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Emma Thompson, known as one of the greatest British actresses of her generation, is a comedienne, screenwriter and author. Here are 50 interesting facts about the Academy Award–winning actress.
- Emma was born on 15 April 1959 in Paddington, London to Eric Thompson and Phyllida Law.
- Her father, Eric Thompson (9 November 1929 – 30 November 1982) was an English actor, television presenter and producer, best known for his “The Magic Roundabout,” and her mother, Phyllida Law (born - 8 May 1932; age - 85 years) is a Scottish actress, known for her appearances in many documentaries and films including “Peter's Friends,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” “The Winter Guest,” etc.
- Emma has one sister, Sophie Thompson - an Olivier award-winning English actress, famous for her role as the Baker's Wife in the Donmar's revival of “Into the Woods.” Sophie is married to Richard Lumsden – a British actor, since 1995 with two children.
- Ronald Eyre (13 April 1929 – 8 April 1992) - an English theatre director, actor and writer was Emma's godfather.
- Her family lived in West Hampstead in North London. However, she spent most her childhood days visiting her grandparents in Ardentinny. She even confessed to feeling Scottish for the reason that "not only because I am half Scottish but also because I've spent half my life here." She owns a home in Dunoon in Argyll and Bute and frequently visits Scotland during holidays.
- Emma educated from Camden School for Girls. She had a flair for language and literature, which she attributed to her father, saying that they share the love for words. She speaks French and Spanish fluently.
- She went to Newnham College, University of Cambridge, to study an English degree in 1977, where she was invited into Footlights, the university's prestigious sketch comedy troupe.
- Emma is first female member of the troupe, which also had fellow actors Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie as members. Fry recalling the incident once said "there was no doubt that Emma was going the distance. Our nickname for her was Emma Talented."
- She later became the group's vice president of the troupe in the year 1980 and co-directed “Women's Hour” - the first all-female revue put on by the troupe. In 1981, Emma with her Footlights team won the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for their sketch show “The Cellar Tapes.”
- She landed a role in the stage version of “Not the Nine O’clock News,” the next year. However, much of her early work was in Television, with her Footlights team members - Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. They starred together in the brief comedy series “There's Nothing To Worry About!” (1982), one-off show “The Crystal Cube” (1982) and the sketch show “Alfresco” (1983–84), which was more successful with two series. Emma has a romantic relationship with Hugh Laurie, which did not last long.
- Emma’s father died on 30 November 1982, as a result of circulatory problems in London three weeks after his 53rd birthday. Talking about her father, she said that this "tore [the family] to pieces,” and "I can't begin to tell you how much I regret his not being around". She added, "At the same time, it's possible that were he still alive I might never have had the space or courage to do what I've done ... I have a definite feeling of inheriting space. And power."
- In 1985, she was cast in the West End revival of the musical “Me and My Girl,” with Robert Lindsay as her co-star, which proved to be her breakthrough. Emma played the role for more than 15 months and was so exhausted that she once said "I thought if I did the fucking Lambeth Walk one more time I was going to fucking throw up."
- By late 1985, she wrote and starred in one-off special for Channel 4, “Emma Thompson: Up for Grabs.” In 1987, she landed leading roles in two television miniseries: “Fortunes of War” and Tutti Frutti,” both of which got her the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress.
- She fell in love with her co-star of “Fortunes of War,” Kenneth Branagh, and married him in 1989. The duo, dubbed a "golden couple," proceeded to appear in several films together, with Branagh often casting her in his own productions.
- Emma's first big-screen appearance was in the romantic comedy “The Tall Guy” (1989), in which she played the lead role of a nurse, with whom Jeff Goldblum as a West End actor falls in love. Though the movie was a box office disappointment, her performance was praised by many.
- She then turned to Shakespeare, starred as Princess Katherine in Branagh's screen adaptation of “Henry V” (1989). In the early 1990’s, she continued with the Shakespeare’s roles, appearing with Branagh in “A Midsummer Night's Dream” and “King Lear.”
- Emma was named to the Board of Advisors for Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival (previously Fahrenheit Theater Company) in Cincinnati, Ohio.
- She returned to big screen as a "frivolous aristocrat" in “Impromptu,” a period drama about the life of George Sand that starred Judy Davis and Hugh Grant. She was nominated for Best Supporting Female at the Independent Spirit Awards.
- Her role as an idealistic, intellectual, forward-looking woman in the Merchant Ivory period drama “Howards End,” based on the novel by E. M. Forster, with Anthony Hopkins and Vanessa Redgrave as her co-stars in the year 1992, was the real turning point in her career.
- The film, which garnered nine Oscar nominations, fetched her three trophies as Best Actress - Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA, for her performance. The New York Times, back then, described it as Emma "found herself an international success almost overnight."
- About her first Oscar nomination, Emma once said “The first time I was nominated, I didn't know anything about the Oscars … I just did Oscar week and enjoyed it very much because I was with my mum.”
- She was initially cast as the lead in “Basic Instinct” (1992), but refused later on. Her next movies such as “Peter's Friends” (1992), “Much Ado About Nothing” (1993), “The Remains of the Day” (1993) and “In the Name of the Father” (1993), had a good reception. Her performance in “Much Ado About Nothing” earned her a nomination for Best Female Lead at the Independent Spirit Awards.
- “The Remains of the Day” was a critical and commercial success, which Emma named as one of the greatest experiences of her career, considering it to be a "masterpiece of withheld emotion." The movie received 8 Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Actress awards. The Miss Kenton role was ranked #52 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time in the year 2006.
- She was also nominated as the Best Supporting Actress for her role as the lawyer Gareth Peirce in “In the Name of the Father.” With these 2 nominations, Emma became one of the ten performers in history to be nominated for two Oscars in the same year along with Holly Hunter nominated for the same awards for her films “The Piano” and “The Firm.”
- In September 1995, Emma and Branagh, the “golden couple” announced that they had separated with the press statement reading – “Our work has inevitably led to our spending long periods ... away from each other and, as a result, we have drifted apart.”
- Emma's success continued with “Sense and Sensibility” (1995), the most popular film adaption of Jane Austen's novel. She was hired to write the film and has spent nearly 5 years to develop the screenplay. While working on the script, a serious problem in her computer resulted in the disappearance of the file. She took her computer to Stephen Fry who, after seven hours, finally managed to retrieve the script.
- She played the role of the spinster sister Elinor Dashwood in the movie, which is one of the highest-grossing films of her career that received widespread critical praise. The role garnered her number of awards - Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, BAFTA Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay. She is the only person in the history of Oscars, to win an Academy Award each for acting and writing.
- Emma, after her official separation with Branagh, entered into depression and claimed that her work in “Sense and Sensibility” screenplay was the only thing that stopped her from "going under in a very nasty way."
- She developed a romantic relationship with her co-star Greg Wise and once said that “Work saved me and Greg saved me. He picked up the pieces and put them together again.”
- After the absence in the year 1996, Emma returned with Alan Rickman's directorial debut - The “Winter Guest,” in which she along with her mother played the mother and daughter on screen. Later, she made an appearance in Ellen, and received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.
- In 1997, Emma was ranked #91 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list.
- Her performance and faultless American accent, in the movie “Primary Colors” (1998), was praised by many, and also led to Hollywood top producers lining up to hire her. However, Emma rejected many of the offers as she admitted to feeling tired and jaded with the industry. Her concerns for living in Los Angeles were also a reason, as she stated that "LA is lovely as long as you know you can leave."
- Emma and Greg had a daughter on 4 December, 1999, named Gaia Romilly Wise. She jokingly called her "jane.com." The pregnancy was successful through IVF treatment. They tried for another kid through the same process, but three years of treatment was unsuccessful. Before Gaia, she had 2 miscarriages with her then-husband Kenneth Branagh in 1994 and partner Greg Wise in 1997.
- She was considered for the lead role of Emma Peel in “The Avengers” (1998), which went to Uma Thurman. She was also the first choice for the role of "God" in Kevin Smith's “Dogma” (1999), which due to her pregnancy, she had to pass over. She even turned down the role of Jodie Foster in “Anna and the King” (1999).
- She was ranked fifth in the 2001 Orange Film Survey of greatest British film actresses.
- Following her pregnancy, she was not on screen again in 2000. The next year, she took the lead role in HBO television film “Wit,” which she felt was "one of the best scripts to have come out of America." The film earned her nominations at the Golden Globes, Emmys and Screen Actors Guild Awards.
- In the year 2003, Emma and Greg got married in Dunoon. The duo informally adopted Tindyebwa Agaba, whom they met at a Refugee Council event and invited him to spend Christmas at their house. "Slowly," Emma said, "he became a sort of permanent fixture, came on holiday to Scotland with us, became part of the family," adding that "I couldn't have more children, and that was hard; but perhaps if I had, I'd have missed out on this extra act of mothering that I've had with Tindy."
- The family – Emma and Greg with their two children, reside in West Hampstead, London, across the street from her mother and down the street from her sister.
- In the year 2003, French singer Georges Moustaki dedicated his album "Moustaki," to her and named it after her.
- She accepted the role of Professor Trelawny in “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” in the year 2004 just to impress her daughter, Gaia. Talking about the movie she said “I have a nervous breakdown in the film and in one scene I get to stand at the top of the stairs waving an empty sherry bottle which is, of course, a typical scene from my daily life, so isn't much of a stretch.”
- Her next movie “Nanny McPhee,” which she developed for almost 9 years, was a huge success, making $122 million worldwide. The film had a sequel, after 5 years – “Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang,” which was also well received.
- In “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” (2007), apart from her character as Professor Trelawny, it is her voice that speaks the prophecy that Harry retrieves at the end of the film.
- She is one among the seven actors - Leonardo DiCaprio, Tilda Swinton, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hanks, Daniel Brühl and Jake Gyllenhaal, to receive a Golden Globe, SAG, BAFTA and Critics' Choice Award nomination for the same performance, but miss being Oscar-nominated for it.
- It seems that Emma used to keep her Oscar statuettes in her bathroom but in order to make room for her daughter Gaia's artwork, she has moved the Oscars to her office.
- She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6714 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on August 6, 2010.
- Her appearance as the head Agent in “Men in Black 3,” (2012) was her biggest commercial hit outside of the Harry Potter films. The success continued with “Beautiful Creatures” (2013), and “Saving Mr. Banks” (2013).
- She is a supporter of Greenpeace. She with her daughter Gaia went on a Greenpeace Save the Arctic expedition in August last year, to raise awareness of the dangers of drilling for oil.
- She is an ambassador for the charity ActionAid, an activist for Palestinians, a patron of the Elton John AIDS Foundation and the Refugee Council and also an ambassador for the Galapagos Conservation Trust.
- Emma published “The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit,” as an addition to the Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit series, which was the New York Times Best Seller. The next year, she wrote a second book entitled “The Christmas Tale of Peter Rabbit.”
- Emma is having 5 projects in the pipeline – “A Walk in the Woods,” “Survivor,” “Adam Jones,” “The Legend of Barney Thompson,” in the year 2015, with “Alone in Berlin,” in 2016.
