I very much enjoyed my first experience at directing Ken Branagh in Hamlet. As an actor, you’ve got your own problems and you’re very concerned with finding your own way through your part. As a director, you’ve got all sorts of people with problems coming up to you and saying, “Well, this doesn’t work, and what can I do with that -what does this mean?” 

You’ve got to make decisions because you’re in charge- of sets and lighting and costumes and what you want and what you need. You problem-solve all the time- about when and how long and which days to rehearse, the coffee breaks, the logistics. And then there is the people dimension. 

Ken and I came to a modus vivendi. I tried to really let him have his head and be very minimal in my direction of him in the soliloquies especially- because I think they are highly personal. When Ken came to me and said, “Well, I’m having trouble with this section and what shall I do here? Can you help me with this?” then I would. I did not want to say, “Look, what you do with this soliloquy is –“ or “This is how—.” I wanted him to find out for himself, so I helped him only when he couldn’t answer a particular question. 

Ken deals very instinctively with Hamlet’s problems in his own way. Any director who works with Hamlet has to give him his own freedom to deal naturally with his own impulses, how he reacts to given situations. Within that framework a director is free to guide and manipulate and help steer a course. 

SDJ, From Modern Hamlets, Mary Z. Maher, 
1992 University of Iowa Press

From the 1990 Stage Struck Interview (for the complete interview go here)

Q: In 1988, you directed for the first time with Hamlet for the Renaissance Company. You’ve played Hamlet
many times yourself since that first time, aged seventeen, at the Edinburgh Festival. How difficult was it to direct
someone else in a part when you obviously have your own strong ideas about the character?

DJ: Yes, it was, up to a point, but Kenneth Branagh very strongly had his own ideas, too. So while giving him all
I could give him I had to get over the initial shock of actually giving away things that, with my instincts as an actor,
I wanted to do. Any new thought about Hamlet I’d give to Ken rather than do them myself. My instinct was,
“Oh, no, because the next time I play it…”, but I’m not going to. But it was fun to get on with the rest of the play,
and the other characters. I think that, for me, was the more enjoyable part, directing everyone around Ken,
rather than concentrating on Ken, because he, in a sense, is clever enough and was strong enough in what he
wanted to do to be left alone. I would push, and just do little bits, but there was a certain resistance there which
is inevitable. Whenever I did Hamlet with a director you tend to just go your own way. If you're going to play
Hamlet, you’ve usually got some idea of how you wanna do it. So it’s best to let the actor do that, because that’s
endemic to the part, you see, the personality of the actor, and the way he wants to go. So my best fun was
helping the rest of them.