Interviews || By: S.T. VanAirsdale || November 22, 2011 03:30 PM EST

Kenneth Branagh on My Week With Marilyn, His Brush With Olivier, and the Curse of the Difficult Actor

Did you ever meet Olivier?

I never met him, no. I met and worked with some of his contemporaries. I saw Ralph Richardson, one of his great contemporaries, many times. I worked with John Gielgud, was in contact with Alec Guiness, and then I wrote to Olivier when I was 20. I was in drama school, and I asked his advice -- actually, weirdly enough, on the next film he directed. He directed The Prince and the Showgirl in '56, and in 1970, he directed a film version of Chekhov's Three Sisters, in which he appeared as the doctor, Chebutikin. He said it took him that long to get over Marilyn -- that she had put him off directing for that long. Anyway, I wrote him for advice: "I'm playing the doctor. Obviously I'm monstrously too young for it; he's supposed to be between 60 and 70. You played it so beautifully. Sir, what could you tell me." And he said, "I can't possibly give you any advice on something that must be your own creation. My advice is to have a bash and hope for the best."

He wrote you back? That was his letter?

That was his letter.

Do you still have it?

I certainly do! I certainly do. I was amazed that he replied. In a way, it's an encapsulation of the very thing that the picture hints at: When he's up against Marilyn, he can't really understand why you need to think about Coca-Cola, Frank Sinatra, not coming in on time, come on set, get upset, need 50 takes... You've just got to do it. Just do it! When there's a problem, just do it. You've got to fake it to make it. You've got to keep practicing. He famously said -- and this might sound immodest of him, but I think he was trying to be accurate. He's a very fine artist, so he could say this kind of thing and one would take it at face value. It was in relation to stage acting -- he said: "It's impossible to be great very often. Most of the time, if you're very lucky, you have to content yourself with merely being very, very good."

He accepted that, but I don't think Marilyn accepted that -- even though she was in work that lots of times didn't even have the possibility of being great because it was soufflé-like. But she seemed to bring a sort of beauty to what she did that when it did work did have shades of gray. She certainly aspires to it. I think she thought of the things we were talking about: Timetables, getting there early, etc. etc. These aren't things that should apply to people who take themselves seriously as great artists. If Picasso were on the job, you wouldn't go up to him and say, "OK, you're going to start Guernica tomorrow at 8 o'clock." He may say, "I'll start it when it comes to me." That's how she felt. But Olivier would start tomorrow morning at 8 o'clock. It may not be a sublime painting, but it was always going to be a pretty marvelous painting.

Do you remember your first time seeing Olivier on screen or on stage?

There are two things I remember vividly. When I was at school, and we were watching a film in an English class -- which we were thrilled about because it felt like we weren't doing any work -- and it turned out to be Henry V. And the teacher stopped the film. In a very, very effective screen entrance, there's a shot backstage, and then from the left, on comes this profile. And this fellow goes... [Quietly clears throat] The teacher stops the film and says, "Who's that?" And nobody had a clue. And he said, "That is the greatest actor in the English-speaking world. That is Laurence Olivier." It was Olivier's first entrance in Henry V, where he comes on very modestly, as an actor in the wings waiting to go on. And what you see is this great aquiline profile -- this very modest start, because he's so nervous -- and then he walks out on stage and he has this great scene with the Dauphin. So I remember that -- thinking, "So that's what all the fuss is about!"

And then in our English department store cupboard, there were two records. These old, bent LP records, and one of them was of Olivier doing speeches from Shakespeare. I asked if I could take that home; there'was one of him, and there was one of Gielgud. I took them home and listened to both of them. So most of what I remember is that slight profile of Olivier coughing, being modestly beautiful before his first grand entrance as Henry V, and then on record, hearing all this very dramatic music and being very struck by this very hypnotic quality of him starting to say, [adapts a husky whisper] "To be or not to be, that is the question" in this sort of far-away way that was part of his conception of Hamlet. I thought, "Oh, apparently that's what great acting is."

Those were very vivid, but working on this picture was to remind me of the other end of things: His performance in The Entertainer which is quite, quite brilliant, or even a film like Bunny Lake is Missing, which he made in the '60s with Otto Preminger? He's so real; he could be so fantastically underplayed. He was such a skillful, amazingly skillful guy.

Do you remember you first experience watching Marilyn Monroe?

I think it was in the train in Some Like it Hot. I remember thinking, "Jesus Christ, she's sexy. Oh my God. Frankly, I'd wear drag if I could get anywhere near her in that sleeping compartment." I wouldn't have known then what the word meant -- and I'm not so sure I do now -- but her voluptuousness. Her kindly voluptuousness. It has sort of an edge to it, whatever this combination she has of both innocence and a very present sexual quality. She was so irresistible in that. That's what I remember: Lemon and Curtis in drag, and her being so kind of... well, ready to take her clothes off in that particular sequence, because they were all going to bed, and they were all girls. With Marilyn, it was sort of the vividness of the looks. The peroxide, platinum blond seemed blonder than any blond on the planet. It was like Olivier in a way in terms of their faces. They had faces for movies. It's such an obvious thing to say, but it was the kind of face you could draw with four or five strokes of a pen. It had that striking, distinctive characteristic.

What about your first time seeing Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe?

It was one of those moments. It followed a Sunday morning at Pinewood, on the same soundstage where they had shot the original movie and we were going to shoot the movie. I had just come over from America; I was still directing Thor at that time, in postproduction. The two things I remember were Michelle speaking for the first time -- as Marilyn, at the read-through, in a read-through inside the film. I was constantly aware of these sorts of double-ups: "God, we're in the same soundstage, and she's just arrived from America," and on and on. And then the second thing was the next day, when I was talking to Judi. We were waiting for Michelle to arrive. They weren't planning to shoot on her, and they decided they might just see her walking away -- this very first shot. I'm talking to Judi, who was being shot, and then she looks to me and says, "Oh, crikey, Kenny -- look!" And I turned around, and there was Michelle walking... I say "walking," but you can't walk as Marilyn in that dress. You kind of... undulate. It's like she's on casters, you know? And we both had a look at each other -- Dench and I -- having heard her sound so right and then see her. Both were very striking feelings of, "I think this is the right actress in the right part."