British actor and director who is often compared with Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier as a towering talent. For his semi-autobiographical comedy-drama Belfast (2021), Branagh was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director and won Best Original Screenplay, making him the first person to be nominated in seven different Academy Awards categories, surpassing Walt Disney, Alfonso Cuarón and George Clooney with six.
The son of a carpenter, Branagh grew up in a large Protestant family in the heart of Belfast, poor and during the time of a troubled Ireland. If there was a shortness of advantages, there was an abundance of love and community spirit. When he was ten, his family moved to London. The boy’s brogue was so thick that he had to repeat everything he said at school, slowly, but his drama teacher encouraged him. As a kid he became hooked on films and TV, and entered the royal Academy of Dramatic Art at 18, in spite of the incomprehension of his family. He was completely stage-struck.
Branagh landed his first professional job in Belfast in November 1981 in Too Late to Talk to Billy. Back among his kin who were eager to see the lad, he found that they had no concept of the life he had chosen and were surprised by his now-British accent. He began to experience the Anglo-Irish sense of “belonging nowhere.” After Billy, Branagh soon began work in another play. On the first day of rehearsals he met his future creative partner, David Parfitt, and soon they began discussions on the idea of a theater company.
Polishing his ability to transform himself into the role he takes, Branagh continued into films and theater. The rave reviews began to roll in, often with amazement at the talent of so youthful a player.
Branagh formed his own Renaissance Theatre Company at 26 to produce Shakespeare; he later directed and starred in his own film version of Shakespeare’s Henry V for which he got an Oscar nomination in 1989. His four-hour Hamlet released in 1996, was hailed as the most faithful film adaptation of the Bard ever released. By 1998, he had directed eight films including three adaptations of Shakespeare. Talented, energetic and determined, he is said to stop at nothing to further his ambitions.
Branagh has narrated numerous documentary series, including Cold War (1998), Walking with Dinosaurs (1999), The Ballad of Big Al (2001), Walking with Beasts (2001), Walking with Monsters (2005), and World War 1 in Colour (2005).
In 1989, he married actress Emma Thompson after being a couple for seven years; they have no kids. He wrote his autobiography young, at 28, Beginnings, an entertaining and readable book. Branagh and Thompson began moving apart in 1993 and officially announced their separation on 30 September 1995. Helena Bonham Carter became his companion at that time, and his co-star in The Theory of Flight in 1998, separating in October 1999.
Sometime on the weekend of 24 May 2003, Irish actor Kenneth Branagh so secretly wed Lindsay Brunnock, whom he met two years ago, that he did not reveal the date even after the wedding. This was his second marriage; he was divorced from actress Emma Thompson in 1996.
Link to Wikipedia biography