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Shakespeare could have no better ambassador than Kenneth Branagh. Despite all the problems of raising finance for movies based on the Bard, he doesn't give up trying to bring his work to the screen. A Japanese-themed As You Like It is the actor-director's latest screen project in the wake of five previous Shakespeare film adaptations since Henry V in 1989 earned him Oscar nominations as both director and actor.

At that time, he said he planned to make Shakespeare bigger than Batman. So has he succeeded? "Possibly not as big as I perhaps suggested," he conceeds.

"To me, it's a miracle we have managed to make another five pictures, and we helped with the Oliver Parker film of Othello. I feel deeply privileged to make films of these plays I care passionately about.

"I think they offer insights, truths and observations of human nature. They allow a different view of the literary icon for people to shout about, or resist, or refute, or celebrate. This has always been about keeping him alive through a celebration of those stories."

He clearly believes that where there's a Will, there's a way of translating his work for a modern audience. And that means escaping from the tried, tested and just a little bit old-fashioned approach to Shakespeare's work.

Branagh has never been afraid to take chances, whether in his casting or setting of the plays. As You Like It, the latest Shakespeare he has adapted and directed for the screen, is no exception with its Japanese setting and ninja attack that opens the film. His casting, too, reflects a move away from the obvious choices with the likes of American actress Bryce Dallas Howard (as Rosalind), Romola Garai, Adrian Lester, Alfred Molina, Kevin Kline and Spooks star David Oyelowo in leading roles.

"Whatever impact they have made, much of the Shakespeare film work has, on the whole, stayed away from the Masterpiece Theatre heritage thing," he says. "Or seen if there is a way in our fast-changing world for this to live in a medium with which we're all familiar."

That hasn't always worked. His under-rated song-and-dance version of Love's Labour's Lost didn't do well at the box office. Putting a Fred and Ginger slant on the story just wasn't appealing to audiences.

It's taken him four years to get As You Like It made, with cable channel HBO putting up a big slice of the budget. "I've had many nos in different voices," he says.

"The previous Shakespeare film we'd done hadn't done very well. Then came the DVD. They started realising it had done well there and had a long shelf life, and suddenly it was a profitable film.

"Things change around. I guess the bargain you strike is for the appropriate budget. The man who runs HBO is a Brit, so he had one foot in a different camp. To some extent the price gives you some form of creative freedom.

"They still regard it as a very big risk. It will be interesting to see how something like that goes over there. So it's interesting but a little risky."

Setting it in 19th Century Japan is a perfectly valid move, Branagh believes. The play is partly about the tensions between town and country, something he sees as very strong in Japan. It's a landscape of neon but also of beautiful forests. Above all, he wanted to get away from what he calls "cakes and ale Shakespeare".

He points out there's a 1936 film of As You Like It with Olivier, as well as a more recent one from 15 years ago. He can justify at length his reasons for setting it in Japan but ends up quoting director Peter Brook that decisions like that can be no more than informed hunches.

He toured for a year or so in a theatre production of the play, so he saw first-hand the effect it had on audiences. But he stays behind the camera in his latest film version, feeling that he had a youthfulness in the cast that would work to its benefit.

"What the actors had, and the play needs if it's going to trip lightly across all the things it discusses, is a sense of fun and a sense of joy. There was no arm-twisting for actors to appear. Not everyone wants to be in this type of film, but when they do they usually want to quite passionately and these people came with great commitment."

Purists may take exception to the change of location, especially given that Branagh couldn't afford to shoot in Japan and instead filmed at a Japanese-style garden, Wakehurst Place, in Sussex.

Again it was part of his plan to revitalise the play and make it more agreeable to modern audiences.

"You can shine a different light on the play and get away from certain assumptions about the Forest of Arden, where it's set. Many people say it's in Warwickshire, others in France," says Branagh.

"There's nothing more specific in the play. It's simply not a given it's supposed to be in a Falstaffian Warwickshire."

The visual presentation is part of the challenge for him every time he films Shakespeare. "I don't find there's an assumpton that the world is waiting for another Shakespeare," he says.

"I have to fight for the finance and answer why do these films at all, why people aren't interested?" What he hopes it adds up to is a very different, very distinct cinema experience. Then, at the end, he pulls the rug from under the feet of the audience by revealing it's all a film set.

He puts it down to instinct more than anything else - and something he's done before. "In the first Shakespeare film I made, Derek Jacobi as the Chorus in Henry V starts in a film studio, switches on some lights and ackowledges this," he recalls.

Branagh the actor hasn't been seen for some time as he's directed three films back-to-back. As well as As You Like It, he's helmed films of The Magic Flute and a new version of the thriller Sleuth, with Jude Law and Michael Caine.

His absence in front of the camera isn't permanent. He says that "perhaps that will be redressed". He's already started, filming a role in the new Tom Cruise film Valkyrie, based on the assassaination attempt on Hitler in 1944.

"Not acting was not remotely a plan. It took three years to make the films and they're all coming out within three months," he says.

* As You Like It (12A) opens in cinemas on Friday.