Kenneth Branagh

“One of the problems with Shakespeare is that you can never give him a ring.”

“Even in the case of a god, audiences - paradoxically - enjoy recognizing the human traits.”

“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.”

“I think television goes through phases, like other creative arts, where suddenly a group of people are producing exciting work all at once.”

“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.”

“Being Irish, I always had this love of words.”

“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...”

“The glory of 70mm is the sharpness of the image it offers.”

“I've always loved pure, silly slapstick comedy. It always makes me laugh.”

“I'm a devotee of Stephen Sondheim. I think he's a genius.”

“I certainly have been guilty of trying to sweep things under the carpet.”

“I think A Midsummer Night's Dream would be terrific because of the transformations that occur. Or The Tempest, things like that. Extraordinary larger than life or supernatural element.”

“I love thrillers, and I always have.”

“What happens is that with difficult processes on a film, they get very intensely compressed because a clock is ticking.”

“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.”

“I did 'Celebrity' by Woody Allen. I did 'The Gingerbread Man' with Robert Altman. These were big talents.”

“For a nanosecond in the pre-Internet pre-digital age, I was a hot young actor, in the sense of popular, and then it passed.”