Emma Thompson

About

Emma Thompson is a proper farmhouse cheddar: warm, familiar, a little crumbly around the edges, and far sharper than it first lets on. She makes you comfortable, then she gets you. Howards End lets her play the strength and vulnerability of a woman navigating rigid class lines, and Thompson makes the moral centre of the film feel completely lived-in. The Remains of the Day is all about restraint. She plays a housekeeper in a grand house, and the entire performance lives in what she is not allowed to say. Every glance and polite refusal carries a quiet, bitter tang. Sense and Sensibility, which she also wrote, gives her Elinor Dashwood, a woman whose good sense is constantly at war with her emotions. She keeps both sides visible, every crumple and re-composition of self. Love Actually is the moment the cheese goes soft in the middle, then breaks your heart with a single, silent cry in a bedroom. In Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, she plays a woman rediscovering herself, vulnerable and funny all at once. Thompson has always understood that the familiar flavour can hide the most complex depths, and she brings them to every scene.