Gold Standard
Few actors have the reputation, and the versatility to back it up, as Dame Emma Thompson. As she celebrates her most revealing role to date in Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, Sam Moore celebrates how far she’s come.
Emma Thompson is the gold standard for British cinema. She’s the crown jewel trumpeted out now for four decades in a career-spanning of Merchant-Ivory period dramas and Hollywood blockbusters, and also by being the poster woman for sobbing with a Joni Mitchell CD. In that time, she has won two Oscars, written a Jane Austen adaptation and became the 21st century’s answer to Mary Poppins in Nanny McPhee – her career has never stopped evolving, making Thompson an actor that not only crosses generations but means something different to each one.
Even into her sixties, where most actors settle into a mould, Thompson continues to be daring. That’s never more noticeable than in her latest film, the sex work comedy-drama Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. Much has been made of the film’s final shot focusing on Thomspon, but her performance as a sexually and emotionally dissatisfied widow who can simply not endure any more unhappiness, is one of complete emotional nakeddness.
Thompson brings her full range to Leo Grande. Katy Brand’s comedy-of-manners script requires her to be tragic, self-hating, hysterical, turned on and motherly often within the same breath and it’s a credit to her versatility that every note lands.
With Leo Grande now in cinemas and the actor-writer celebrating four decades on screen, there’s no better time to dive into the many eras of Emma Thompson.
Classic Thompson
Thompson first burst into the popular consciousness in the early 1990s where she came to typify a tight-jawed upper class stoicism that Americans in particular would come to associate with Britishness. During this breakout era, where she established herself as the best British actor of her generation alongside the likes of Daniel Day-Lewis, Kate Winslet and Gary Oldman, she inhabited role after role with a deft humanism where she brought a shot of personable humour to often heavy dramatic material.
Her first major role was 1991’s Dead Again, a Hitchcockian thriller of the double identity variety directed by her then husband Kenneth Branagh (Kenny from the Block also stars in the lead with a particularly dubious American accent). It was the start of a landmark decade for the actor, as she appeared in a string of acclaimed period dramas.
Most famous would be her two Merchant-Ivory films – Howard’s End and The Remains of the Day. First (and best) was Howard’s End, a grandiose adaptation of the E.M. Forster masterpiece, which generally ticks all the period drama cliches. Love triangle? Check. Contested inheritance? Check. A stately manor setting? Big check. But like the novel, this adaptation is a breathtaking dissection of class and good old British hypocrisy, anchored by a Thompson performance that scooped her an Oscar.
Whereas her Merchant-Ivory performances were a picture of subtlety, Thompson’s turn in In The Name of the Father was one of indignant rage as Jim Sheridan’s film threw a brick through the window of the British government in this retelling of the wrongful convictions of the Guildford Four. Her human rights lawyer’s dignified anger at injustice mirrors Thompson’s own noble activism, which includes recent criticism of the British government’s “callous” immigration laws.
The peak of Thompson’s early career was Sense and Sensibility, her own unfaithful adaptation of the Jane Austen classic directed by Ang Lee that shows just what a hackneyed show Downton Abbey is. Thriving with a contemporary take on Austen’s scathing wit that refuses to tip into period nostalgia, Thompson’s script and performance is very funny and embodies the warmth that make her such a treasured performer.
This run of acclaim took her to the uppest of echelons of commercial Hollywood, where she would co-star with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Junior. In the Ivan Reitman-directed film, Thompson and Schwarzenegger crackle with a unique brand of chemistry – the Austrian bodybuilder’s natural zaniness melding perfectly with her English silliness.
Children’s Favourite Thompson
With the new millennium, Thompson gravitated away from stately dramas and into the realm of family movies, soon finding herself one of the most famous people on planet Earth with under-16s. But before Harry Potter and Nanny McPhee gave her titanic levels of stardom, Thompson stole Love Actually and its 43 different plot strands by being one of the few actors of the ensemble to treat Richards Curtis’ saccharine screenplay with emotional gravitas.
Married to Alan Rickman’s philandering advertising executive Harry, Thompson embodies the devastating reality of betrayal and heartbreak. In a film that is far from shy on melodrama, Thompson, who discovers her husband has been having an affair after realising a piece of jewellery he bought was not for her, swells quietly into an agonising sob that is instantly familiar to anyone that has had their world shattered to pieces within seconds. Stood to the far left of the frame – isolated, alone – Thompson communicates entirely through posture and near-silent cries, it’s the stark reality of numbing pain and some of her finest work. The rest of the film found it impossible to live up to her presence.
Thompson perhaps found her highest point of fame when joining the Harry Potter series for the third (and best) instalment – Prisoner of Azkaban – as the wide-eyed eccentric fortune teller Sybill Trelawney. Where most of Thompson’s best performances see her dialling down and tapping into quiet emotion, Harry Potter finds her in the opposite register, hamming it up memorably, terrifying the students of Hogwarts with threats of impending doom.
As the scene-stealing divination professor, Thompson introduced herself to a generation of children who had not yet found The Remains of the Day or Sense and Sensibility. She would then go on to become the same generation’s Mary Poppins, with her crooked nose disciplinarian Nanny McPhee. Also written by Thompson (her first screenplay since winning the Oscar for Sense and Sensibility), the Roald Dahl-like fable features her as the formidable woman in black who she graces with a magical air of loose silliness. It’s like watching Robert De Niro unwind in Meet the Parents after decades of gruelling performances as psychopaths, serial killers and gangsters.
Contemporary Thompson
Although now at the stage most performers waltz around for bit parts hitting all the classic beats, over the last decade Thompson has continued to push herself. As well as Leo Grande, Thompson has elasticated herself across mainstream Hollywood through roles in Cruella, Saving Mr Banks and even in Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories.
While the films may vary in quality, they feature some of Thompson’s most remarkable performances. Saving Mr Banks, where she plays Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers, sees the actor in possibly her very best performance as the brittle and austere writer battling Walt Disney over his plans to turn her treasured character into a movie musical.
Thompson’s 2022 will still see her take on the iconic role of Miss Trunchbull in Matthew Warchus’ musical adaptation of Matilda, complete with NFL player shoulders and a snarl Nurse Ratched would be envious of. It’s another sign Thompson has no interest in stopping being Britain’s most interesting actor, without an ounce of vanity in the world.
Sign up to our mailing list and you’ll be sent our latest Storyboard post every week with The Friday Read. Mailing list subscribers are also automatically entered into our weekly competition to win one of five pairs of cinema tickets, so it’s truly a win-win scenario.