Multiple-award winner Emma Thompson won her first Oscar in 1992, for her portrayal of Margaret in Howard's End, opposite Anthony Hopkins. Her second Oscar came to her in 1995, for her screen adaptation of Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility, making her the only person to have won Academy Awards for both acting and writing. She is also one of a short list of performers to have been nominated for both a Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor award in the same year, when, in 1993, she was nominated for Best Actress for her performance as a housekeeper in Merchant-Ivory's The Remains of the Day, again opposite Hopkins, and Best Supporting Actress for her turn as a barrister in In the Name of the Father. The list of other awards she has won is long, including Golden Globes and others from Los Angeles Film Critics Circle, BAFTA and Boston Society of Film Critics. In 1997 she took home the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series, for her turn as a British actress named "Emma Thompson" who reveals she's a lesbian from Ohio, on the comedy series Ellen.
Born in London, England, on April 15, 1959, Thompson studied English literature at Cambridge University, where, in the early 1980s, she co-wrote, co-produced and co-directed Cambridge University's first all-female revue "Woman's Hour." She played a variety of roles in England's TV show Cambridge Footlight's Revue and went on to perform on the TV show Alfresco in 1983. In 1985, she starred in the West End musical Me and My Girl.
Other television credits include Fortunes of War (1985), Tutti Frutti (1987), Thompson (BBC-TV variety series which she hosted and wrote, 1988), Cheers (playing Frasier Crane's first wife, Nanny Gee, 1992) and The Blue Boy (1994).
Thompson has performed on the stage in Look Back in Anger, King Lear and A Midsummer Night's Dream (all in 1989).
In 2001, she returned to acting after a three-year hiatus, when she took time to write the script for Victor: An Unfinished Song, a biopic of Chilean folk singer Victor Jara (and to be with her new baby). Thompson portrayed a professor who develops ovarian cancer in the HBO adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit, directed by Mike Nichols, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. She and Nichols co-wrote the screenplay, winning an Emmy nomination for writing and one for Thompson for her starring role in the production.
In 2003, she reunited with Nichols to play the Angel in the HBO miniseries adaptation of Angels in America, and Thompson received both a SAG nomination and an Emmy nomination for best actress in a Television Movie or Miniseries.
Thompson and actor/director Kenneth Branagh divorced after five years of marriage. She is now married to actor Greg Wise and they are the parents of a daughter.
(born April 15, 1959, London, Eng.) British actress and screenwriter. After graduating from the University of Cambridge, she acted on stage and television and won acclaim in the miniseries Fortunes of War (1987). While married to Kenneth Branagh (1989 – 94), she appeared in several of his films, including Henry V (1989), Dead Again (1991), and Much Ado About Nothing (1993). She later starred in Howards End (1992, Academy Award), The Remains of the Day (1993), Sense and Sensibility (1995), for which she won an Academy Award for best screenplay, and Primary Colors (1998).
"I place a high moral value on the way people behave. I find it repellent to have a lot, and to behave with anything other than courtesy in the old sense of the word -- politeness of the heart, a gentleness of the spirit."
One of the first ladies of contemporary British stage and cinema, Emma Thompson has won equal acclaim for her work as an actress and a screenwriter. For a long time known as Kenneth Branagh's other half, Thompson was able to demonstrate her considerable talent to an international audience with Oscar-winning mid-1990s work in such films as Howards End and Sense and Sensibility.
Born April 15, 1959 in Paddington, West London, Thompson grew up in a household well-suited for creative expression. Both of her parents were actors, her father, Eric Thompson, the creator of the popular TV series The Magic Roundabout, and her actress mother, Phyllida Law, a cast member of This Poisoned Earth (1961), Otley (1968) and several other films. Thompson and her sister, Sophie (who also became an actress), enjoyed a fairly colorful upbringing; as Emma later said, "I was brought up by people who tended to giggle at funerals." She excelled at school, was well liked, and went on to enroll at Cambridge University in 1978. It was at Cambridge that Thompson started performing as part of the legendary Footlights Group, once home to various members of Monty Python, who provided a huge inspiration to the fledgling comedienne. Unfortunately, Thompson's studies and her work with fellow Footlights members Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry were interrupted when her father had a debilitating stroke. Thompson went home for a few months, where she taught him how to speak again. After her return to Cambridge, she graduated in 1980 with a degree in English, and she got her first break working for a short-lived BBC radio show.
Personal tragedy struck for Thompson in 1982 when her father died of a heart attack. Ironically, it was in the wake of this turmoil that her professional life began to move forward: she got a job touring with the popular satire Not the Nine O'Clock News and worked with co-conspirators Fry and Laurie on the popular BBC comedy sketch show Alfresco. This led to Thompson's biggest break to date when she was picked for the lead in a revised version of the musical Me and My Girl. Coincidentally featuring a script by Fry, the show proved popular and established Thompson as a respected performer. She stayed with the show for over a year, after which she got her next big break when she was cast as one of the leads in the miniseries Fortunes of War (1988). The other lead happened to be Kenneth Branagh, and the two were soon collaborating off-screen as well as on. Following Thompson's BAFTA Award for her work on the series (as well as a BAFTA for her role on the TV series Tutti Frutti), she helped Branagh form his own production company, Renaissance Films. In 1989, the same year that she starred in the nutty satire The Tall Guy (which teamed her with Black Adder stalwarts Rowan Atkinson, Richard Curtis and Mel Smith)
and in a televised version of Look Back in Anger with Branagh, she appeared as the French queen in Branagh's acclaimed adaptation of Henry V.
Following the success of Henry V, Thompson had a droll turn as a frivolous aristocrat in Impromptu (1990) and then collaborated with Branagh on the noirish suspense thriller Dead Again in 1991. The film proved a relative hit on both sides of the Atlantic, and it further established the now-married Branagh and Thompson as the First Darlings of contemporary British theatre. The following year, Thompson came into her own with her starring role in Merchant Ivory's Howards End. She won a number of awards, including an Oscar, BAFTA, and Golden Globe for her portrayal of Margaret Schlegel, and she found herself an international success almost overnight.
After a turn in the ensemble comedy Peter's Friends that same year, Thompson starred as Beatrice opposite Branagh's Benedict in his adaptation of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing in 1993. That year proved an unqualified success for the actress, who was nominated for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Oscars, the former for her portrayal of a repressed housekeeper in Merchant Ivory's The Remains of the Day and the latter for her role as Daniel Day-Lewis's lawyer in In the Name of the Father. Although she didn't win either award, Thompson continued her triumphant streak when -- after starring in Junior in 1994 -- she adapted and starred in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility in 1995. Directed by Ang Lee, the film proved popular with critics and audiences alike, and it won Thompson a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. She also earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination, a BAFTA Best Actress Award, and a Golden Globe for Best Adapted Screenplay.
1995 also proved to be a turning point in Thompson's personal life, as, after a much-publicized separation, she and Branagh divorced. Just as well publicized was Thompson's subsequent relationship with Sense and Sensibility co-star Greg Wise. The somewhat tumultuous quality of her love life mirrored that of Dora Carrington, the character she played that year in Carrington. This story of the famed Bloomsbury painter was not nearly as successful as Sense, and Thompson was not seen again on the screen until 1997, when she starred in Alan Rickman's The Winter Guest. The film -- which featured the actress and her mother, Law, playing an estranged daughter and mother -- received fairly positive reviews. The following year, Thompson continued to win praise for her work with a starring role in Primary Colors and a guest spot on the sitcom Ellen, for which she won an Emmy. In 1999, Thompson announced her plans for semi-retirement: pregnant with Wise's child, she turned down a number of roles -- including that of God in Dogma -- in order to concentrate on her family. The two married in July 2003.
In the years that followed Thompson would still remain fairly active onscreen, with roles as a frustrated wife in Love Actually (which found her BAFTA nominated for Best Supporting Actress) and a missing journalist whose husband (played by Antonio Bandaras) is looking for answers in Missing Argentina (which marked the second collaboration, after Carrington, between Thompson and director Christopher Hampton) serving to whet the appetites of longtime fans. For her role as a respected English professor who is forced to re-evaluate her life in Mike Nichols' made-for-television drama Wit (2001), the renowned veteran actress and screenwriter would earn Emmy nominations for both duties. Following an angelic turn in the HBO mini-series Angels in America, Thompson essayed a pair of magical roles in both Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Nanny McPhee - in which she potrayed a governess who utilizes supernatural powers to reign in her unruly young charges.
Thompson then joined the cast of Marc Forster's fantasy comedy Stranger than Fiction, which Columbia slated for U.S. release in November of 2006. She plays Kay Eiffel, an author of thriller and espionage novels suffering from a massive writer's block. The central character in Eiffel's book (an IRS agent played by Will Ferrell) hears Kay's audible narration and - realizing that she's planning to kill him off - tries to find a way to stop her, with the help of Professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman). ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi
Thompson was born in Paddington, London, England. Her father was the actor Eric Thompson, best known for having written and narrated The Magic Roundabout, shown on BBC children's television in the 1960s and 1970s. Her mother is the Scottish actress Phyllida Law. Thompson's younger sister is actress Sophie Thompson. Thompson has spent part of her life in Scotland and has stated that she "feel[s] Scottish".[1]
Thompson went to Camden School for Girls[2] and then read English at Newnham College, Cambridge where she was a member (along with fellow actors Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Tony Slattery) and vice-president of the university's comedy troupe, the Footlights. Her acting talent was so impressive that agent Richard Armitage signed her to a contract while she was still two years away from graduation. Thompson graduated from Cambridge in 1980. Shortly afterward, she came to fame with a leading role opposite Robert Lindsay in the Leicester Haymarket Theatre's production of the musical Me and My Girl, which had just been rescripted by Stephen Fry.
Career
Thompson's earliest television appearances included the comedy sketch show Alfresco, broadcast in 1983 and 1984 (as well as its three-part pilot There's Nothing to Worry About, shown in 1982), which also featured Ben Elton, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. Also in 1984 she guested alongside Fry and Laurie in the episode "Bambi" of the sitcom The Young Ones, playing Miss Money-Sterling. Her breakthrough began in 1987 with her role as red-haired rock guitarist Suzi Kettles in the cult TV series Tutti Frutti. This was followed by acclaim for the BBC series Fortunes of War in which she starred with her then future husband, Kenneth Branagh. For these two 1987 roles she won a BAFTA for Best Actress. In 1988, she starred in and wrote the eponymous Thompson comedy sketch series for BBC1; the series was not successful with audiences or critics. Described in Time Out magazine as "very clever-little-me-ish",[citation needed] it has never been repeated in Britain despite her Oscar successes, and Thompson has not returned to the sketch comedy field.
Thompson won her next Oscar in 1996, for best adapted screenplay for her adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, a film directed by Ang Lee, in which she also played the Oscar-nominated lead role opposite Hugh Grant. She has said that she keeps both of her award statues in her downstairs bathroom, citing embarrassment at placing them in a more prominent place.[3]
Thompson's recent television work has included a starring role in the 2001 HBO drama Wit, in which she played a dying cancer patient, and 2003's Angels in America, playing multiple roles, including one of the titular angels. Her Emmy Award was as a guest star in a 1997 episode of the show Ellen;[4] in this episode she played a fictionalised parody of herself: a closeted lesbian more concerned with the media finding out she is actually American. She also appeared in an episode of Cheers in 1992 titled "One Hugs, the Other Doesn't".
Thompson at the London premiere of Nanny McPhee, 2005
While at Cambridge, Thompson was romantically involved with actor Hugh Laurie,[6] a fellow Footlights member and an undergraduate at Selwyn College, just across the road from Newnham. Thompson continues her friendship with Laurie.
Thompson married actor Greg Wise in 2003 in Dunoon, Scotland, where she has a second home.[7] The couple have a daughter, Gaia Romilly, born in 1999. In 2003, the couple informally adopted a 16-year-old Rwandan refugee named Tindyebwa Agaba. They successfully resisted his deportation back to Rwanda, his family having been killed in the genocide.[8]
Controversy
At a visit to Exeter University in November 2010 for a lecture titled 'All Africans Now', Thompson stated that Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party would "love Exeter. He would feel very comfortable here", in reference to Exeter University's low number of ethnic minority students. Her remarks were responded to by from Exeter Conservative councillor, Jeff Coates, who said "It's a very strange accusation to make. For heaven's sake, this is a country on the north-west fringes of Europe".[9]
Thompson came in for criticism for a comment on The Late Late Show on US television in August 2010, regarding residents of the Isle of Wight's attitude to homosexuals, remarking that they 'stone homosexuals'.[10] Thompson later apologised, stating that her comments were meant to refer to the Isle of Man instead.[11]
Activism
Environmental work
Thompson in 2008
Thompson is a supporter of Greenpeace. It was announced on 13 January 2009 that, with three other members of the organisation, she had bought land near the village of Sipson, under threat from a proposed third runway for Heathrow Airport.[12] It was hoped that possession of the land, half the size of a football pitch, would make it possible to prevent the government from carrying through its plan to expand the airport.
Bought for an undisclosed sum from a local land owner, the plot was to be split into small squares and sold across the globe. Thompson said, "I don't understand how any government remotely serious about committing to reversing climate change can even consider these ridiculous plans. It's laughably hypocritical. That's why we've bought a plot on the runway. We'll stop this from happening even if we have to move in and plant vegetables."[13]
Political and religious views
Thompson has said of her religious and political views: "I'm an atheist; I suppose you can call me a sort of libertarian anarchist. I regard religion with fear and suspicion. It's not enough to say that I don't believe in God. I actually regard the system as distressing: I am offended by some of the things said in the Bible and the Qur'an and I refute them."[14] Despite this, she says that the guiding moral principles, ethical principles and much of the philosophy of Christianity is very good and that she celebrates Christmas.[15] She told the BBC Andrew Marr Show in March 2010 that she had been a member of the Labour Party "all my life."[16] Thompson is also a Palestinian human rights activist, having been a member of the British-based ENOUGH! coalition that seeks to end the "Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank."[17]
Infringement accusation
In 2011, playwright, Gregory Murphy, accused Emma Thompson of misappropriating his Off-Broadway and West End theatre 2009 play and subsequent screenplay, "The Countess," about the bizarre "love triangle" between John Ruskin, Effie Gray and John Everett Millais.[18] Murphy asserts that copies of his play and screenplay were sent to her and her husband, Greg Wise, through a mutual friend. After obtaining a copy of a screenplay titled, "Effie", credited to Thompson and Wise, Murphy contacted the film's producers, noting that "Effie" was distinctly related to Murphy's own screenplay in its "time-frame, character development, structure and tone."[19]
Thompson asserts that she has never seen "The Countess", read its screenplay, or ever received a copy from the mutual friend, who is willing to testify that he never gave her a copy. She maintains that all similarities between "Effie" and "The Countess" are simply the result of them being based on the same historical events.[19]
Thompson met with Murphy at her home in an attempt to reach an agreement, and there followed over a number of months discussion of a possible writer's credit on the film and payment to Murphy. However no settlement could be reached to the satisfaction of both parties.
Thompson was expected to go into production on "Effie" in August 2011. However, she must "be able to demonstrate that there is no validity to Mr. Murphy's claim of infringement" to close the financing for the film.[18]
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