Best Known As: Film Actor,  Television Actor

Gist:  Kenneth Charles Branagh (born 10 December 1960) is a Northern Irish actor and film director.

Life Facts:  Branagh, the second of three children, was born and raised in Belfast to working-class Protestant parents Frances (née Harper) and William Branagh, a plumber and carpenter who ran a company that specialised in fitting partitions and suspended ceilings. He was educated at Grove Primary School. At the age of nine, he relocated with his family to Reading, Berkshire to escape "the Troubles". At school, he affected an English accent to avoid bullying. On his identity today he has said, "I feel Irish. I don't think you can take Belfast out of the boy," and he attributes his "love of words" to his Irishness.

Branagh has also been involved in several made-for-TV films. Among his most acclaimed portrayals is that of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the film Warm Springs (2005), for which he received an Emmy Award nomination. Though the film received 16 Emmy nominations, winning five (including Best Made-For-Television Film), Branagh did not win the award for his portrayal. He did though, receive an Emmy for his portryal of SS leader Reinhard Heydrich in the TV film Conspiracy (2001), a depiction of the Wannsee Conference, where Nazi officials decided on the Final Solution. In 2002 Branagh starred in the two-part television movie Shackleton, a dramatization of the 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition's battle for survival, for which he was nominated for a BAFTA award and an Emmy. Branagh also narrated the BBC documentaries Walking With Dinosaurs, Walking With Beasts and Walking With Monsters.

Branagh filmed three feature-length adaptations of Henning Mankell's best-selling Wallander crime novels for the BBC in mid-2008. Branagh plays the eponymous Inspector Kurt Wallander and also serves as the executive producer of the series. The three films were broadcast on BBC One in November and December 2008. Branagh won the award for best actor at the 35th Broadcasting Press Guild Television and Radio Awards (2009). It was his first major television award win in the UK. . The highest accolade though was when he received his first BAFTA TV on 26 April 2009 for the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series . For his performance in the episode One Step Behind, he has been nominated in the Outstanding Actor, Miniseries or Movie category of the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards. The role has also gained him a nomination for Best Actor at the 2009 Crime Thriller Awards.

He is set to star as Matthew Shardlake in a BBC commissioned adaptation of C.J. Sansoms' Tudor crime novel 'Dissolution', which is in the final stages of negotiation.

*Shakespeare's Richard III (complete) for Naxos Audiobooks

*In the Ravine & Other Short Stories by Anton Chekhov (unabridged) for Naxos Audiobooks

*Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream (recitant) live recording for Sony Classical, conducted by Claudio Abbado

*The Diary of Samuel Pepys 1660-1669 (abridged) for Hodder Headline Audio Classics

*The Magician's Nephew by C.S Lewis for Harper Books

*Shakespeare's "Sonnet 30" for the 2002 compilation album, When Love Speaks (EMI Classics)

Career Facts:  Branagh has also been involved in several made-for-TV films. Among his most acclaimed portrayals is that of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the film Warm Springs (2005), for which he received an Emmy Award nomination. Though the film received 16 Emmy nominations, winning five (including Best Made-For-Television Film), Branagh did not win the award for his portrayal. He did though, receive an Emmy for his portryal of SS leader Reinhard Heydrich in the TV film Conspiracy (2001), a depiction of the Wannsee Conference, where Nazi officials decided on the Final Solution. In 2002 Branagh starred in the two-part television movie Shackleton, a dramatization of the 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition's battle for survival, for which he was nominated for a BAFTA award and an Emmy. Branagh also narrated the BBC documentaries Walking With Dinosaurs, Walking With Beasts and Walking With Monsters.

Branagh filmed three feature-length adaptations of Henning Mankell's best-selling Wallander crime novels for the BBC in mid-2008. Branagh plays the eponymous Inspector Kurt Wallander and also serves as the executive producer of the series. The three films were broadcast on BBC One in November and December 2008. Branagh won the award for best actor at the 35th Broadcasting Press Guild Television and Radio Awards (2009). It was his first major television award win in the UK. . The highest accolade though was when he received his first BAFTA TV on 26 April 2009 for the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series . For his performance in the episode One Step Behind, he has been nominated in the Outstanding Actor, Miniseries or Movie category of the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards. The role has also gained him a nomination for Best Actor at the 2009 Crime Thriller Awards.

He is set to star as Matthew Shardlake in a BBC commissioned adaptation of C.J. Sansoms' Tudor crime novel 'Dissolution', which is in the final stages of negotiation.