Oct 23, 2025
The Oscar-winning actor and director will play Prospero in The Tempest for the first time.
The Oscar-winning actor and director will play Prospero in The Tempest for the first time.
Judi Dench and Kenneth Branagh walk SHEEP on leads as they receive Freedom of the Town in Stratford-upon-Avon a day before Shakespeare's birthday celebrations. Source: dailymail.co.uk
I will forever wonder what on Earth compelled the Russo’s, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (the screenwriters), Kevin Feige and Disney to turn Thor’s PTSD into a fucking joke in Endgame. The only director I trust with Thor will always be Ken Branagh.
Henry V costume for Ken Branagh’s 1989 Film . In exhibition at Gainsborough Old Hall
Photos by me July 2018
Tom’s full interview from the tribute to Ken Branagh by British Academy Britannia Awards.
In the nineteen-eighties and nineties, the actor, writer, and director ushered in a Golden Era of Shakespeare plays on film the likes of whi
What really discombobulated me, though, was that Hot Lear does such a bad job with the verse. Branagh’s diction is as precise as ever, but his character’s big speeches are emotional blanks—loud and fast, and seemingly triggered at random. Yet there was a time, not all that long ago, when the name Kenneth Branagh was internationally synonymous with Shakespeare. He once directed and starred in movies—“Henry V,” from 1989, was the first—that heralded a Golden Era of Shakespeare on film.
A new production of the Shakespearean tragedy, starring and co-directed by Branagh, will play 50 performances in New York.
I remember from when we were making a film of Cinderella that structure of a man and his three daughters and the fairytale architecture, which seem to be something Shakespeare heads to in the last part of his career. There's no magic in King Lear—God knows they want it sometimes—but Lear carries this sort of profound connection to the dirty business of being human.
From Daniel Radcliffe to Paul Mescal, a star name will fill theatres. And if most of the audience aren’t there for the acting, that’s not al
Poor Kenneth Branagh. His West End production of King Lear has been savaged by critics – including the Observer’s Susannah Clapp – as an emotionally stilted, insubstantial affair. Branagh is, of course, a trained Shakespearean actor, although he hasn’t performed on stage in eight years. His luxuriant bouffant – making him possibly the most follicularly blessed Lear since Laurence Olivier – is all Hollywood, as is the surprising third-act revelation that this Lear comes with abs.