Beginning, Paperback

In "Beginning," Academy Award nominee Kenneth Branagh charts the ups and downs of a life in acting - a young career that has made him the most acclaimed actor of his generation. Opening with his childhood in working-class Belfast, in a neighborhood of drinkers and dreamers, Branagh describes the fires of early ambition that drew him to the stage and to the plays of Shakespeare. At age twenty-four he founded his own actor's troupe with the goal of performing those plays; at twenty-eight, he directed and starred in the movie of "Henry V," the role that won him international fame.