"Children are the most wonderful audiences. What's struck me most is that that they watch it so silently, until the end when they shriek and shout and clap."
Dame Emma Thompson, DBE, is a distinguished British actress, born 15 April 1959 in Paddington, London, and best known for a lot of Merchant Ivory
movies, as well as Sense and Sensibility, Dead Again, Stranger Than Fiction, Nanny McPhee and Saving Mr. Banks. Introduced Fry to Laurie, thus making her responsible for a veritable English institution. Also almost played God (it was decided that Alanis Morissette would be funnier). Has a very vitriolic friendship with Stephen Fry, who, despite being gay, has apparently seen her naked.
Thompson is also the only person who's won Academy Awards in both screenwriting (Sense and Sensibility) and acting (Howards End). Compare with Barbra Streisand, Laurence Olivier, George Clooney, and Michael Douglas, who also have unusual Oscar combinations.
Selected Filmography:
- The Young Ones (s2e1 Bambi, cameo)
- Henry V (Kenneth Branagh version)
- Peter's Friends
- Impromptu
- Howards End
- Cheers (one memorable episode in which she plays Frasier Crane's first wife)
- Much Ado About Nothing (Kenneth Branagh version)
- The Remains of the Day
- In the Name of the Father
- Junior
- Sense and Sensibility as Elinor Dashwood.
- Primary Colors
- Judas Kiss as FBI Agent Sadie Hawkins
- Treasure Planet as Captain Amelia (voice only).
- Angels in America
- Love Actually
- Harry Potter as Madam Trelawney.
- Nanny McPhee as Nanny McPhee.
- Stranger Than Fiction
- I Am Legend
- Brideshead Revisited
- Last Chance Harvey
- An Education
- The Boat That Rocked
- Men in Black (2012 — present) as Agent O:
- Men in Black 3 (2012)
- Men in Black: International (2019)
- Brave as Queen Elinor (voice only).
- Beautiful Creatures
- Saving Mr. Banks as P.L. Travers.
- Beauty and the Beast (2017) as Mrs. Potts.
- Years and Years as Viv Rook
- Late Night (2019)
- Last Christmas
- Dolittle
Tropes:
- Ability over Appearance:
- Treasure Island has the captain as a male. Treasure Planet changes it to a woman to accommodate Emma.
- She was, at 36, by all rights far too old to play 19-year-old Elinor Dashwood (aged to 25) in Sense and Sensibility — something about which nobody cared one jot after seeing even a fraction of her excellent performance in the film.
- Adam Westing: In Ellen she's caught making out with a woman, and encouraged to come out to the public...then gets cold feet about whether it could lead to the discovery of her even greater shame of being American. She won an Emmy for the performance, which included a perfect Midwestern accent.
- Beauty Inversion: In Nanny McPhee where she appears under old age prosthetics - and Nanny becomes more beautiful as the story goes on. Emma joked it took more make-up to have her appear beautiful.
- The Cameo: As the Headmistress in An Education.
- Cast the Expert: Very appropriate that she be chosen to play a writer in Stranger Than Fiction.
- Casting Gag: She plays Hugh Grant's sister in Love Actually, when they had played lovers in Sense and Sensibility.
- Dawson Casting: At 36 she played Elinor Dashwood who is around 19.
- Dyeing for Your Art: She gained thirty pounds for Love Actually.
- Enforced Method Acting:
- For Stranger Than Fiction she fed lines to Will Ferrell through an earpiece, so that his reaction to words other people can't hear would be more natural.
- She and Kate Winslet lived together while filming Sense and Sensibility in order to develop a natural sisterly chemistry.
- Fake Nationality: Sort of. She plays the Australian PL Travers in Saving Mr. Banks, but Travers had lost her accent and spoke with an English one at the time Emma plays her.
- Fake Scot: She voices Scottish Queen Elinor in Brave. It's quite good, helped no doubt by having Scottish family members.
- Leslie Nielsen Syndrome: Got her start doing various period dramas for Merchant & Ivory films. These days she's more likely to turn up in a comedy as 'that quirky English lady'. Even in the drama Saving Mr. Banks she still plays The Comically Serious.
- Actually inverted since she began her career in comedy alongside her old flame Hugh Laurie and Gay Best Friend Stephen Fry. Her current career path is more a reversion to the mean than a sudden shift. She has nothing left to prove and can do what she loves. Here's a good sample of how naturally funny she is.
- Actually inverted since she began her career in comedy alongside her old flame Hugh Laurie and Gay Best Friend Stephen Fry. Her current career path is more a reversion to the mean than a sudden shift. She has nothing left to prove and can do what she loves. Here's a good sample of how naturally funny she is
- Loads and Loads of Roles: For the TV adaptation of Angels in America she plays an angel, a homeless woman and Nurse Emily.
- Real-Life Relative: Her sister Sophie Thompson stars in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, though she appears in Part 1 and Emma in Part 2.
- So My Kids Can Watch: She took the role of Professor Trelawney to impress her daughter.
- Those Two Actors: With Kelly Macdonald in Nanny McPhee, Brave and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
- Throw It In!: In Brave she ad-libbed Elinor's line "there'll be fire and sword if it's not set right."
- What Could Have Been:
- She was nearly cast as Catherine Tromell in Basic Instinct but backed out of the deal.
- She also nearly played Emma Peel in The Avengers (1998). The role went to Uma Thurman.
- A kiss was filmed between her and Hugh Grant in Sense and Sensibility, but cut as it would have been inappropriate for the time the novel was written.
- Meryl Streep was interested in Miss Kenton in The Remains of the Day. As it was written with Emma in mind, it remains one of only three parts that Meryl has ever been turned down for.
- She quit the Skydance Animation film Luck in protest of the studio hiring the disgraced John Lasseter.
- Written by Cast Member: An Oscar-winning screenwriter herself, she has contributed to the scripts of many projects she's worked on.
