FACES FOR THE NINETIES : ...

About this time last year, London theater critic Michael Billington worried in that city’s Guardian newspaper that actor/director Kenneth Branagh might “push himself too hard.” After a “punishing season” of three Shakespeare plays at home and on tour with his fledgling Renaissance Theatre Company, the Belfast-born Wunderkind was going straight into directing and starring in a film of “Henry V.”

But Branagh, now 28, has lived a life of overachieving. Besides launching Renaissance a few years ago with colleague David Parfitt, he had earlier played London’s West End and Royal Shakespeare Company stages, plus done extensive TV and film work both at home and in the U.S. Renaissance’s first production was his own play, “Public Enemy,” and he has already published an autobiography. Such luminaries as Judi Dench and Derek Jacobi have directed him as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Benedick and Touchstone. Given his lust for innovative productions of the Bard, whether on stage or film, why shouldn’t Branagh take on Laurence Olivier’s earlier achievement--at age 36--of starring in and directing what he called “a good yarn”?

Rounding up money and such distinguished colleagues as Dench and Jacobi, not to mention his future bride Emma Thompson, Branagh made his film directorial debut last year with his adaptation of “Henry V” and did so to considerable praise and attention.

Referred to by Time magazine’s Richard Corliss as “the most accomplished, acclaimed and ambitious performer of his generation,” Branagh next turns his attention back to the stage.

Renaissance arrives at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum this month as the first stop for its world tour of “King Lear” and “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” And after that, Branagh told one interviewer, might come films of “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Hamlet.”