In the Bleak Midwinter (1995)

Kenneth Branagh directs A MIDWINTER'S TALE, a delightful romantic comedy that celebrates the acting profession with all its passion, humor, drama, naivety, and zest for life. "It's a comic look at the actor's eternal despair" says Branagh. The ensemble comedy takes as its starting point the efforts of an out-of-work actor, Joe Harper, played by Michael Maloney (TRULY MADLY DEEPLY), who salvages his pride by mounting a low-budget production of "Hamlet". Only his agent Margaretta D'Arville (Joan Collins) believes in him. His auditions summon from the woodwork a most unpromising selection of misfits and has-beens. He signs up a cast of six to play the twenty-four roles in Shakespeare's greatest play. And so the challenge begins