Almost one year ago, I bumped into a rather dishevelled but radiant Dame Emma Thompson in the ladies’ bathroom. We had both been in the audience at the London Palladium for a performance by the singer Adele. Emma – alongside her husband, actor Greg Wise – had been on her feet dancing up a storm throughout the two-hour performance with the sort of energy and wild abandon that is usually reserved for teenagers.
But as she stopped to chat, it was her rockstar outfit she wanted to draw attention to. “Look,” she said, laughing. “Leather pants! [Vegan leather, of course.] I’d never have worn them in my twenties, but now I’m in my sixties, I thought, ‘Who cares? Just go for it!’ I’ve had the time of my life.”
This is quintessential Emma. At 63 years of age, she has proven herself to be not just one of the world’s finest actresses, but also a trailblazing, fearless, taboo-breaking woman’s woman who is never afraid to speak out and say exactly what she thinks.
In the acting world, she stands on the shoulders of Britain’s other grande dames of the theatrical world, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters and Helen Mirren. But unlike them, she has never had a single acting lesson in her life.
Emma is a rule-breaker unafraid to defy convention – as she proved in 2022 by stripping naked, and confronting issues of sex, body image and ageing, in the groundbreaking Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.
Critically acclaimed for movies including , , and as a writer for her Oscar-winning adaptation of Jane Austen’s , this multi-talented Cambridge graduate – currently starring, playing the grotesque Miss Trunchbull in and working on a musical adaptation of – is also seen far from the glamour of the Hollywood red carpet, standing knee-deep in mud at anti-fracking protests or standing shoulder to shoulder with climate activists at Extinction Rebellion rallies.
