Variety is very, very good. Going from medium to medium, if you get the chance to do it, from theater to television to film, which are all distinctly different, keeps me sharp. What works in one doesn't work in the other, and you have to be looking for the truth of the performance, whatever way that medium might demand.
— Kenneth Branagh
I did not make this a long film for its own sake. I wanted to make an entertaining film and offer it out there for those who want to see it. If word of mouth suggests there is an audience out there, hopefully their cinema will show it.
I don't think Hamlet is mad, nor is he predisposed to be a gloomy or tragic figure.
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.
In the hands of a great poet, words have ways of affecting us in ways we don't understand.
Music and language are a vital element. We, as actors and directors, offer it to people who want to experience it. Sometimes the actual meaning is less important than the words themselves.
The best actors, I think, have a childlike quality. They have a sort of an ability to lose themselves. There's still some silliness.
The long version of the play is actually an easier version to follow. In all of the cut versions the intense speeches are cut too close together for the audience and the actors.
I think the best actors are the most generous, the kindest, the greatest people and at their worst they are vain, greedy and insecure.
I'll tell you what I'm grateful for, and that's the clarity of understanding that the most important things in life are health, family and friends, and the time to spend on them.
Actors are the best and the worst of people. They're like kids. When they're good, they're very very good. When they're bad they're very very naughty.
I do think that, for instance, we've been very lucky to have theatrical careers and be associated with Shakespeare which sometimes gives you a kind of bogus kudos.
I like to cast actors I admire, one's that are talented. Each one will bring something new to the part. This play has been done thousands of times and now certain characters are too familiar.
If it's good art, it's good.
It's quite hard for people to just accept that they're very contradictory.
One of the things that makes Hamlet unique among Shakespeare's characters is his courage to face up to the darker elements of his personality.
The elasticity of Shakespeare is extraordinary.
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.
My definition of success is control.
I certainly have been guilty of trying to sweep things under the carpet.
I don't know that there is too far, actually. I think there's only too bad. If it's bad you've gone too far.
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.
If you've done a brilliant version it becomes something else.
It's very strange that the people you love are often the people you're most cruel to.
So many plays with magic in them that would be a terrific invitation to an imaginative animation team.
The glory of 70mm is the sharpness of the image it offers.
We're self obsessed and mad and stupid - not that other people can't be the same way - but the extremes are kind of honest in some mad way. Anyway, I like them.
Friendship is one of the most tangible things in a world which offers fewer and fewer supports.
