The London Film Critics Circle, the U.K.’s largest and most established critics’ body, is to award Northern Irish actor and director Kenneth Branagh with their annual Dilys Powell Award for excellence in film.
The award will honour Branagh’s 34 year career to date – a career which has seen him nominated for five Academy Awards – Best Supporting Actor for ‘My Week With Marilyn’, Best Adapted Screenplay for ‘Hamlet’, Best Short Film for ‘Swan Song’ and Best Lead Actor and Best Director for ‘Henry V’.
Branagh has also been nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and has won an Emmy and three BAFTAs.
Branagh has directed or starred in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays, including Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello (1995), Hamlet (1996), Love's Labour's Lost (2000), and As You Like It (2006).
He has also starred in numerous other films and television series including Fortunes of War (1987), Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998), Wild Wild West (1999), The Road to El Dorado (2000), Conspiracy (2001), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Warm Springs (2005), Valkyrie (2008), Wallander (2008–present), and My Week with Marilyn (2011) as Sir Laurence Olivier (Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor). He has directed such notable films as Dead Again (1991) in which he also starred, Swan Song (1992) (Academy Award nominated for Best Live Action Short Film), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) in which he also starred, The Magic Flute (2006), Sleuth (2007), the blockbuster superhero film Thor (2011), the action thriller Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014) in which he also co-stars, and Cinderella (2015).
In accepting the Dilys Powell Award, Branagh joins such past honorees as Judi Dench, Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Michael Caine and Mike Leigh. He will accept the honor at the Circle’s awards ceremony in London on January 17, 2016.
