Emma Thompson’s career has moved between comedy, period drama, children’s films and sharp-edged contemporary roles, but one constant is her work as a writer as well as a performer. She won an Academy Award for acting in Howards End and another for adapting Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, an unusual double that makes her career notable both on screen and behind it.

Cambridge, comedy and the stage

Born in Hammersmith, London, on 15 April 1959, Thompson grew up in a family of performers: her father was actor and writer Eric Thompson, and her mother is Scottish actress Phyllida Law. She studied English at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she joined the Cambridge Footlights sketch-comedy troupe. In 1981, her Footlights team won the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for The Cellar Tapes. She graduated with upper second-class honours.

Thompson’s first professional stage work included a 1982 tour with a stage version of Not the Nine O’Clock News. Television followed, with appearances in There’s Nothing to Worry About! and the sketch series Alfresco, alongside fellow Footlights performers Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. In 1985, she joined the West End revival of the musical Me and My Girl, playing Sally Smith for 15 months. The production was a breakthrough, and the experience established her as a performer able to carry comedy on stage as well as in sketches.

Two television dramas brought wider attention in 1987. Thompson starred in Fortunes of War, a Second World War series, and Tutti Frutti, a comedy about a Scottish rock band. Her performances in both earned her the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. In the years that followed, she continued to move between television, theatre and film, including early screen work with Kenneth Branagh in Henry V and later collaborations in Dead Again and Much Ado About Nothing.

Howards End and international recognition

Thompson’s performance as Margaret Schlegel in James Ivory’s Howards End (1992), adapted from E. M. Forster’s novel, brought her international recognition. The film examines class and privilege in Edwardian Britain; Thompson played an idealistic, observant woman whose encounters with a wealthy, conservative family expose those divisions. She won both the Academy Award and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress, as well as a Golden Globe. The achievement marked her arrival as a leading figure in cinema, rather than only a television and stage performer.

In 1993, she appeared opposite Anthony Hopkins in The Remains of the Day, another literary adaptation shaped by questions of class, duty and emotional restraint. That year she was also nominated for an Academy Award for her supporting performance as lawyer Gareth Peirce in In the Name of the Father. The nominations recognised two markedly different roles in the same year. Her other work in this period included Peter’s Friends and Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing.

With Sense and Sensibility (1995), Thompson took on the combined demands of adaptation and performance. She wrote the screenplay from Jane Austen’s novel and played Elinor Dashwood, the eldest sister whose composure conceals strong feeling. The film, directed by Ang Lee and co-starring Kate Winslet, was widely praised. Thompson won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and received another Best Actress nomination. She remains the only person to have won Oscars for both acting and screenwriting. The screenplay also earned her a BAFTA and a Golden Globe.

Writing for audiences of different ages

Thompson’s writing has not been confined to literary adaptations. She wrote and starred in Nanny McPhee (2005), a family film based loosely on the Nurse Matilda stories she had read as a child. The project took nine years from the first book to the film’s release. Its story of a mysterious nanny and a family of unruly children became a commercial success, and Thompson wrote and starred in the sequel, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010). She also co-wrote the screenplay for Bridget Jones’s Baby and wrote the screenplay for Effie Gray.

Her screen work continued to range widely. She appeared in Love Actually (2003) as a wife confronting her husband’s infidelity, and later played P. L. Travers in Saving Mr. Banks (2013), a role that brought her further awards attention. In 2014, she returned to the stage in a Lincoln Center production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, playing Mrs Lovett. Film and television credits across subsequent years included Late Night, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande and Matilda the Musical. Her work in children’s storytelling also reached the page: authorised by Beatrix Potter’s publishers, she wrote three Peter Rabbit books, beginning with The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit in 2012.

Public work and honours

Thompson has also used her public profile to support human-rights and environmental causes. She is chair of the Helen Bamber Foundation, which works with victims of torture, and a patron of the Refugee Council. Her environmental campaigning has included work with Greenpeace. In 2009, she and three other Greenpeace members bought land near Sipson, close to Heathrow, as part of a campaign against a proposed third runway. She later joined a Greenpeace expedition to raise awareness of the risks of Arctic oil drilling and supported climate-change demonstrations in London.

Her honours reflect the breadth of her work. She received two Academy Awards, for Howards End and Sense and Sensibility, as well as three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globes and a Primetime Emmy Award. In 2018, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to drama. The recognition sits alongside a career that has continued across film, television, theatre and writing rather than settling into a single category.

Why Emma Thompson deserves a place in British Legacy

Thompson’s place in British Legacy rests on achievements that are specific and sustained. Her early career grew out of Cambridge comedy and British stage and television work: the Footlights, the West End revival of Me and My Girl, and the BBC series Tutti Frutti and Fortunes of War. She then brought a distinctive performance to Howards End, a film concerned with class in Edwardian Britain, and helped carry British literary storytelling to an international audience. Her two Academy Awards recognise different kinds of creative work: the craft of acting and the labour of adapting Austen for cinema.

Her contribution is not limited to prestige drama. By writing and starring in the Nanny McPhee films, she helped make family stories that took children seriously; her three authorised Peter Rabbit books extended that work into publishing. Her stage, screen and television roles demonstrate a performer able to shift between comedy and drama, while her work with the Helen Bamber Foundation, the Refugee Council and Greenpeace connects public recognition with practical advocacy. Together, these achievements show how a British career can combine performance, authorship and civic engagement. That combination, rather than generic acclaim, is the reason Thompson merits a lasting place in British Legacy.

Sources

Emma Thompson (Wikipedia, revision 1379702148)

Adapted in part from Emma Thompson by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.