JOIN USA fairy tale with a twist
If any of the Royal Family see the new live action version of Cinderella, they may be surprised to see some similarities between the prince’s palace on screen and their own Buckingham Palace.
Cinderella’s director Kenneth Branagh confesses that when he visited the palace to receive his knighthood in 2012, he studied the decor and passed the ideas on to the film’s Oscar-winning production designer Dante Ferretti. “It was a nice thing to go to the Palace and get to see it. I was able to share some of my research with Dante and we have the wide white corridors that are in Buckingham Palace in our film palace,” he says with a laugh.
Disney’s Studio’s rebooting of the classic fairy tale, last filmed 65 years ago, is yet another change of pace for 54-year-old Branagh, who is one of the few actors to have received five Oscar nominations in five separate categories: Actor (Henry V), Supporting Actor (My Week with Marilyn), Director (Henry V), Adapted Screenplay (Hamlet) and Short Film (Swan Song).
Although he is best known for his Shakespearean work both on stage and in film, he has shown himself to be equally adept at directing thrillers (Dead Again), horror (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein), comedy (Peter’s Friends) and superheroes (Thor).
But a fairy tale? Particularly one that is so well-known? “The tale has been in various cultures for the last two and a half thousand years and is flexible and has had many adaptations,” he agrees. “It was important for us to reinvent Cinderella and make her a more pro-active, more 21st century character.
“For me it’s not a question of better; it’s a question of different. The animated classic from Disney is a quite magical piece of moviemaking but it was made in 1950, and I felt there would be a vast number of people who would never have seen it or seen it in the context of the life we lead and so there would be room for another one.”
The Kenneth Branagh of today is far more easy-going and relaxed than he was when his near-obsessive drive propelled him to virtually non-stop work on the British stage, on television and in films. In the late 1980s and early 90s he and Emma Thompson — or Ken and Em as they were known — were Britain’s premier theatrical couple and he was writing, directing and acting all at the same time, constantly juggling projects.
Together they were a dynamic couple who starred in the television drama Fortunes Of War; appeared on the American stage in King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream; co-starred in the films Dead Again and Peter’s Friends and appeared in Look Back In Anger both on stage and television.
Their joint projects ended abruptly, and he and Thompson divorced in October 1995. Life for the Belfast-born Branagh is lived at a much less-hectic pace nowadays with a lot more humour than in the past. Looking back, if he could give advice to his younger self, he says he would tell him: “Lighten up, just enjoy life, smile more, laugh more and don’t get so worked up about things.”
Raised in a working class home in Belfast, he moved to England with his family when he was 10 and as a teenager began his love affair with the theatre and movies. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at age 23, opening its 1984 season at Stratford as the youngest Henry V in the troupe’s history.
Alternating between Hollywood, the UK and movies, the stage and television, as well as his Shakespearean work, his diverse acting roles have included the British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton; the vainglorious Professor Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets; Franklin D Roosevelt in Warm Springs, Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger and Laurence Olivier in My Week With Marilyn.
For his Cinderella, Branagh cast 25-year-old Lily James, best known as the trouble-making Lady Rose MacClare in Downton Abbey, who, he says, has both the kindness and courage of the title character. “Her voice is warm and musical and she has a strong sense of humour which is important, plus she’s a beautiful girl. I think that she has a lovely heart and that comes through in her work.”
He cast Ben Chaplin and Haley Atwell as her mother and father, Cate Blanchett as her stepmother, Richard Madden as the Prince and Derek Jacobi, an old friend and colleague, as the King.
For his next project, Kenneth Branagh wants to combine his love for Shakespeare with his newly-found affection for fairy tales. “Until now I hadn’t thought about making a fairy tale as a movie, but now I realise I am being drawn to them. So a Shakespeare play that I have been interested in working on for a long time is The Winter’s Tale which I see very much as a fairy tale. Later on this year we will do The Winter’s Tale on stage in London and in terms of films, it’s always in my thoughts.”