Kenneth Branagh

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

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

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.

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

When you cast someone like Natalie Portman, the character can't just be the love interest.

Being Irish, I always had this love of words.

I did 'Love's Labour's Lost' in the theater and found it to be riotously funny.

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.

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.

Thor' has got several big battles in it, a reckless, headstrong young hero who has to confront his past and deal with a complicated relationship with his father, it has lots of savage Europeans hacking each other to death at various points, and all of this sounded very much like 'Henry V.'

I love thrillers, and I always have.

I think we love the escapism of something like 'Cinderella,' and I think we do with 'Thor.'