Kenneth Branagh’s favourite film performance: “Active, sexy, provocative”
At one point, around the early 1990s, it was decided by many that Kenneth Branagh might well be the best actor in the world. He had just come off the back of Henry V, an adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s best-known works that he had not just written the screenplay for, but played the lead and directed too.
Reaction to his film, the first he had directed in his career, was rapturous. It was nominated for a raft of awards, including three Oscar nominations, with two going to Branagh for ‘Best Actor’ and ‘Best Director’. It won the other, for costume design. It was enough to elevate the Belfast-born Branagh to the very top of his profession, after a decade spent working his way up in the theatre and on screen.
Around this time, there were several emerging British talents, many of whom had come up through the ranks alongside Branagh, including Emma Thompson, who he would later marry, Alan Rickman, Fiona Shaw and Jonathan Pryce. Branagh turned his post-Henry V success into writing and directing a Hollywood thriller, 1991’s Dead Again, starring Thompson and Andy Garcia and Peter’s Friends the following year, a romantic comedy again featuring Thompson.
While another Shakespeare adaptation, Much Ado About Nothing, was a hit in 1993 (despite Keanu Reeves), Branagh then had a major misstep, even with Robert De Niro in his cast, with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1994, which made a small profit but didn’t go down well with critics. He returned to Shakespeare with success, however, in 1996’s Hamlet, before deciding to focus on acting for the next decade or so.
After a relatively quiet period of time, Branagh took charge of several very high-profile Hollywood films with huge budgets, beginning with Marvel’s Thor in 2011. The first film to feature Chris Hemsworth’s hammer-wielding character in the lead role, it was an enormous hit and sparked a franchise that would spawn another three sequels, turning Hemsworth into one of the world’s biggest actors.
Branagh then turned his attention to Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, a CIA thriller starring Chris Pine and Kevin Costner that earned over $100million at the box office but got mixed reviews, probably because of the performance of Kiera Knightley. And then in 2014, Branagh was handed the reins to the live-action version of Disney’s Cinderella.
Again, he fashioned a major hit, with the film starring Lily James and Cate Blanchett bringing in over half a billion dollars in receipts. Branagh had definite ideas on how he wanted to balance the themes of dark and light in the story while still making it accessible to kids, and around the time of release, he spoke to Den of Geek about influences he held, citing one from 50 years beforehand, especially.
He said, “I’ve mentioned this before, but a performance I particularly love in movies is from the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons. It’s Paul Scofield playing Sir Thomas More. I think that’s an active, sexy, proactive presentation of goodness, and crucially of intelligence, thoughtfulness and consideration.”
Scofield was a renowned actor who won the ‘triple crown’ (Oscar, Tony and Emmy) in his long career, and Branagh had cast him as one of the lead roles in Henry V. It was A Man For All Seasons that brought him his Academy Award, and the nuanced performance that Branagh had in mind when making his Disney film.
He added: “I think that Cinderella, subtly, can do this in a way that still maintains a sense of fun, and you could argue a sense of the absurd, that there’s a sweet daftness… but it’s all in the context of being the same person. Not stepping out and winking at the audience.”
It would be his last big-budget film for some time, although he returned to Disney with the disastrous Artemis Fowl in 2020, a book adaptation that was destroyed by Covid and terrible reviews. He bounced back the following year, however, with an Oscar win among three nominations for his film Belfast.
He has also directed a new thriller due to release this year called The Last Disturbance of Madeline Hynde, which stars Jodie Comer and Patricia Arquette.
