Word: branagh
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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HENRY V. Kenneth Branagh, 28, is the Olivier wanna-be of the '80s. In this version, keenly faithful to the famous 1944 film, the actor-director stakes his boldest claim yet to Lord Larry's title. The elite cast -- a veritable Burke's Peerage of British acting -- makes it a royal, enjoyable feast...
...general's gift of being the man you automatically follow," says Richard Briers, who plays Bardolph in the film Henry and will assay King Lear in the Renaissance's tour of the U.S. next year. Branagh needed that royal self-assurance to build a major acting company and mount a large film. He will need more of it to sustain his career at its current velocity. "Quite soon," says Terry Hands, the RSC's artistic director, "Ken must decide whether he will be an admin man or a great actor. If a leading actor is also running the whole show...
...there was more to Branagh than blond ambition. Says Hugh Cruttwell, then RADA's principal: "He had all the talent and initiative you can see in full flood now." Other people soon saw it too. Just out of RADA he won the plum role of Judd, the cynical Marxist student in Another Country -- a performance whose laser intelligence and subversive edge announced an actor at the start of a brilliant career. He would fulfill that promise when the RSC's Adrian Noble cast him as Henry...
Tunnel vision is no problem for Branagh -- but in the service of the play, not the perks. "I'm not interested in being rich and famous," he avers, "in smoking a big cigar and driving a big car. I want to stay human-size, just as I wanted to make Henry V as manlike as possible." He plans to shoot two films in 1991: a Shakespeare comedy, perhaps Much Ado About Nothing, and a modern story set in Chicago. Meanwhile, he may write a novel. And at night he will read himself to sleep with a good book...
...Kenneth Branagh is a British arts whirlwind: acting, writing, directing, managing his own rep company. Now he wants to make Shakespeare meaningful to moviegoers. It could work...