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.

My definition of success is control.

So many plays with magic in them that would be a terrific invitation to an imaginative animation team.

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.

The best actors, I think, have a childlike quality. They have a sort of an ability to lose themselves. There's still some silliness.

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.

It's very strange that the people you love are often the people you're most cruel to.

The elasticity of Shakespeare is extraordinary.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's quite hard for people to just accept that they're very contradictory.

The glory of 70mm is the sharpness of the image it offers.

I don't think Hamlet is mad, nor is he predisposed to be a gloomy or tragic figure.

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.

In the hands of a great poet, words have ways of affecting us in ways we don't understand.

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.

If you've done a brilliant version it becomes something else.

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 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.

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 think the best actors are the most generous, the kindest, the greatest people and at their worst they are vain, greedy and insecure.

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 certainly have been guilty of trying to sweep things under the carpet.

'Frankenstein' feels like an ancient tale, the kind of traditional story that appears in many other forms.

'The Painkiller' is a remarkable play.

A brother who is unhappy is a dangerous relative to have.

A creative and artistic home is what I've been looking for in the theatre.

A lot of the films I've done have links to other movies that I've directed in the past.

Being Irish, I always had this love of words.

Carrying a movie is both a great privilege, it's a great opportunity, but it can be a great pressure, and sometimes that can make people behave very oddly.

Do you know what I feel about Dr. Who's? I feel the same way as I do about the Bonds. I love them all. I love them all! I don't have favorites.

For a nanosecond in the pre-Internet pre-digital age, I was a hot young actor, in the sense of popular, and then it passed.

How many times do you read about 'the Cinderella story,' the story of the underdog, the story of the ordinary human being, often subjected to cruelty and ignorance and neglect, who somehow triumphs?

I am a long-time hide-behind-the-sofa-in-the-early-Doctor Who-in-the-1960s fan.

I choose to be inspired by things that have been done well in the past. So, I don't worry about being compared, because I think that does paralyze you.

I come from the theatre; my bones are in the theatre. It's as natural as breathing to want to be in the theatre.

I did 'Celebrity' by Woody Allen. I did 'The Gingerbread Man' with Robert Altman. These were big talents.

I did not expect to be allowed to be an actor, to be allowed to eventually direct things.

I don't find myself so exercised by a desperation to be new.

I feel more Irish than English. I feel freer than British, more visceral, with a love of language. Shot through with fire in some way. That's why I resist being appropriated as the current repository of Shakespeare on the planet. That would mean I'm part of the English cultural elite, and I am utterly ill-fitted to be.

I fondly remember good times working on 'Thor.'

I had a friend who introduced me to a meditation practice which involves a couple of half-hours a day of meditation, where essentially you try to achieve a stillness that allows you to just be there in the moment.

I have a pathetic urge at some stage in my life to be able to pull out my wallet and pull out a little card on which it would say, 'Kenneth Branagh, artistic director.'

I liked the fact that 'My Week With Marilyn' wasn't a biopic.

I live in the English countryside, so I'm surrounded by magpies.