Thompson, Emma 1959-

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THOMPSON, Emma 1959-

PERSONAL: Born April 15, 1959, in London, England; daughter of Eric (a director) and Phyllida (an actress) Thompson; married Kenneth Branagh (an actor, producer, and director), 1989 (divorced, 1994), companion of Greg Wise; children: one daughter, Gaia Romilly (with Wise). Education: Newnham College, Cambridge, studied English literature.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Hamilton Asper Ltd., Ground Floor, 24 Hanway Street, London W1P 9DD, England.

CAREER: Actress for stage, television, and film. Began career as a performer with Cambridge University's Footlights revue. Stage appearances include Me and My Girl, 1985; Look Back in Anger, 1989; A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1990; and King Lear, 1990. Television appearances include Fortunes of War, 1988; "The Winslow Boy," 1990; Cheers, 1992; Look Back in Anger, 1993; "The Blue Boy," 1994; and Wit, 2001. Film appearances include Henry V, 1989; The Tall Guy, 1989; Impromptu, 1991; Dead Again, 1991; Howard's End, 1992; Peter's Friends, 1992; Much Ado about Nothing, 1993; The Remains of the Day, 1993; In the Name of the Father, 1993; Junior, 1995; Carrington, 1995; Sense and Sensibility, 1995; The Winter Guest, 1997; Primary Colors, 1998; Judas Kiss, 1998; Maybe Baby, 2000; Treasure Planet, 2002; and Love Actually, 2003.

MEMBER: Screen Actors Guild.

AWARDS, HONORS: British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for best actress, 1986, for Fortunes of War; New York Film Critics Circle Award for best actress, 1992, Academy Award for best actress, BAFTA Award for best actress, and Golden Globe Award for best actress in a drama, all 1993, all for Howard's End; Academy Award for best screenplay adaptation, 1995, for Sense and Sensibility; Humanitas Award for co-writing, 2001, for Wit.

WRITINGS:

Sense and Sensibility (screenplay; adapted from the novel by Jane Austen; Columbia, 1995), published in The Sense and Sensibility Diaries and Screenplay: The Making of the Film Based on the Jane Austen Novel, Newmarket Press (New York, NY), 1995.

Wit (teleplay), HBO Films, 2001.

SIDELIGHTS: Emma Thompson, a critically acclaimed and award-winning actress for film, stage, and television, wrote her first screenplay for Ang Lee's 1995 film adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel Sense and Sensibility, in which Thompson also played the role of Elinor Dashwood. The Academy Award-winning screenplay, along with the journal Thompson kept during the production of the film, was published in 1995 as The Sense and Sensibility Diaries and Screenplay: The Making of the Film Based on the Jane Austen Novel. Stanley Kauffmann, in his New Republic review of the film, noted that Thompson "spent five years working intermittently on the script while she acted in seven films."

Remaining faithful to Austen's original story with only "very slight" alterations, Thompson's Sense and Sensibility screenplay "can easily be chided by maniacally zealous Austenites," observed Kauffmann, "but such folk probably should not go to films of Austen unless they want to sneer." Richard Schickel, writing for Time, found Thompson's adaptation "impeccable" and comparable to the romantic comedies of Frank Capra and Leo McCarey, adding that viewers "don't expect to find [this kind of joyous catharsis] in adaptations of classic literature" or "in modern movies." Dana Kennedy in Entertainment Weekly thought Thompson's adaptation "so crisp, merry, and timeless that it might inspire those who think of Austen as high school syllabus material to read the book." In his Newsweek review of the film, Jack Kroll called the screenplay "vigorous, faithful," and related Thompson's attitude toward critics who label Austen films as period pieces: "You don't think people are still concerned with marriage, money, romance, finding a partner? Jane Austen is a genius who appeals to any generation." Commenting on the actress's "restrained" performance in the role of Elinor, New Yorker cinema reviewer Terrence Rafferty remarked, "Thanks to Thompson's exertions—both as actress and screenwriter—the heroine's goodness never seems implausible, and Austen's quiet but insistent polemical fervor is never permitted to overtax the story's delicate comic structure." Janet Maslin summarized in her New York Times review of the film: "Thompson . . . proves as crisp and indispensably clever a screenwriter as she is a leading lady."