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Concerning gossip & rumours I refer you to other Branagh sites.
The facts:
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First: It would get too long
Second: I'm too lazy
Third: I'm afraid I could forget something.
So here's an excerpt of Awards which are well known or at least sound good :o)
It is an affection mixed with admiration, sometimes with awe, and sometimes with a little jealousy and envy at the prodigious range of his talent and his achievement. I delight in his wit and his humour. And I appreciate his wonderful, streetwise self-mocking self-awareness.
About the first time he met Ken
This very personable young man walked in - bursting with self-confidence
Dame Judi Dench
..from the moment I met Ken Branagh I was in deep trouble...
Chooses the play for you
I was doing The Gift of the Gorgon at the Barbican theater and he was doing his Hamlet, which started at six thirty. I had a two-hour drive from home and when I got there there was never a parking place for me because everybody had gone in to see Ken in Hamlet.
However, I have to say that he's among a handful of people that if he were to say will you come and play this part and I didn't even know what the play was I would without reading it say yes, I'll come.
Kenny, Kenny you've gone very, very West End.
Patrick Doyle
He's one of the funniest men I've ever met
He's a great man, a fantastic man
Brian Blessed
Never had The Bard had a finer servant than you
Ben Elton
He simultaneously created and destroyed my acting career with that because it was the first and last part I ever got. The phone's not rung since.
Shakespeare does owe Ken a debt. Ken, in my opinion, has a unique ability to make Shakespeare what he is. What Shakespeare is, a modern writer. Not just in his ideas but in his language - his language remains modern. Ken really brings Shakespeare alive.
Stephen Fry
Being asked to talk about Kenneth Branagh is like being asked to speak about a very talented actor-director, very like. It's, it's so like it, it hurts. Ah, some men are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness faxed through to them. With Ken it's all three and more.
The Branster however is not, as we know, a man. He is what insurance people call, after natural catastrophes, an act of God.
Helena Bonham Carter
Before they split
I am definitely happy and definitely in love. I have had other loves in the past, but this is the most
long-lasting, grown up one.
After they split
...having known Ken quite well I can safely say that he is one of the more extraordinary people of this world
Emma Thompson
I'd like children but Ken is so tired that all his sperm are on crutches . . .
Bob Hoskins
I can't help it, but whenever I think of him my chest goes right out to there and I think to myself, "I'm in the same business as him." And Ken Branagh makes me really proud to be in that business.
Oliver Parker
"ODE TO KEN - and a Great Deal is
Today a man who's worth his weight
in Golden Quills is feted.
The service he has done the state
cannot be overstated.
The truth is Kenneth never cowers,
Though green-eyed rivals stare aghast.
I say amen to that sweet powers,
This Belfast boy was built to last.
A message then I give to Ken,
apart from wish him well.
Is keep your powder dry my friend,
then blow 'em all to hell."
Ian McKellen
I know many of the actors who have worked for him, and all of them without exception are in thrall to his talent, charm and willpower and to the respect he shows them on and off the set.
John Sessions
Until Em came along Ken was the worst dressed man in London. He was seriously out of a chain store . . .
Nicholas de Jongh ("that esteemed theatrical critic", according to Samantha Bond)
Samantha Bond and Branagh may not be the best Romeo and Juliet, but they're certainly the quickest.