Getting to Know: Emma Thompson

With Good Luck to You, Leo Grande new on disc and Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical and What's Love Got to Do With It? heading for cinemas, what better time to get to know Emma Thompson?

Four decades have passed since Emma Thompson first stepped into the limelight. Born into a show business family, she has done a little bit of everything, from sketches and stand-up to acting and writing. Indeed, these latter skills earned her a unique place in Oscar history. She's yet to test herself as a director, but chances are pretty good she'd excel at that, too.

On the Street Where She Lives

Emma Thompson was born in Paddington in London on 15 April 1959. She was the daughter of writer-performer Eric Thompson and actress Phyllida Law, and Emma and younger sister Sophie were raised in a cultivated family atmosphere in the same West Hampstead street where she now lives next door to her 90 year-old mother.

When she was seven, Emma was given a box of sweets after having had her tonsils removed. When her nanny ate them, she persuaded Sophie to run away from home. As she later recalled, 'We went around the corner and ate sandwiches behind a tree. It was the naughtiest thing I ever did.' Less happily, Thompson also remembers being forcibly kissed by the elderly magician who had been hired to perform at her birthday party.

Eric and Phyllida had met while performing at the Old Vic. Although he had small roles in such features as Basil Dearden's Pool of London (1951) and John Boulting's Lucky Jim (1957), Eric was better known for his work on children's television at the BBC. While presenting Play School (1964-67), he was commissioned to write and voice the English-language storylines for The Magic Roundabout (1965-77), which was took its visuals from Serge Danot's stop-motion French series, Le Manège enchanté.

Characters like Florence, Mr Rusty, Zebedee the jack-in-the-box, Brian the snail, Dylan the rabbit, Ermintrude the cow, and Dougal the sugar lump guzzling dog became teatime favourites with the entire family, as Eric Thompson's witty narration had a sophistication that appealed to adults, as well as children. In addition to the 441 five-minute episodes, there was also a feature film, Dougal and the Blue Cat (1970). This is available to rent from Cinema Paradiso, along with a number of titles from the digitally animated series that followed Dave Borthwick, Jean Duval, and Frank Passingham's 2005 feature, The Magic Roundabout.

Phyllida Law hails from Glasgow, but went to school in Bristol. She planned to become a stage designer at the Old Vic School, but decided to act instead. Following her film debut in Dick Clement's Otley (1968), she appeared in Ennio De Conchi's Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973). But she was more often seen on stage and television until the mid-1990s, when she started landing prominent supporting roles in such comedies as Sara Sugarman's Mad Cows (1999), Nigel Cole's Saving Grace (2000), Craig Ferguson's I'll Be There (2003), Roger Goldby's The Waiting Room (2007), and Adriana Trigiani's Then Came You (2020), as well as period dramas like Bernard Rose's Anna Karenina (1997), Chris Noona's Miss Potter (2006), Rodrigo Garcia's Albert Nobbs (2011), and Alan Rickman's A Little Chaos (2014).

All of these titles are available with a single click from Cinema Paradiso. Law also teamed with John Hurt in Michael Davies's Oscar-nominated short, Love At First Sight (2010). She's also acted opposite Emma on several occasions and alongside Sophie once, in Douglas McGrath's Emma (1996). The sisters have never appeared in the same production, although they were cast as Mafalda Hopkirk (Sophie) and Professor Sybil Trelawney (Emma) in different parts of David Yates's dualogy, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2010-11).

Having quit school at 15, Sophie actually beat Emma on to the screen, as she played Penelope in five episodes of the ITV series, A Traveller in Time (1978). Unlike Emma, Sophie went to drama school (the Old Vic, like her parents) before making her feature bow alongside Michael Palin in Richard Loncraine's The Missionary (1982). She was seen by millions as Lydia (the bride unable to wait for her nuptial night) in Mike Newell's Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994).

Having played Mary Musgrave in Roger Michell's adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion (1995), Sophie took character parts in such high-profile pictures as Pat O'Connor's Dancing At Lughnasa (1998), Robert Altman's Gosford Park (2001), and Ryan Murphy's Eat Pray Love (2010). In between racking up six Olivier nominations for her work in the West End, Sophie also graced such diverse features as Eric Styles's Relative Values (2000), Douglas McGrath's Nicholas Nickleby (2002), Ed Bye's Fat Slags (2004), Lucy Akhurst's Morris: A Life With Bells On (2009), and Victoria Wood's That Day We Sang (2014). This wonderfully diverse CV is also available on high-quality disc from Cinema Paradiso.

Both sisters attended Camden School for Girls, where Emma appeared in a one production. She did, however, write some sketches for a charity show with Martin Bergman from the nearby University College School. Having taken her A levels in English, French, and Latin Thompson took up a place to study English at Newnham College, Cambridge in 1978. It was here that her outlook on life was changed by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), a book about the roles that Victorian female writers had to assume in order to express themselves. Another tome to shape her worldview from this period was Robert Tressell's The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (1914), which politicised Thompson and made her a life-long member of the Labour Party.

Dyeing her hair red and donning dungarees, Thompson became a punk. She also acquired an ambition to become a comedian like Lily Tomlin. To this end, she gravitated towards the university's Amateur Dramatic Club. But, at Bergman's invitation, she found a home with the famous Cambridge Footlights troupe that had spawned such comic luminaries as the Beyond the Fringe duo, Peter Cook and Jonathan Miller, and Monty Python stalwarts John Cleese, Graham Chapman, and Eric Idle.

Having appeared in the pantomime, Aladdin, Thompson became Vice-President of Footlights in 1980 and co-directed its first all-female revue, Woman's Hour. She dated Simon McBurney and Hugh Laurie, who followed his Olympic gold medallist father by rowing in the 1980 University Boat Race against Oxford. He was also a member of Footlights and recalled their friendship in a speech at Thompson's Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony in 2010. 'Everything she did just oozed talent,' he declared. 'She said talented things, she wore talented clothes, she rode a talented bicycle, she made talented spaghetti.'

Fellow Footlights member Stephen Fry was equally effusive. 'There was no doubt that Emma was going the distance,' he told one interviewer. 'Our nickname for her was Emma Talented.' She earned the epithet in 1981, when she joined Fry, Laurie, Tony Slattery, Paul Shearer, and Penny Dwyer in The Cellar Tapes, which won the inaugural Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This toured the UK and Australia before being shown on television in 1982. But that proved a sobering year, as Eric Thompson died of a heart attack at the age of 52. Emma later reflected on how his loss tore the family to pieces. But she has also suggested that '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.'

A Sketchy Start

In 1982, Thompson made her professional bow in the touring cast of Not the Nine O'Clock News. Cinema Paradiso users can relive some of the classic sketches featuring Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith, Griff Rhys-Jones, and Pamela Stephenson on The Best of Not the Nine O'Clock News (2003). Also in 1982, Thompson, Fry, and Laurie joined forces with Ben Elton for There's Nothing to Worry About!, a sketch show that was only shown in the Granada region. Following Thompson's solo trip to the Fringe in Short Vehicle (1983), the quartet came together again as the Footlights College team opposing Scumbag College in the University Challenge showdown in the 1984 Bambi episode of The Young Ones (1982-84). The same year saw Thompson in a walk-on in Slags, an episode of The Comic Strip Presents... (1980-2016) that was headlined by Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders (who also scripted).

Fry and Laurie came calling again with a slot in their one-off BBC show, The Crystal Cube (1983), which was followed by another sketch show, Alfresco (1983-84), which added Robbie Coltrane to the strength. Series television gave Thompson the flexibility to take over the role of Sally Smith in Fry's revival of Noel Gay's classic musical, Me and My Girl (1985), which had won the Olivier Award for Best Musical. During her 15-month stint, she wrote and headlined a Channel Four special, Emma Thompson: Up For Grabs (1985), which included Phyllida Law in the cast. It was coolly received, however, and she decided to spread her wings after tiring of doing 'The Lambeth Walk' every night.

In 1987, Thompson picked up a guitar to play aspiring Scottish rocker Suzi Kettles, who joins The Majestics, a struggling combo fronted by her old classmate Danny McGlone (Robbie Coltrane) in John Byrne's six-time BAFTA-winning BBC series, Tutti Frutti. Buoyed by the success, she signed up for her own sketch show, Thompson (1988). The critics were far from kind, but she didn't have time to dwell, as she was invited to make her feature debut, as nurse Kate Lemmon, in Mel Smith's The Tall Guy (1989). A knockabout sex scene involving Thompson and Jeff Goldblum received as many column inches as the song 'He's Packing His Trunk'. But the headlines around this time were all focussed on Thompson's romance with fellow rising star, Kenneth Branagh.

Ken'n'Em

Before 1987, Thompson had largely been regarded as a comic performer. Everything changed when she was paired with Kenneth Branagh as Guy and Harriet Pringle in writer Alan Plater and director James Cellan Jones's much-lauded 1987 adaptation of Olivia Manning's bestselling Fortunes of War hexalogy. Set in the Balkans and the Middle East during the Second World War, the series revealed a new side of Thompson, who won the BAFTA for Best Actress in conjunction for her work in Tutti Frutti.

As romance blossomed, Thompson and Branagh were cast together again, as Jimmy and Alison Porter in Judi Dench's version of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, which had previously been filmed by Tony Richardson in 1959, with Richard Burton as the 'angry young man' and Mary Ure as the wife tied to the 'kitchen sink'. More significantly, Thompson played the French princess, Katherine, in Branagh's Oscar-nominated adaptation of William Shakespeare's Henry V (both 1989). As this had been previously brought to the screen by Laurence Olivier in 1944, the press started comparing Branagh and Thompson to Olivier and Vivien Leigh.

Moreover, they gave them the nickname 'Ken'n'Em' in hyping them as the latest showbiz power couple. Yet, the pair fought to protect their privacy and refused to be interviewed or photographed together. While the 29 year-old Branagh drew flak for publishing an autobiography to raise funds for his Renaissance Theatre Company, Thompson sidestepped the media circus to appear in a couple of Theatre Night presentations for the BBC ('Knuckle' and 'The Winslow Boy', both 1989). She also earned a nomination for Best Supporting Female at the Independent Spirit Awards for her work as Claudette, Duchess of d'Antan in James Lapine's Impromptu (1991), an account of the relationship between Polish composer Frédéric Chopin (Hugh Grant) and the French writer, George Sand (Judy Davis).

The same year also saw Thompson guest as children's entertainer Nanette Guzman, the first wife of Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), in the 'One Hugs, the Other Doesn't' episode of Cheers (1982-93). She also reunited with Branagh for Dead Again (1991), a neo-noir that shifted between monochrome and colour, as the action switched between 1949 and the present.

In addition to directing, Branagh also took the dual roles of composer Roman Strauss and private eye Mike Church, while Thompson also doubled up as Margaret Strauss and an amnesiac named Grace. Full of Hitchcockian flourishes, the film fell foul of the critics, who delighted in dubbing the now-married Branaghs 'luvvies'. They also sharpened their pencils when Thompson's Footlights chums Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, and Tony Slattery were cast in Branagh's Peter's Friends (1992). She played Maggie Chester in an ensemble dramedy set in a sprawling country manor over the New Year holiday that many compared unfavourably to Lawrence Kasdan's The Big Chill (1983), which is also available to rent from Cinema Paradiso for a nostalgic double bill.

The wintry provinces were replaced by Tuscan sunshine for Branagh's interpretation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, in which he pitched his Benedick against Thompson's Beatrice, while Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves looked on admiringly as Dons Pedro and John. Thompson drew a Best Female Lead nomination at the Independent Spirit Awards, but Reeves received a Golden Raspberry nod for Worst Supporting Actor, only to lose out to Woody Harrelson for Adrian Lyne's Indecent Proposal (both 1993).

With sections of the media bent on rubbishing Branagh and Thompson no matter what they did, certain journalists took ghoulish delight in exposing the affair between Branagh and Helena Bonham Carter during the filming of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994). Having already been suffering from depression as the couple drifted apart, Thompson was devastated by this very public betrayal. She has since revealed that 'I fell in love with Ken because he was like my father, very funny, very witty, a self-made man from a working-class background who had taught himself to get on in life. He also has a beautiful voice - as did my Dad.' But she refused to hide away following the announcement of the separation in September 1995 and has since forgiven Bonham Carter for an episode she now considers to be 'blood under the bridge'.

Making Oscar History

While her private life was proving painful, Thompson's career was going from strength to strength. Following a conversation with Paul Verhoeven about Basic Instinct, she contacted James Ivory about playing Margaret Schlegel in Merchant-Ivory's forthcoming adaptation of E.M. Forster's Howards End (both 1992). 'I know how to do this,' she wrote, 'I know this woman so well.'

Thompson proved to be as good as her word, as she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also received a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for her poignant performance alongside Anthony Hopkins. Indeed, such was her rapport with Hopkins that Ivory teamed them again as Stevens and Miss Kenton, the butler and housekeeper at Darlington Hall in The Remains of the Day (1993), which was adapted from the Booker Prize-winning novel by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Further acclaim came for Thompson's work as lawyer Gareth Peirce in Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father (1993), which recreated events surrounding the prosecution of Gerry Conlan (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his father Giuseppe (Pete Postlethwaite) following a Guildford pub bombing by the IRA in 1974. Thompson received a Best Supporting nomination to go with her Best Actress citation for The Remains of the Day and joined a select band of actresses who have been nominated twice at the Oscars in a single year. The others are Fay Bainter (White Banners & Jezebel, 1938); Teresa Wright (The Pride of the Yankees & Mrs Miniver, 1942); Jessica Lange ( Frances & Tootsie, 1982); Sigourney Weaver (Gorillas in the Mist & Working Girl, 1988); Holly Hunter (The Piano & The Firm, 1993); Julianne Moore (Far From Heaven & The Hours, 2002); Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth: The Golden Age & I'm Not There, 2007); and Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story & Jojo Rabbit, 2019). To witness screen greatness in action, click on the titles to order your Cinema Paradiso double bills.

Critic Robert McCrum suggested that Thompson's change of fortunes had come about because 'she became the artist of lowered expectations and nuanced performance'. However, she was more grounded in her assessment. 'I am an instinctive actress,' she stated in one interview. 'I don't have technique because I never learnt any. I do the cerebral bit before I start. Then I just let it be. I allow whatever rises to rise naturally. You are tricking your subconscious. I work from the inside out.'

So far, Thompson had only appeared in British films and she found herself on the receiving end after making her Hollywood debut as Dr Diana Reddin opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in Ivan Reitman's pregnancy comedy, Junior. She also put in an uncredited appearance as Isabel in Steve Miner's My Father the Hero (both 1994). The critics were kinder, however, when she returned to the heritage sanctuary to play artist Dora Carrington opposite Jonathan Pryce's Lytton Strachey in Christopher Hampton's Bloomsbury Group drama, Carrington (1995).

Despite her mother's warning not to get bogged down in frock operas, Thompson had spent five years working on a screenplay based on Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. Producer Lindsay Doran has worked with Thompson on Dead Again and was certain she could do justice to Austen's subtle social satire. Although Branagh had been Doran's first choice, Ang Lee was hired to direct and Thompson agreed to play Elinor Dashwood alongside Kate Winslet as her sister, Marianne. The pair shared the acting honours as the film earned 12 BAFTA nominations to go with its Golden Bear triumph at the Berlin Film Festival. Seven Oscar nominations followed (although Lee was snubbed), with Thompson's victory in the Best Adapted Screenplay category making her the first person ever to win Academy Awards for acting and writing.

'I felt slightly apologetic about stealing from Jane Austen to make a movie,' Thompson later admitted, after having received her third nomination for Best Actress. Somewhat surprisingly, she has been ignored by the Academy ever since. But the Austen adaptation didn't just enhance Thompson's reputation. It also brought her lasting happiness, as she met future husband Greg Wise during the shoot. In addition to raising their daughter, Gaia, the couple also informally adopted 16 year-old Tindyebwa Agaba in 2003. A former Rwandan child soldier, he remains very much part of the family, as it shuttles between homes in Hampstead, Loch Eck, and Venice, where Thompson and Wise had become resident citizens prior to the Covid-19 epidemic.

Stardom on Her Own Terms

Following a two-year hiatus, Thompson returned to the screen opposite Phyllida Law as Frances in Alan Rickman's Scottish-set day in the life drama, The Winter Guest (1997). Thompson and Rickman were next cast together as FBI agent Sadie Hawkins and Detective David Friedman seeking to get the better of one another while investigating a murder in Sebastian Gutierrez's Judas Kiss (1998).

Driven and distracted by inner voices telling her 'try harder; must do better', Thompson accepted the part of Susan Stanton in Mike Nichols's adaptation of Primary Colors (1998), a bestseller based on the relationship between Bill and Hillary Clinton. John Travolta played the presidential candidate and Thompson got on so well with Nichols (whom she came to regard as a second father) that they collaborated on the tele-dramas, Wit (2001) and Angels in America (2003). Sadly, the former isn't available for rental, but the shaven-headed Thompson earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations as cancer patient Vivian Bearing in the former, which she also helped adapt from Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play. She took three roles in the latter mini-series, which was inspired by another Pulitzer winner written by Tony Kushner. Focussing on the AIDS crisis in mid-80s New York, it co-starred Meryl Streep and Al Pacino and broke the record set by Roots (1977) in converting 11 of its 21 Emmy nominations.

Thompson did win an Emmy, however, for her guest turn in an episode of Ellen de Generes's sitcom, Ellen (1994-98). She also joined forces with Wise and other celebrities for Hospital! (1997), a Channel Five comedy special, in which she played an Elephant Woman. However, she was rarely seen while undergoing IVF treatment, although she did cameo as fertility guru Druscilla in Ben Elton's Maybe Baby (2000) and voiced Captain Amelia in Ron Clements and John Musker's Disney disappointment, Treasure Planet (2002).

Having played Cecilia Rueda, a crusading journalist who disappears during the Dirty War in Christopher Hampton's Imagining Argentina, Thompson joined the ensemble of Richard Curtis's Love Actually (both 2003). Drawing on private heartache, she stole the film (and drew a BAFTA Best Supporting nomination) as Karen, who discovers that husband Harry (Alan Rickman) is having an affair while exchanging gifts on Christmas morning. As she confided in a 2013 interview, 'I've had so much bloody practice at crying in a bedroom then having to go out and be cheerful, gathering up the pieces of my heart and putting them in a drawer.'

Reaching a New Audience

Content to remain close to home as a new mother, Thompson embraced such supporting roles as Hogwarts Divination teacher Sybill Trelawney in Alfonso Cuarón's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). She returned in David Yates's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (2011), by which time she had established another popular children's franchise.

Inspired by Christianna Brand's Nurse Matilda books, Kirk Jones's Nanny McPhee (2005) reunited Thompson with Lindsay Doran, who again commissioned the actress to write the screenplay. Set in Victorian London, the action centres on undertaker Cedric Brown (Colin Firth), who is admonished by his late wife's great-aunt, Lady Adelaide Stitch (Angela Lansbury) for his inability to control his seven children. Enter Nanny McPhee, whose mix of discipline and magic saves the day and proved such a hit with younger audiences that Thompson returned in Susanna White's sequel, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010). Despite spending two decades bringing the films to the screen, Thompson's passion for the character has not abated and she is currently preparing a stage musical version with Gary Clark, who had written the songs for John Carney's Sing Street (2016).

Following a voiceover cameo as Lesa from the Evil Ski Team in Cory Edwards's animated gem, Hoodwinked! (2005), Thompson returned Stateside to play Karen Eiffel, the novelist who somehow starts narrating the everyday life of tax inspector Harold Crick in Marc Forster's comic fantasy, Stranger Than Fiction (2006). A clutch of character parts followed, including an uncredited turn as Alice Krippen, the scientist who has genetically engineered measles to cure cancer in Francis Lawrence's I Am Legend (2007).

She next assumed the role of Teresa Flyte, Marchioness of Marchmain that Claire Bloom had taken in Charles Sturridge's 1981 tele-adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Julian Jerrold directed the 2008 feature version, which saw Michael Gambon play Lord Marchmain and Ed Stoppard, Ben Whishaw, Hayley Atwill, and Felicity Jones play their children, Bridey, Sebstian, Julia, and Cordelia. Both versions can be found among the 100,000 titles in the Cinema Paradiso catalogue.

Thompson also guested as the early 1960s headmistress announcing that Jenny Mellor (Carey Mulligan) won't amount to much in Lone Scherfig's adaptation of journalist Lynn Barber's autobiographical tome, An Education. And she hooked up with Richard Curtis again to play Charlotte, the mother who dispatches her son Carl (Tom Sturridge) to stay with his godfather, Quentin (Bill Nighy), on a 1960s pirate radio vessel in The Boat That Rocked (both 2009).

A rare lead during this period came in Joel Hopkins's Last Chance Harvey (2008), which sees airport worker and aspiring writer Kate Walker form an attachment to American jingle writer Harvey Shine (Dustin Hoffman) when he comes to London for his estranged daughter's wedding. She moved on to another two-hander, A Song of Lunch (2010), which was directed by Niall MacCormick from a Christopher Reid poem about a book editor (Alan Rickman) lunching in a Soho restaurant with the old flame (Thompson) he hasn't seen since she jilted him for a bestselling novelist 15 years earlier.

As this brought Thompson her fourth Emmy nomination, an enterprising DVD label should surely twin it with 'Walking the Dogs', a 2012 entry in the Sky Arts Playhouse Presents series that sees Queen Elizabeth II (Thompson) dealing with an intruder (Eddie Marsan) in her Buckingham Palace bedroom. For that mattter, it's about time someone released Paul Murton's The Blue Boy (1994), an hour-long BBC Scotland drama, in which Marie and Joe Bonner (Adrian Dunbar) are haunted by the spirit of a boy who had drowned a century earlier in the loch abutting their hotel.

National Treasure or Loud-Mouthed Luvvie?

Three projects in 2012 rather summed up Emma Thompson's approach to her career as she entered her sixth decade. Having guested as new MIB chief, Agent O, in Barry Sonnenfeld's Men in Black 3 (a role she would reprise in F. Gary Gray's Men in Black: International, 2019), she reflected on Much Ado About Nothing with Francesco da Mosto in the BBC documentary, Shakespeare in Italy. She then provided the voice for Queen Elinor, who is turned into a bear in Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman's Brave and prompts spirited, but penitent daughter Princess Merida of DunBroch (Kelly Macdonald) to go on a perilous mission to save the kingdom.

Thompson played another mother dabbling with spells in Richard LaGravanese's adaptation of Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl's YA novel, Beautiful Creatures. In fact, Thompson not only plays wicked caster Sarafine Duchannes - who wants to lure daughter Lena (Alice Englert) to the dark side - but she also possesses the body of South Carolina housewife, Mavis Lincoln. There's deviousness of a very different kind on show in Joel Hopkins's The Love Punch (both 2013), however, as divorcees Richard (Pierce Brosnan) and Kate Jones (Thompson) seek revenge on Vincent Kruger (Laurent Lafitte), the French financier who has frittered away their savings and pension plan.

The highlight of Thompson's 2013, however, was John Lee Hancock's Saving Mr Banks, which recalls how Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) persuades author Pamela L. Travers (Thompson) to let his studio adapt her beloved children's stories as Mary Poppins (1964). Finding it a 'blissful joy' to embody someone so contradictory and difficult, Thompson was nominated for Best Actress at the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, and the Screen Actors Guild awards. However, she was bafflingly overlooked by the Academy and, when Meryl Streep emailed her friend to say how bad she felt that she had been nominated for John Wells's August: Osage County, Thompson settled for a one-word answer: 'Good.'

On the back of such acclaim, Thompson made her Broadway debut in returning to the stage for the first time in 24 years to play Mrs Lovett in the Lincoln Center revival of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (a role, ironically, that had been taken by Helena Bonham Carter in Tim Burton's 2007 take on Stephen Sondheim's ghoulish musical). A televised transmission of Thompson's larger than life turn earned her a sixth Primetime Emmy nomination. Meanwhile, she served as narrator of Jason Reitman's Men, Women & Children (2014), which sees various residents of a small Texan town have their lives disrupted by online addiction.

Between assignments, Thompson and Wise had been working on another screenplay. Based on the disastrous marriage of Victorian art critic, John Ruskin, to Scottish model, Euphemia Gray, the film was announced in 2008. However, playwrights Eva Pomerance and Gregory Murphy brought separate plagiarism suits against the production. Pomerance had her case dismissed, while judges accepted that a second draft submitted by Thompson during the hearing was sufficiently different from Murphy's 1999 Off-Broadway play, The Countess, for filming to commence. Refusing to pay legal fees or bonds, Murphy took his case to the Court of Appeals and was vindicated. Despite Wise starring as Ruskin, Dakota Fanning playing Gray, and Thompson cameoing as Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, Richard Laxton's Effie Gray (2013), was released without fanfare and undeservedly slipped through into the margins.

Notwithstanding her status as a national treasure, Thompson was dogged by more negative publicity over the next few years. It mattered not that she had travelled to Myanmar and across Africa on behalf of Action Aid. Or that she had joined Greenpeace on expeditions to Canada and Norway. When Thompson expressed doubts about Brexit at a Berlin press conference prior to the 2016 referendum, the press had a field day, especially after she described Britain as a 'tiny little cloud-bolted, rainy corner of sort-of Europe, a cake-filled, misery-laden, grey old island'. The Daily Telegraph ran the headline, 'National treasure or Britain's most annoying woman?', while Tory MP Conor Burns averred that 'Ms Thompson is typical of the worst sort of fat-cat luvvie. Most Brits will see the referendum as a celebration of the democracy our ancestors died to defend. Sadly, they also died to allow snooty ladies like Ms Thompson to vent their metropolitan elitist snobbery.'

Thompson defended her right to free speech by stating 'I think that anyone with any sort of voice has a duty to plug into what they think needs to be said, and say it.' She also claimed, 'We all need to speak up, and a woman who has got a louder voice needs to shout very loudly indeed.' However, she remained a target for the right-leaning media. Consequently, when she flew from Los Angeles to London to attend an Extinction Rebellion rally (having previously helped a charity buy land around Heathrow to prevent the building of a third runaway), she was mercilessly pilloried.

Nothing could distract Thompson from the day job, however. In 2015, she played opposite Robert Redford in Ken Kwapis's A Walk in the Woods, as travel writer Bill Bryson debates the merits of trekking the Appalachian Trail with his wife, Catherine, who feels that it would be too dangerous to travel alone. However, Thompson left a deeper impression with the few who saw Robert Carlyle's directorial debut, The Legend of Barney Thomson, in which she played Cemolina, a foul-mouthed, bingo-playing 77 year-old Glaswegian prostitute with a dark secret in her freezer. Ignore the killjoy reviews, this grim romp should be on every Cinema Paradiso wishlist.

What a Difference a Dame Makes

Thompson has been busier in the last seven years than she's ever been. She continued to take intriguing character roles like Dr Rosshilde, who conducts weekly drug tests on chef Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper) in John Wells's Burnt (2015). In addition to playing another medic, Dr Rawling, she also contributed to the screenplay of Sharon Maguire's Bridget Jones's Baby (2016), with Helen Fielding and Dan Mazer. The same year, she narrated Bruce Livesey's documentary short, The Doubt Machine: Inside the Koch Brothers' War on Climate Science, which explored the controversial eco theories of American industrialists Charles and David Koch.

A more substantial role came in Alone In Berlin (2016), Vincent Perez's adaptation of Hans Fallada's 1947 novel, Every Man Dies Alone. This had been inspired by working-class couple Otto and Elise Hampel, who had distributed anti-Nazi postcards around their home city following the death of their son during the Second World War. Thompson and Brendan Gleeson are splendidly matched, as Anna and Otto Quangel, with the latter replacing Mark Rylance shortly before shooting began.

Thompson managed to shoehorn five assignments into 2017, beginning with voicing the part of Mrs Potts in Bill Condon's live-action version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, in which she made a fine job of the Oscar-winning title song that had been sung by Angela Lansbury in Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise's original 1991 animation. Typically, Thompson followed this highly commercial venture by essaying Sylvia Pankhurst in Sea Sorrow, Vanessa Redgrave's deeply personal documentary about a century of refugee migration across Europe.

A reunion with Dustin Hoffman came in Noah Baumbach's The Meyerowitz Stories, in which Thompson played Maureen, the newly sober hippy third wife of ailing sculptor Harold Meyerowitz. This pleasingly chaotic family saga was followed by Richard Eyre's adaptation of Ian McEwan's The Children Act, which cast Thompson as judge Fiona Maye, whose marriage to academic Jack (Stanley Tucci) crumbles while she resolves a case involving Adam Henry (Fionn Whitehead), a teenager with leukaemia who is being denied a blood transfusion by his Jehovah's Witness parents.

Completing the year, Thompson guested as Elizabeth I in 'A Christmas Crow', a special episode of Upstart Crow (2016-), which was scripted by old friend, Ben Elton. She remained on the small screen to play Goneril, alongside Emily Watson (Regan) and Florence Pugh (Cordelia) in Richard Eyre's interpretation of Shakespeare's King Lear (2018), which boasted Anthony Hopkins in the title role. Sadly, this isn't currently available to rent, but Cinema Paradiso users can see Thompson playing the prime minister unconvinced by Rowan Atkinson's antipathy towards a Silicon Valley tycoon in David Kerr's Johnny English Strikes Again (2019), which completed the spy spoof trilogy started by Peter Howitt's Johnny English (2003) and Oliver Parker's Johnny English Reborn (2011).

Having become Dame Emma in the 2018 Birthday Honours, Thompson returned to the Commons as Vivienne Rook, the celebrity businesswoman who exploits her status to become a populist MP with dangerously divisive views in Russell T. Davies's dystopian BBC drama, Years and Years. She wielded power of a softer sort as chat show host Katherine Newbury in Nisha Ganatra's Late Night (both 2019), which was scripted by Mindy Kaling, who co-stars as a writer hired to arrest falling ratings.

Thompson was nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Comedy or Musical at the Golden Globes. But she made more headlines in 2019 when she resigned from Skydance Animation's Luck after the company hired John Lasseter, who had departed Disney after reports emerged of 'inappropriate hugging' and 'other missteps'. Jane Fonda and Whoopi Goldberg subsequently joined the cast of Peggy Holmes's 2022 comedy, which follows the ill-starred Sam Greenfield (Eva Noblezada) and a Scottish-accented black cat named Bob (Simon Pegg) into the Land of Luck.

By contrast, Chris Butler's Missing Link retained Thompson's voiceover services, as Dora, the elder who reluctantly welcomes a Sasquatch named Mr Susan Link (Zach Galifianakis) to meet his Yeti ancestors in the Himalayas. This offbeat stop-motion became the first non-computerised winner of the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature, although it lost out at the Oscars to Josh Cooley's Toy Story 4 (both 2019).

The following year, Thompson would voice Polynesia the macaw in Stephen Gaghan's Dolittle (2020), a reworking of the Hugh Lofting stories about a doctor who can talk to animals (Robert Downey, Jr) that proved a box-office flop en route to earning six nominations at the Golden Raspberry Awards. Alongside Jack Cooper Stimpson's climate change short, Extinction, Thompson squeezed the project in between two more features, Coky Giedroyc's How to Build a Girl and Paul Feig's Last Christmas (all 2019). Based on Caitlin Moran's bestselling novel, the former casts Thompson as Amanda Watson, the publisher who hires Wolverhampton wannabe Johanna Morrigan (Beanie Feldstein) to write a column. Inspired by a 1984 Wham single, the latter was co-scripted with Bryony Cummings from a story that Thompson had concocted with Greg Wise. She also cameos as Petra, the clinging Yugoslavian mother of Kate Andrich (Emilia Clarke), the store elf who makes a surprising discovery about London bicycle courier Tom Webster (Henry Golding).

'If nobody wants me to act, that's fine,' Thompson once told a reporter. 'In fact, I'm somewhat hibernatory.' Spending the Covid lockdowns in Scotland with her family, she lightened the load in 2021. However, she joined the narrators of Charlie Watts's Twelve Nights, a minute-long study of homelessness and the work of the Crisis charity. Moreover, her sole acting role of the year gave her the chance to play a rare villain, as Baroness von Hellman in Craig Gillespie's Cruella (2021), the designer fronting the fashion house where Estella (Emma Stone) works and the owner of the mansion where Estrella's mother, Catherine (Emily Beecham), had fallen from a balcony while being pursued by Dalmatians.

Having played Lady Marcham in Hugh Laurie's Britbox adaptation of Agatha Christie's Why Didn't They Ask Evans?, the 62 year-old Thompson literally bared all as Nancy Stokes, the widowed and retired religious studies teacher who hires a sex worker (Daryl McCormack) to help her achieve an orgasm in Sophie Hyde's Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (both 2022). This was the first feature scripted by comedian Katy Brand and Thompson moved on to another debut outing, as Shekhar Kapur's cross-cultural romcom, What's Love Got to Do With It? (both 2022), was scripted by Jemima Khan. Lily James stars as Zoe, a documentary film-maker whose disastrous love life drives mother Cath (Thompson) to distraction. However, her eyes are opened when she follows neighbour Kaz (Shazad Latif) to Lahore for his arranged marriage.

This is due in UK cinemas in early 2023, by which time audiences will have seen Thompson buried beneath make-up that took a team of five three hours to apply each day so that she could play Miss Agatha Trunchbull in Mattew Warchus's Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical (2022). Complete with songs by Tim Minchin and co-starring Alisha Weir as Matilda Wormwood and Lashana Lynch as Miss Jennifer Honey, this will be available on disc some time next year. In the meantime, Cinema Paradiso users can enjoy Mara Wilson getting the better of Pam Ferris in Danny DeVito's hilarious Matilda (1996).

As for what comes next, Thompson is keeping quiet. Perhaps more nominations will follow her inclusion for Leo Grande in the gender neutral acting categories at the British Independent Film Awards? One thing is for certain, whatever project she undertakes will continue the recent trend for fans and foes alike to expect the unexpected.