Well-known currently active British actors and actresses include: Gemma Arterton, Rowan Atkinson, Christian Bale, Sacha Baron Cohen, Kate Beckinsale, Paul Bettany, Orlando Bloom, Emily Blunt, Helena Bonham Carter, Kenneth Branagh, Jim Broadbent, Daniel Craig, Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, Rupert Everett, Ralph Fiennes, Colin Firth, Michael Gambon, Anthony Hopkins, Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley, Keira Knightley, Hugh Laurie, Jude Law, James McAvoy, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren, Carey Mulligan, Thandie Newton, Bill Nighy, Gary Oldman, Clive Owen, Robert Pattinson, Daniel Radcliffe, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, Alan Rickman, Tim Roth, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jason Statham, Patrick Stewart, Alex Pettyfer, Gerard Butler, Emma Thompson, Emma Watson, Rachel Weisz, Kate Winslet, Tom Hiddleston, Ray Winstone and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

RADA has a number of notable associate members including Jane Asher, Sir Michael Gambon, Robert Bourne, Kenneth Branagh, Jon Cryer, Richard Digby Day, Trevor Eve, Ralph Fiennes, Edward Fox, Iain Glen, Gerald Harper, Sir Ian Holm, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Sir Derek Jacobi, Patricia Kneale, Paul McGann, Dame Helen Mirren, Sir Trevor Nunn, Peter O ' Toole, Dame Diana Rigg, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, Lord Snowdon, Shelley Thompson, Alan Rickman, Timothy Dalton and Sir Roger Moore.

It starred Stephen Fry, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Imelda Staunton, Rita Rudner, Tony Slattery, Phyllida Law, Alex Lowe, and Alphonsia Emmanuel.

Peter's friends are Andrew ( Branagh ), now a writer in Hollywood ; married jingle writers Roger ( Laurie ) and Mary ( Staunton ); glamorous costume designer Sarah ( Emmanuel ); and eccentric Maggie ( Thompson ), who works in publishing.

At the time the film was made, Branagh was married to Thompson, who had also dated Laurie during their university days.

Phyllida Law is Thompson's mother and along with Richard Briers, Imelda Staunton and Alex Lowe appeared with Branagh and Thompson in Branagh's adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing the following year.

It stars Branagh and his then-wife Emma Thompson, and co-stars Andy García, Derek Jacobi, Wayne Knight, and Robin Williams.

In addition to the dual roles played by Branagh and Thompson, actress Jo Anderson and the film's composer Patrick Doyle both play small dual parts, appearing in the present-day and 1940s sequences.

As it happened, her renown and readership developed substantially after her death ; a television serialisation of Fortunes of War starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh finally came to fruition in 1987, bringing her work to a wider audience.

The novels were adapted for television by the BBC and available in the US on Masterpiece Theater in 1987, starring Kenneth Branagh as Guy and Emma Thompson as Harriet.

In 1989, Judi Dench again worked as director for the Renaissance revival of both the theatre and television productions of Look Back in Anger by John Osborne, presented first in Belfast then in London at the Lyric Theatre, starring Branagh as Jimmy Porter and Emma Thompson as Alison.

Adapted scenes in flashback from Henry IV are included in the 1989 film version of Henry V ( 1989 ) with Robbie Coltrane portraying Sir John Falstaff and Kenneth Branagh playing the young Prince Hal.

The released version retains only about a quarter of Shakespeare's lines ; although Branagh managed to include all seventeen of the original speaking roles, some ( most notably among the lower-class characters ) are cut almost to nothing.

Flaws ( most of which are minor ) aside, Love's Labour's Lost is an enjoyable trifle, especially for those who don't take their Shakespeare too seriously and those who love the old Hollywood musicals as much as Branagh obviously does.

Vice presidents are Dame Maggie Smith and Kenneth Branagh.

While it may seem that this is because Branagh is from the United Kingdom ( where cars are driven on the left-hand side of the road ), it is actually because behind him are a number of skyscrapers that he, as the director, wanted included in the background.

The film is narrated by Kenneth Branagh and extracts from Frank's diary are read by Glenn Close.

The centre ’ s other Patrons are the former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion and multi award winning actor Kenneth Branagh.

Branagh was part of the ' new wave ’ of actors to emerge from the Academy.

During this period another ' new wave ' of actors emerges at the Academy, including Jonathan Pryce, Juliet Stevenson, Alan Rickman, Anton Lesser, Kenneth Branagh, Bruce Payne and Fiona Shaw.

In the case of the Kenneth Branagh Hamlet, there were many famous actors playing supporting or bit roles, and these actors were given prominent billing in the posters along with the film's actual stars: Branagh, Derek Jacobi, Julie Christie, and Kate Winslet.

Pacino also features other actors famous for performing Shakespeare, such as Vanessa Redgrave, Kenneth Branagh, John Gielgud, Derek Jacobi, James Earl Jones, and Kevin Kline.

Wallander has been portrayed on screen by the actors Rolf Lassgård, Krister Henriksson and Kenneth Branagh.

With a group of ' angels '— fellow actors, writers and kindred spirits — the newly formed company was able to finance its first full season, including the premiere of Branagh's thriller, Public Enemy, in the Lyric Hammersmith main house, with Branagh in the ' Jimmie Cagney ' style leading role.

Although Renaissance received no public funding, it partnered in 1988 with John Adams and the Birmingham Rep on a touring season of plays launched as Renaissance Shakespeare on the Road, with three classical actors making their directing debuts: Judi Dench with Much Ado About Nothing ; Geraldine McEwan with As You Like It ; and Derek Jacobi with Hamlet, which featured Branagh in the title role.

Known as the Billy Plays, they starred Kenneth Branagh as Billy Martin in his first acting role following his graduation from RADA.

In Spain 1519, two con artists, Tulio ( Kevin Kline ) and Miguel ( Kenneth Branagh ) win a map to the legendary City of Gold, El Dorado, in a rigged gambling match ( though ironically they end up winning the map fairly ).

* Kenneth Branagh as Miguel, one of the con artists who pretend to be gods so they can get gold.

The Renaissance Theatre Company was founded in 1987 by Kenneth Branagh and David Parfitt as a development of the work they had been doing periodically on the London ' Fringe ', producing and appearing in lunchtime shows, leading up to Branagh's full-scale production of Romeo and Juliet, at the Lyric Studio in Hammersmith in August 1986 co-starring Branagh and Samantha Bond.

Online critic James Berardinelli highly praised the film, giving it three-and-a-half out of four stars, stating, " No current film maker appears to love and understand Shakespeare as well as Branagh, and never has his affection for the Bard been more apparent than here.

Other contemporary British film directors include Paul W. S. Anderson, Andrea Arnold, Richard Attenborough, Kenneth Branagh, Danny Boyle, Terence Davies, Mike Figgis, Terry Gilliam, Tom Hooper, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Sam Mendes, Alan Parker, Sally Potter, Lynne Ramsay, Guy Ritchie, Michael Winterbottom, Edgar Wright, Joe Wright and Matthew Vaughn.

Shakespeare experts Sir John Gielgud and Kenneth Branagh consider the definitive rendition of the Bard's tragic tale to be the 1964 Russian film Gamlet () based on a translation by Boris Pasternak and directed by Grigori Kozintsev, with a score by Dmitri Shostakovich.

In contrast to Zeffirelli, whose Hamlet was heavily cut, Kenneth Branagh adapted, directed, and starred in a 1996 version containing every word of Shakespeare's play, combining the material from the F1 and Q2 texts.

Branagh set the film with late 19th-century costuming and furnishings ; and Blenheim Palace, built in the early 18th century, became Elsinore Castle in the external scenes.

* In the commentary for the 2011 film Thor, director Kenneth Branagh hypothesized that Thor's Hammer is composed of neutronium, since it is explicitly stated in the film that the hammer was forged from a dying star.

Olivier both stars and directs, as Kenneth Branagh was to do over forty years later in his successful remake.

The second major film, directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh in 1989, attempts to give a more realistic evocation of the period and lays more emphasis on the horrors of war.

Where Olivier staged the comic scenes as comedy, Branagh played them as serious drama, because he felt the humour was outdated and incomprehensible to modern audiences.

Dench's contribution was a staging of Much Ado About Nothing, set in the Napoleonic era, which starred Kenneth Branagh and Samantha Bond as Benedick and Beatrice.

Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh ( ; born 10 December 1960 ) is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland.

Branagh has been nominated for five Academy Awards, five Golden Globes, and has won an Emmy and three BAFTAs.

Branagh, the middle of three children, was born and brought up in Belfast, the son of working-class Protestant parents Frances ( née Harper ) and William Branagh, a plumber and joiner who ran a company that specialised in fitting partitions and suspended ceilings.

Branagh went on to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Branagh achieved some early measure of success in his native Northern Ireland for his role as the title character in the BBC's Play for Today trilogy known as the Billy Plays ( 1982 – 84 ), written by Graham Reid and set in Belfast.

Branagh became a major presence in the media and on the British stage when Renaissance collaborated with Birmingham Rep for a 1988 touring season of three Shakespeare plays under the umbrella title of Renaissance Shakespeare on the Road, which also played a repertory season at the Phoenix Theatre in London.

Others included Bruce Payne, Juliet Stevenson, Alan Rickman, Anton Lesser, Kenneth Branagh and Fiona Shaw.

On 7 September 2006, Kenneth Branagh announced at the Venice Film Festival his new film of the play, with the screenplay by Nobel laureate Harold Pinter.

In his later years, Gielgud played the Ghost of Hamlet's Father in productions of the play, first to Richard Burton's Melancholy Dane on the Broadway stage which Gielgud directed in 1964, then on television with Richard Chamberlain, and finally in a radio production starring Gielgud's protégé Kenneth Branagh.