Kenneth Charles Branagh (born 10 December 1960) is a Northern Irish actor and film director.

Branagh, the second of three children, was born and raised in Belfast to working-class Protestant parents Frances (née Harper) and William Branagh, a plumber and carpenter who ran a company that specialised in fitting partitions and suspended ceilings. He was educated at Grove Primary School. At the age of nine, he relocated with his family to Reading, Berkshire to escape "the Troubles". At school, he affected an English accent to avoid bullying. On his identity today he has said, "I feel Irish. I don't think you can take Belfast out of the boy," and he attributes his "love of words" to his Irishness.

Branagh achieved some early measure of success in his native Northern Ireland for his role as the title character in the BBC's Play for Today trilogy known as the Billy Plays (1982-84), written by Graham Reid and set in Belfast.