#58. I think in the wake of the domination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, everyone is now looking for a grand plan.
Kenneth Branagh
#59. 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
#60. What happens is that with difficult processes on a film, they get very intensely compressed because a clock is ticking.
Kenneth Branagh
#61. It's very strange that the people you love are often the people you're most cruel to.
Kenneth Branagh
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. I live in the English countryside, so I'm surrounded by magpies.
Kenneth Branagh
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. Lighten up, just enjoy life, smile more, laugh more, and don't get so worked up about things.
Kenneth Branagh
#69. '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
#70. 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
#71. A creative and artistic home is what I've been looking for in the theatre.
Kenneth Branagh
#72. 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
#73. I liked the fact that 'My Week With Marilyn' wasn't a biopic.
Kenneth Branagh
#75. Even in the case of a god, audiences - paradoxically - enjoy recognizing the human traits.
Kenneth Branagh
#77. A brother who is unhappy is a dangerous relative to have.
Kenneth Branagh
#78. I don't find myself so exercised by a desperation to be new.
Kenneth Branagh
#81. 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
#82. The director needs to be in command on set because everything crumbles if that's not the case.
Kenneth Branagh
#83. I went to a comprehensive school and didn't go to university.
Kenneth Branagh
#84. I read the final Wallander novel, 'The Troubled Man,' not long after it was published.
Kenneth Branagh
#86. 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
#87. 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
#88. I did 'Celebrity' by Woody Allen. I did 'The Gingerbread Man' with Robert Altman. These were big talents.
Kenneth Branagh
#89. Friendship is one of the most tangible things in a world which offers fewer and fewer supports.
Kenneth Branagh
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. The Chinese say, 'It's good to live in interesting times.'
Kenneth Branagh
#95. 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
#96. 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
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. Doing Shakespeare on stage with Kenneth Branagh, I don't think it gets better than that.
Richard Madden
#100. 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
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