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Photo: Dublin International Film Festival · CC BY 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons Photo shows actor Kenneth Branagh
Hercule Poirot
Kenneth Branagh's Belgian detective wears the most discussed mustache of the 2010s — a vast, two-tiered, gray handlebar that deserved its own billing.
- Actor
- Kenneth Branagh
- Film
- Murder on the Orient Express
- Year
- 2017
- Medium
- Movie
- Style
- Handlebar
- Fan Votes
- 0 legendary · 0 meh
- Battle Wins
- 1
Why Hercule Poirot's Mustache Matters
Agatha Christie described Hercule Poirot's mustache as the most magnificent in England, and Kenneth Branagh took that literally. For his 2017 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express, which he both directed and starred in, Branagh commissioned a sprawling, silver-gray handlebar with a second layer beneath it — a mustache so large it made headlines before the trailer did.
The design was deliberate. Branagh wanted a lip that matched the novel's descriptions rather than the tidier versions worn by David Suchet and Albert Finney, and the result became a conversation piece, a meme and eventually a beloved signature.
Branagh kept the mustache for Death on the Nile (2022) and A Haunting in Venice (2023), which even gives it an origin story.
- Branagh directed and starred in the 2017 film; the ensemble included Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Judi Dench and Daisy Ridley.
- Agatha Christie's novel *Murder on the Orient Express* was published in 1934.
- David Suchet played Poirot on television from 1989 to 2013 with a far neater waxed mustache.
- *Death on the Nile* (2022) opens with a flashback explaining why Poirot grew the mustache.
How to Grow the Handlebar
The grand champion. Curled at the ends, waxed to the heavens, and absolutely not sorry about it.
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