Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Women We Love: Emma Thompson

Object of our affection: Emma Thompson, actress/ writer.

- Warm and witty, she's the actress at the top of my "fantasy celebrity dinner party" invite list. In sharp contrast -- proof of her amazing talent -- she plays the cold and calculating matriarch at the center of the new Brideshead Revisited (opening wide this weekend), a performance already gaining whispers of Oscar #3 for Miss Thompson.

- She won Oscar #1 (along with every other award known to man) for her breakthrough role in Howards End. Two nominations at once followed, for The Remains of the Day and In the Name of the Father, and then again for writing and starring in Sense and Sensibility; Oscar #2 came for adapting the Jane Austen classic to the screen.

- Prior to all that, she co-starred with her then husband Kenneth Branagh in Henry V, Dead Again, Peter's Friends and Much Ado About Nothing (she is currently married to her Sense co-star Greg Wise). Other notable film roles include The Tall Guy, Impromptu, Junior, Carrington, Primary Colors, Treasure Planet, Love Actually, Nanny McPhee (which she also wrote), Stranger Than Fiction and two Harry Potter movies (so far) as the loopy divination professor Sybil Trelawney.

- On television, she won an Emmy for hilariously playing a closeted lesbian (and Ohioan) version of herself on Ellen, and received nominations for Wit (for both acting and writing) and the landmark Angels in America.

- After Brideshead, her next films include the 60's set coming of age drama An Education, the late in life romantic drama Last Chance Harvey and the rock radio comedy The Boat That Rocked. Plus, she has just revealed that she will adapt George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion for the planned remake of the beloved musical My Fair Lady.

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