Age: 65
male
Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh (born 10 December 1960) is a Northern Irish actor and filmmaker. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Reading, Berkshire, Branagh trained at RADA in London and served as its president from 2015 to 2024. His accolades include an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Olivier Award. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 2012 and was given Freedom of the City in his native Belfast in 2018. In 2020, he was ranked in 20th place on The Irish Times's list of Ireland's greatest film actors. Branagh has directed and starred in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays, including Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello (1995), Hamlet (1996), and As You Like It (2006). He was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Director for Henry V and Best Adapted Screenplay for Hamlet. He directed Swan Song (1992), which earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. He also directed Peter's Friends (1992), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), Thor (2011), and Cinderella (2015). For his semi-autobiographical film Belfast (2021), he was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Director and won Best Original Screenplay. Branagh directed and starred as Hercule Poirot in the Hercule Poirot film series (2017–present). He has also acted in Celebrity (1998), Wild Wild West (1999), The Road to El Dorado (2000), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), and Valkyrie (2008). His portrayal of Laurence Olivier in My Week with Marilyn (2011) earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He played supporting roles in Christopher Nolan's films Dunkirk (2017), Tenet (2020), and Oppenheimer (2023). Branagh has starred in the BBC1 series Fortunes of War (1987), the Channel 4 series Shackleton (2002), the television film Warm Springs (2005), and the BBC One series Wallander (2008–2016). He received a Primetime Emmy Award and an International Emmy Award for Best Actor for portraying SS leader Reinhard Heydrich in the HBO film Conspiracy (2001).
Before the Phantom, there was Erik. It starts off in 1854 when a deformed child is birthed from an aristocratic couple. He grows to be a teenager, with a mask constantly on his face, and living in the attic, where he can’t be seen. Due to the torment from his mother, and being unable to leave the house, he runs away during a dinner party that his parents are hosting. He grabs a random coat and leaves. He is then found by gypsies where they find the inscription on the coat to be: Erik, so that’s what they call him. They accept him for who he is, and when he is not performing, they don’t have him wear his mask. He eventually becomes a very skilled musician and illusionist. He eventually gets to play for the Shah, who is vastly impressed with his skills. He has him stay in the palace as an entertainer. Meanwhile, he befriends a man named Nadir, who is sort of a bodyguard for the Shah. He lets him use the library, where Erik learns of construction, just like his father. Years later, he is sick of living in the palace as the Shah never fully accepted him for who he was unlike Nadir, and the gypsies. He yearns to leave, especially after a weary sexual encounter with the Shah’s daughter. Nadir decides he will smuggle him out of the palace and arranges for him to go to France. They leave together, and Erik eventually settles under the catacombs of the Paris Opera House where he builds various routes and traps for himself.
