Kenneth Branagh Quotes
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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.
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In Northern Ireland, I truly, effortlessly, knew who I was. I knew where I belonged. I felt completely and utterly secure.
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I think that short films often contain an originality, a creative freedom, an energy and an invention that is inspiring and entertaining. I think they are, as Shakespeare put it, a good deed in a naughty world.
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The director needs to be in command on set because everything crumbles if that's not the case.
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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?'
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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.
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In the hands of a great poet, words have ways of affecting us in ways we don't understand.
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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.
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If it's good art, it's good.
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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.
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I think what you're always looking for as artists is to be honest and to continue to be honestly driven by that which you are passionately engaged with. It should need not be forced.
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Sometimes I used to think to myself, 'Have I lost a sense of humor?' but I don't think that I have. I think one can be as snarky and sarcastic as lots of people, but I have never found that it makes me particularly happy.
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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.'
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I think the best actors are the most generous, the kindest, the greatest people and at their worst they are vain, greedy and insecure.
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My parents are the reason I wanted to make Shakespeare available to ordinary people.
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In the course of my lifetime, that world went from violence to a kind of peace.
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A brother who is unhappy is a dangerous relative to have.
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'Jack Ryan' is a very fast-paced, very contemporary, very action-driven thriller.
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I feel more Irish than English. I feel freer than British, more visceral, with a love of language. Shot through with fire in some way. That's why I resist being appropriated as the current repository of Shakespeare on the planet. That would mean I'm part of the English cultural elite, and I am utterly ill-fitted to be.
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A lot of the films I've done have links to other movies that I've directed in the past.
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It's quite hard for people to just accept that they're very contradictory.
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I think we love the escapism of something like 'Cinderella,' and I think we do with 'Thor.'
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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.
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The records - what little we know about Shakespeare, including the records of the plays in his playhouse - were often the story of how quickly they came off if they didn't work. They had to move on. They were absolutely led by box office.