Emma Thompson | Biography, Movies, & Facts (2024)

Emma Thompson (born April 15, 1959, London, England) is an English actress and screenwriter, noted for her sophisticated and witty performances and later for her award-winning scripts.

Thompson, the daughter of actors Eric Thompson and Phyllida Law, grew up in a theatrical household that gave her an appreciation for the ridiculous. While studying English literature at the University of Cambridge, she performed with the comedy troupe Footlights. Soon after graduating in 1980, she ventured into drama, distinguishing herself opposite Kenneth Branagh in the British Broadcasting Corporation’s television miniseries Fortunes of War (1987). The couple became frequent collaborators and married in 1989 (divorced 1995). Thompson starred with Branagh in Henry V (1989), which he directed, and followed with two more Branagh-directed films, the thriller Dead Again (1991), in which the couple played dual roles, and the sentimental comedy Peter’s Friends (1992).

In 1992 Thompson portrayed a pragmatic bohemian who befriends a dying woman and later marries her widower (played by Anthony Hopkins) in the screen adaptation of E.M. Forster’s Howards End. For her performance, Thompson won both an Academy Award and a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for best actress. In 1993 she again starred opposite Branagh, in a film adaptation of Shakespeare’s play Much Ado About Nothing in which she played Beatrice to Branagh’s Benedick. The breezy, colourful Much Ado won the praise of critics and attracted an unusually large and diverse audience. That year Thompson also played a 1930s housekeeper in The Remains of the Day.

In 1995 Thompson wrote and starred in Sense and Sensibility, based on Jane Austen’s novel. The film was a critical and commercial success, and Thompson won an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay and a BAFTA Award for best actress. She also later married (2003) costar Greg Wise. In 2001 Thompson wrote the script for and starred in the television adaptation of the stage drama Wit, which centres on a college professor with terminal cancer. In the television miniseries Angels in America (2003), based on Tony Kushner’s play about AIDS in the 1980s, she played a homeless woman.

Thompson’s later work included such notable films as Love Actually (2003), Stranger Than Fiction (2006), and several film adaptations of J.K. Rowling’s popular Harry Potter series. In 2008 she starred in Brideshead Revisited, based on Evelyn Waugh’s novel, and in Last Chance Harvey, a romantic comedy set in London. The following year she appeared in two films set in 1960s England: the coming-of-age drama An Education, in which she portrayed a boarding-school headmistress, and the rock-and-roll-themed comedy Pirate Radio.

In the animated Brave (2012), Thompson provided the voice of a Scottish queen. She was acclaimed for her steely, sympathetic depiction of Mary Poppins (1934) author P.L. Travers in Saving Mr. Banks (2013). She then narrated the family drama (2014) and played the wife of author Bill Bryson (Robert Redford) in a 2015 screen adaptation of his 1998 memoir A Walk in the Woods. Her credits from 2017 included Beauty and the Beast, a remake of the Disney classic, and The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), wherein she gave a comical performance as the wife of a sculptor (Dustin Hoffman). That year Thompson also garnered critical acclaim for The Children Act, in which she played a judge contending with a marital crisis as she decides a case concerning a teenager refusing a blood transfusion on religious grounds.

Thompson then portrayed Goneril, one of King Lear’s treacherous daughters, in a televised adaptation of Shakespeare’s play and the British prime minister in the spy spoof Johnny English Strikes Again (both 2018). Her credits from 2019 included the stop-motion animated comedy Missing Link, in which she provided the voice of a yeti elder. That year she also starred as a talk show host who hires a woman of colour (Mindy Kaling) to diversify her all-white-male writing team in Late Night. Thompson later lent her voice to the family comedy Dolittle (2020). In 2021 Thompson played a demanding fashion designer in Cruella, a live-action comedy about the early life of the villain from the Disney classic One Hundred and One Dalmatians.

Thompson resumed her screenwriting career with the family film Nanny McPhee (2005), adapted from a series of books by Christianna Brand, and played the titular role, a governess with magical powers. She wrote and starred in the sequel, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010; U.S. title Nanny McPhee Returns) as well. Thompson also wrote the screenplay for Effie Gray (2014), an examination of the marriage of art critic John Ruskin; she appeared in the film in a supporting role.

Thompson was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2018.