Emma Thompson

Emma Thompson was married to actor Kenneth Branagh from 1989 to 1995. They met while working on the BBC miniseries Fortunes of War and continued to collaborate in films including Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Dead Again, and Peter’s Friends.

She married actor Greg Wise in 2003. They have two children, Gaia and Tindyebwa Agaba.

Thompson studied English literature at the University of Cambridge, where she joined the Footlights comedy troupe. She was the troupe’s first female member and later became its vice president, co-directing its first all-female revue, Women’s Hour. Her Footlights contemporaries included Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.

After graduating in 1980, Thompson worked in BBC radio and toured with comedy shows. She wrote and performed with Fry and Laurie in the television sketch program Alfresco from 1983 to 1984. Her leading role in the West End production of Me and My Girl helped lead to her casting in Fortunes of War in 1987, for which she won a BAFTA Television Award.

Thompson’s performance as Margaret Schlegel in the 1992 adaptation of E.M. Forster’s Howards End established her as a major film actress. She won the Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Best Actress for the role.

In 1993 she appeared opposite Kenneth Branagh in Much Ado About Nothing and played Miss Kenton in The Remains of the Day. Thompson wrote the screenplay for Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility and played Elinor Dashwood in the 1995 film. Her screenplay won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, while her performance won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress.

Thompson expanded her writing career with the television adaptation Wit, which she wrote and starred in in 2001. She later wrote Nanny McPhee, adapting the film from books by Christianna Brand, and played the magical governess. She also wrote and starred in the sequel, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, released in 2010.

Her other screenwriting credits include Effie Gray, Bridget Jones’s Baby, and Last Christmas. She wrote the story and screenplay for Last Christmas and appeared in the film as Petra.

Thompson’s later acting credits included Love Actually, Stranger Than Fiction, Brideshead Revisited, and An Education. She also appeared in several films from the Harry Potter franchise as Professor Sybill Trelawney, beginning with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

She voiced Captain Amelia in Treasure Planet and Queen Elinor in Pixar’s Brave. In Saving Mr. Banks, she played author P. L. Travers, a performance that received critical acclaim. Her later roles included Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast, the Baroness in Cruella, Nancy Stokes in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, and Agatha Trunchbull in Matilda: The Musical.

Thompson has won Academy Awards for both acting and writing. She received the Best Actress Oscar for Howards End and the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Sense and Sensibility.

Her other honours include BAFTA Awards for acting, a Golden Globe for the Sense and Sensibility screenplay, and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2018 for her services to drama.