Kenneth Branagh Quotes

I'm very proud of 'Valhalla Rising.'

With 'Vikings,' I had the task of making these people interesting and, to a point, sympathetic.

'Valhalla Rising' is a fusion of my upbringing, basically: everything I grew up loving and wanted to make a film of.

As a kid, all I wanted to do was be in a Viking film.

The education of going through the 'Thor' experience was great.

'Vikings' has been so many different challenges, and some of that is, at times, you have to be big and imposing and violent and vicious, and then you have be pulled back and withdrawn and just more layers and more time to portray those layers, too.

I was so lucky because what I did in 'Thor' was I built the character from the ground up - the foundations of his spirit, really. He was someone who was born with an expectation that he would one day be a king, born with an entitlement.

Bring back dueling, I say. Drive-by sword fight.

I know 'Vikings' isn't really based in magic, but it goes back to Old World spirituality and different religions, and a lot of voodoo.

My novel 'Wolf Brother' is set in northern Scandinavia during the late Stone Age, so I was aware from the start of Norse influences. I used some Norse names, and the soul-eater Thiazzi is based on the Norse storm giant, Thiassi.

'The Cardturner,' while it has bridge in it, you certainly don't need to know how to play bridge to read it. It's basically a book about relationships - between Alton and his great-uncle, and Alton and his friends, and how it changes his life.

The stories in 'Parenthood' are so much the stories of our lives. And the people who have worked on the show feel very connected to these characters.

When you're a Viking, you never know when you're going to get the axe.

So when I write characters and situations and relationships, I try to sort of utilize what I know about the world, limited as it is, and what I hear from my friends and see with my relatives.

Put the hero back in the super hero movies, because I think 'super' might have taken over.

I'd like to be on the next 'Six Feet Under,' whatever that is.

And of course Marc Cherry heightens it and makes it hilarious. But there's so many universal themes in the show, and he made it so funny. We knew he was onto something if he could keep it up and, thankfully, he did.

The big things in the average person's life are the romances that they have - and then the destruction and loss of them. Parents, siblings, children, the death of parents, family tension... these are monumental things. They struck me as being interesting to write about. I didn't have a very exotic life, but all this stuff happened to me.

RUNE is another one I'm really looking forward to.

There are so many good stories about the Vikings.

I always cry when Mufasa dies in 'The Lion King.' I just can't handle it.

The feeling that makes 'Warcraft' work as a game is that feeling that heroism can come out of anything or anyone.

I read a lot of Icelandic sagas when I was young. I've always been interested in the Viking culture.

Uttaran' works because it has real emotions and situations. Of course, some drama is essential in a television show, but people connect to the characters.

I'm from Norway, and when kids were reading comics, I was reading Icelandic and Norwegian sagas about the Vikings. The glorification of violence, their mentality, and their way of living - that was part of my own education growing up.