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Kenneth Branagh
By Mark White
Faber and Faber £17.99
323 pages
Dateline: 6th December, 2005
Kenneth Branagh is an amazing artistic and perhaps human phenomenon.
Still only in his mid-forties, he is fully deserving of a biography
exploring his life to date and, compared with footballers or other sportsmen,
has fitted in so much more that should be of interest to a wide audience.
In part, this is because he was a prodigy who achieved far more by
the time that he was 30 than the average thespian manages in a lifetime.
From a very early stage, he was likened to Lord Olivier as an actor.
Comparisons of this type are rarely helpful and in this case proved
a real millstone for the young pretender. However, Branagh's remarkable
versatility means that in the widest sense he really could eventually
be seen as having taken on the mantle of his illustrious predecessor.
Mark White might seem a strange person be writing a biography of a
latter-day matinee idol. He is an academic who teaches history and has
written four previous books, all of them connected to President Kennedy
and the Cuban missile crisis.
His main credential for writing this unofficial but encouraged biography
is an appreciation of his subject that can border on hero-worship. Indeed,
he describes the actor-director as the greatest Shakespearean of his
age and "would argue that his Henry V and his performance in it
have not been matched.
Despite the evident dangers of drooling excessively, White manages
to write a reasonably balanced book, which does not hide some of Branagh's
less attractive traits and a number of unsuccessful career and life
choices.
Kenneth Branagh was born in Northern Ireland and, as a result of the
Troubles, his family moved to Reading while he was still a child. He
was always driven and there is little doubt, once he set his sights
on becoming an actor, that not only would he get accepted by RADA but
also come out at the other end with a gold medal as the pick of his
year.
Before he even graduated, he was appearing on Shaftesbury Avenue as
one of a talented team of young actors in Julian Mitchell's Another
Country. From there, his star kept ascending for the next decade.
At the RSC, he demanded and was given the role of Henry V and in no
time comparisons with Olivier were flooding out. Soon, he was working
in television and film, had created his Renaissance Theatre Company
and become regarded as the great star of his generation.
His fame was substantially built on his decision, still in his mid-twenties
to take on Henry V on film and to make a major success of it
both as director and actor. This was the start of his mission to bring
Shakespeare to the people, who were surprisingly receptive, particularly
to his charming adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing.
A credible argument is put forward to suggest that commencing with
Henry V, Branagh has heralded the greatest age of Shakespeare
on film that has so far been known, following a long, fallow period
after Roman Polanski's Macbeth.
He was not shy in courting publicity and his marriage to actress Emma
Thompson leads the biographer to describe them as "The Beckham
and Posh Spice of their day". A more accurate comparison might
have been that with his patron and friend, Prince Charles and his troubled
marriage with the late Princess of Wales. From there, Hollywood beckoned,
as he became director and double star, with Miss Thompson also playing
two roles, in Dead Again.
After almost unbounded success, it was perhaps inevitable, knowing
the nature of the British press that this young man would give his biographer
the opportunity to write a painful chapter entitled "Backlash".
While the American press has generally been sympathetic to Branagh,
their British counterparts whether in theatre, on film or in the gossip
columns have loved sniping at the ginger-haired, working-class boy who
attempted to take on the world.
This eventually seems to have got through and pained a man who had
no notion of failure and expected everyone to believe in him. This single-minded
man also deserved his success, partly for his artistic genius but more
for an incredible work ethic and speed of mind, without which he could
never have achieved so much, so soon.
Branagh then faced some commercial and artistic disasters in his thirties,
not all of them media generated, but has seemingly emerged as an older,
wiser and happier man.
In recent years, he has had a number of film successes including Rabbit
Proof Fence and one of the Harry Potter films, worked in theatre,
acting in David Mamet's Edmond at the National Theatre and directing
The Right Size in The Play What I Wrote, which won over both
the West End and Broadway. According to Mark White, he was also seriously
considered for the position of artistic director at the RSC when Adrian
Noble resigned.
It will be fascinating see which way Kenneth Branagh's career develops
over the next couple of decades. His biographer is tipping him as a
potential leader of either the National Theatre or the RSC, citing his
organisational skills combined with the artistic ones that could make
him a major success in either role. There is also a reasonable possibility
that he could go back to Hollywood as director, star or both, or lead
a new renaissance in the British film industry. One thing is certain,
we have not heard the last of this very driven Northern Irishman.
Philip Fisher
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