For his "Hamlet", the first film to use the complete Shakespearean text, Branagh won his fourth Oscar nomination (Best Adapted Screenplay) but the four-hour film failed to make back even half of its investment. In 1998 Branagh collaborated with director Robert Altman and they shot movie "The Gingerbread Man". Then he was selected to play in Woody Allen's "Celebrity". That year Branagh performed in "Theory of Flight".
In 1999 he acted in "Wild Wild West" where he represented legless Dr. Arliss Loveless, who was Will Smith's enemy. In 2000 he lent his voice for the leading characters in the animated film "The Road to El Dorado" and then gave his voice as the narrator of the Oscar-nominated animated short "The Periwig-Maker".
During 90´s he became quite favourite actor. He was casted e.g. in the comedy "How to Kill Your Neighbour’s Dog" and in the based-on-fact movie "Rabbit Proof Fence", which is about three Aboriginal girls who wanted to freedom in 1930´s. On TV Branagh was successful in an Emmy-winning performance as Reinhard Heydrich in the HBO original "Conspiracy". His last step was into the fantasy sphere as the conceited Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor Gilderoy Lockhart in the "Harry Potter and the Chambers of Secrets" in 2002.