Kenneth Branagh returns to the Royal Shakespeare Company for the first time in 30 years, playing Prospero in The Tempest (13 May to 20 June 2026) and Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard (10 July – 29 August 2026).
About
Kenneth Branagh is one of the greatest actors of his generation, and is also an award-winning director and writer.
Branagh has won an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Olivier Award.
In 2015 he formed The Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company to create a season of plays at the Garrick Theatre in which he would act and direct. He most recently appeared on stage in London’s West End in the title role of King Lear at the Wyndham’s Theatre.
Branagh, who is President of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduated from RADA alongside other notable actors including Jonathan Pryce, Juliet Stevenson, Alan Rickman, Anton Lesser, Bruce Payne and Fiona Shaw and was considered part of a new breed of actors.
Theatre credits
Branagh’s stage acting credits include: King Lear (Wyndham’s Theatre), The Winter’s Tale, Harlequinade /All On Her Own, The Painkiller and The Entertainer (Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company at the Garrick Theatre), Another Country, Henry V, Golden Girls, three productions of Hamlet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Romeo and Juliet (also directed), Public Enemy, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Look Back in Anger, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (also directed), King Lear (also directed), Coriolanus, Richard III, Edmond, Ivanov, The Painkiller and Macbeth (also co-directed). The plays he has also directed include John Sessions’ The Life of Napoleon and Napoleon, The American Story, Twelfth Night, Uncle Vanya, The Play What I Wrote, and Ducktastic.
Film credits
Branagh’s film credits include: Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, Tenet, All is True, Avengers: Infinity War, Dunkirk, Henry V, Dead Again, Peter’s Friends, Much Ado About Nothing, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, In the Bleak Midwinter, Othello, Hamlet, The Gingerbread Man, Theory of Flight, Celebrity, Wild Wild West, El Dorado, Love’s Labour’s Lost, How to Kill Your Neighbour’s Dog, Rabbit Proof Fence, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, As You Like It, The Magic Flute, Sleuth, Valkyrie, The Boat that Rocked, Thor, My Week with Marilyn, Jack Ryan, and Cinderella for Disney.
TV credits
Branagh’s television credits include: This England, The Billy Plays, The Boy in the Bush, Fortunes of War, Shadow of a Gunman, Conspiracy, Shackleton, Warm Springs, 10 Days to War, and Wallander.
Writing
His writing credits include his Oscar winning screenplay for his film Belfast; two plays, Tell Me Honestly and Public Enemy; his autobiography, Beginning; and a number of screen adaptations including Shakespeare’s Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, As You Like It, In The Bleak Midwinter and Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
More about The Tempest at the RSC
More about The Cherry Orchard at the RSC
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