Emma Thompson
Dame Emma Thompson is an English actress and screenwriter. Her work spans over four decades of screen and stage, and her accolades include two Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award. In 2018, she was made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to drama.
Born to actors Eric Thompson and Phyllida Law, Thompson was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she became a member of the Footlights troupe, and appeared in the comedy sketch series Alfresco. In 1985, she starred in the West End revival of the musical Me and My Girl, which was a breakthrough in her career. In 1987, she came to prominence for her performances in two BBC series, Tutti Frutti and Fortunes of War, winning the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for her work on both series. In the early 1990s, she often collaborated with then-husband, actor and director Kenneth Branagh, in films such as Henry V, Dead Again, and Much Ado About Nothing.
For her performance in the Merchant-Ivory period drama Howards End, Thompson won the BAFTA Award and the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1993, she received two Academy Award nominations—Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress—for the respective roles of the housekeeper of a grand household in The Remains of the Day and a lawyer in In the Name of the Father, becoming one of the few actors to achieve this feat. Thompson wrote and starred in Sense and Sensibility, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay—making her the only person in history to win Oscars for both acting and writing—and once again won the BAFTA. Further critical acclaim came for her roles in Primary Colors, Love Actually, Saving Mr. Banks, Late Night, and Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.
Other notable film credits include the Harry Potter saga, Nanny McPhee , Stranger than Fiction, An Education, Men in Black 3 and the spin-off Men in Black: International, Brave, Beauty and the Beast, Cruella, and Matilda the Musical. Her television credits include Wit, Angels in America, The Song of Lunch, King Lear and Years and Years. She portrayed Mrs. Lovett in a Lincoln Center production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in 2014. Authorised by the publishers of Beatrix Potter, Thompson has also written three Peter Rabbit children's books.
Early life and education
Thompson was born in Hammersmith, London on 15 April 1959. Her mother is Scottish actress Phyllida Law, while her English father, Eric Thompson, was an actor best known as the writer of the popular children's television series The Magic Roundabout. Her godfather was the director and writer Ronald Eyre. She has a younger sister, Sophie, who is also an actress. The family lived in the West Hampstead district of London, and Thompson was educated at Camden School for Girls. She spent much time in Scotland during her childhood and often visited Ardentinny, where her grandparents and uncle lived.File:ADC Theatre Cambridge.jpg|thumb|upright=0.85|ADC Theatre, University of Cambridge, where Thompson began performing with Footlights
In her youth, Thompson was intrigued by language and literature, a trait she attributes to her father, who shared her love of words. After successfully taking A levels in English, French and Latin, and securing a scholarship, she began studying for an English degree at Newnham College, Cambridge, arriving in 1977. Thompson believes that it was inevitable she would become an actor, remarking that she was "surrounded by creative people and I don't think it would ever have gone any other way, really". While there, she had a "seminal moment" that turned her to feminism and inspired her to take up performing. She explained in a 2007 interview how she discovered the book The Madwoman in the Attic, "which is about Victorian female writers and the disguises they took on in order to express what they wanted to express. That completely changed my life." She became a self-professed "punk rocker", with short red hair and a motorbike, and aspired to be a comedian like Lily Tomlin.
At Cambridge, Thompson was invited into the Cambridge Footlights, the university's prestigious sketch comedy troupe, by its president, Martin Bergman. Also in the troupe were fellow actors Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, and she had a romantic relationship with the latter. Fry recalled that "there was no doubt that Emma was going the distance. Our nickname for her was Emma Talented."
In 1980, Thompson served as the Vice President of Footlights, and co-directed the troupe's first all-female revue, Woman's Hour. The following year, she and her Footlights team won the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for their sketch show The Cellar Tapes. She graduated with upper second-class honours. In the early 80's, Thompson studied clowning under Philippe Gaulier at École Philippe Gaulier.
Thompson's father died in 1982, at age 52. She has stated that this "tore 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."
Career
Early work and breakthrough (1980–1989)
During Thompson's years studying at Cambridge, she starred in a BBC Radio 4 comedy series called Injury Time, which was recorded and broadcast from 1980 to 1982.Thompson had her first professional role in 1982, touring in a stage version of Not the Nine O'Clock News. She then turned to television, where much of her early work came with her Footlights co-stars Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. The regional ITV comedy series There's Nothing to Worry About! was their first outing, followed by the one-off BBC show The Crystal Cube. There's Nothing to Worry About! later returned as the networked sketch show Alfresco, which ran for two series with Thompson, Fry, Laurie, Ben Elton, and Robbie Coltrane. She later collaborated again with Fry and Laurie on the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 series Saturday Night Fry.
In 1985, Thompson was cast in the West End revival of the musical Me and My Girl, co-starring Robert Lindsay. It provided a breakthrough in her career, as the production earned rave reviews. She played the role of Sally Smith for 15 months, which exhausted her; she later remarked "I thought if I did the fucking "Lambeth Walk" one more time I was going to fucking throw up." At the end of 1985, she wrote and starred in her own one-off special for Channel 4, Emma Thompson: Up for Grabs.
Thompson achieved another breakthrough in 1987, when she had leading roles in two television miniseries: Fortunes of War, a World War II drama costarring Kenneth Branagh, and Tutti Frutti, a dark comedy about a Scottish rock band with Robbie Coltrane. For these performances, Thompson won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. The following year, she wrote and starred in her own sketch comedy series for BBC, Thompson, but this was poorly received. In 1989, she and Branagh—with whom she had formed a romantic relationship—starred in a stage revival of Look Back in Anger, directed by Judi Dench and produced by Branagh's Renaissance Theatre Company. Later that year, the pair starred in a televised version of the play.
Thompson's first cinema appearance came in the romantic comedy The Tall Guy, the feature-film debut from screenwriter Richard Curtis. It starred Jeff Goldblum as a West End actor, and Thompson played the nurse with whom he falls in love. The film was not widely seen, but Thompson's performance was praised in The New York Times, where Caryn James called her "an exceptionally versatile comic actress". She next turned to Shakespeare, appearing as Princess Katherine in Branagh's screen adaptation of Henry V. The film was released to great critical acclaim.
''Howards End'' and worldwide recognition (1990–1993)
Thompson and Branagh are considered by American writer and critic James Monaco to have led the "British cinematic onslaught" in the 1990s. She continued to experiment with Shakespeare in the new decade, appearing with Branagh in his stage productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream and King Lear. Reviewing the latter, the Chicago Tribune praised her "extraordinary" performance of the "hobbling, stooped hunchback Fool". Thompson returned to cinema in 1991, playing a "frivolous aristocrat" in Impromptu with Judy Davis and Hugh Grant. She was nominated for Best Supporting Female at the Independent Spirit Awards. Her second release of 1991 was another pairing with Branagh, who also directed, in the Los Angeles-based noir Dead Again. She played a woman who has forgotten her identity. Early in 1992, Thompson had a guest role in an episode of Cheers as Frasier Crane's first wife.File:AnthonyHopkins2.jpg|thumb|upright=0.85|Anthony Hopkins starred with Thompson in Howards End and The Remains of the Day
A turning point in Thompson's career came when she was cast opposite Anthony Hopkins and Vanessa Redgrave in the Merchant Ivory period drama Howards End, based on the novel by E. M. Forster. The film explored the social class system in Edwardian Britain, with Thompson playing an idealistic, intellectual, forward-looking woman who comes into association with a privileged and deeply conservative family. She actively pursued the role by writing to director James Ivory, who agreed to an audition and then gave her the part. According to the critic Vincent Canby, the film allowed Thompson to " into her own", away from Branagh. Upon release, Roger Ebert wrote that she was "superb in the central role: quiet, ironic, observant, with steel inside". Howards End was widely praised, a "surprise hit", and received nine Academy Award nominations. Among its three wins was the Best Actress trophy for Thompson, who was also awarded a Golden Globe and BAFTA for her performance. Reflecting on the role, The New York Times wrote that the actress "found herself an international success almost overnight".
For her next two films, Thompson returned to working with Branagh. In Peter's Friends, the pair starred with Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Imelda Staunton, and Tony Slattery as a group of Cambridge alumni who are reunited ten years after graduating. The comedy was positively reviewed, and Desson Howe of The Washington Post wrote that Thompson was its highlight: "Even as a rather one-dimensional character, she exudes grace and an adroit sense of comic tragedy." She followed this with Branagh's screen version of Much Ado About Nothing. The couple starred as Beatrice and Benedick, alongside a cast that also included Denzel Washington, Keanu Reeves, and Michael Keaton. Thompson was widely praised for the on-screen chemistry with Branagh and the natural ease with which she played the role, marking another critical success for Thompson. Her performance earned a nomination for Best Female Lead at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Thompson reunited with Merchant–Ivory and Anthony Hopkins to film The Remains of the Day, which has been described as a "classic" and the production team's definitive film. Based on Kazuo Ishiguro's novel about a housekeeper and butler in interwar Britain, the story is acclaimed for its study of loneliness and repression, though Thompson was particularly interested in looking at "the deformity that servitude inflicts upon people", since her grandmother had worked as a servant and made many sacrifices. She has named the film as one of the greatest experiences of her career, considering it to be a "masterpiece of withheld emotion". The Remains of the Day was a critical and commercial success, receiving eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and a second Best Actress nomination for Thompson.
Along with her Best Actress nomination at the 66th Academy Awards, Thompson was also nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category, making her the eighth performer in history to be nominated for two Oscars in the same year. It came for her role as the lawyer Gareth Peirce in In the Name of the Father, a drama about the Guildford Four starring Daniel Day-Lewis. The film was her second hit of the year, earning $65million and critical praise, and was nominated for Best Picture along with The Remains of the Day.