Kenneth Branagh joins the cast

The upcoming epic thriller based on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it.
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I think Branagh is Max Born.

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Niels Bohr
Kenneth Branagh

Winner of the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics, Niels Bohr was revered by Oppenheimer and other scientists of his generation for his study of atomic structure and famed “Copenhagen Interpretation” of quantum mechanics.

To play Bohr, Christopher Nolan turned to yet another frequent collaborator, Kenneth Branagh, who starred as the valiant Commander Bolton in Dunkirk and the villainous Andrei Sator in Tenet, and whose own storied career as a writer-director reached new heights in 2021 with Belfast, which earned him Academy Award® nominations for Best Picture and Best Director and won an Oscar® for Best Original Screenplay.

“It was nice to have a starting point,” says Branagh of Nolan’s latest assignment for him. “Niels Bohr is a great man of science, Nobel laureate, one of the architects of this shift from classical physics to quantum physics, which was all part of the worldwide movement towards the knowledge that brought the atomic bomb, nuclear energy, and everything that came with it. There’s a voluminous amount of material out there about him. You can hear him; you can see him; you can watch him, and you can read a great deal about him. It was the little details that I cherry-picked that helped the most. Bohr loved football. His brother played for the Danish national team, and he was a pretty good footballer himself. He was always an outdoors guy. When he came to Los Alamos, he skied. He loved American silent Westerns of the 1920s. And he was also, reported by those who watched him, entirely absent-minded. He was an exceptionally brilliant man who could tangle with Einstein and a very approachable everyman. He might get lost crossing the street, yet his mind was also sharp as a razor.”

Nolan helped Branagh further focus his performance by comparing Bohr’s relationship to Oppenheimer to famous characters from a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. “Even though Oppenheimer didn’t necessarily spend that much time with him, Bohr was really significant to him,” says Branagh. “Chris had this idea that he had sort of an Obi-Wan-Kenobi relationship to Oppenheimer, so it was worth thinking about in those terms. Bohr was, in a way, a magician, someone who understood some degrees more than what Oppenheimer understood. But Bohr also appreciated that Oppenheimer was the man who would be presenting the atomic bomb to the world. He recognized that Oppenheimer would be able to both understand the science and endure the trials and tribulations of what would follow, which is something that Bohr intuits is going to be necessary.”

Branagh says he’s continuously amazed at Nolan’s ability to lead his cast and crew in producing such ambitious, high-risk, high-reward movies. “It’s thrilling to work with someone who is so naturally, as a filmmaker, confident in all the right ways,” Branagh says. “Chris leads the charge with an extraordinary work ethic. He’s always fun, he’s got a sharp sense of humor, he’s kind and listens to his actors. He’s a tremendous collaborator and a great natural leader. It’s a marvelous thing to be able to watch and support him.”
Oppenheimer" Production Notes

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