At 51, Emma Thompson has won two Academy Awards, one Emmy and earlier this month received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She's also an avid activist and serves as chair of the Helen Bamber Foundation, a London-based philanthropic foundation.
But next year, her plans are to slow down and enjoy life with husband Greg Wise and her children, Gaia Romilly Wise, 10, and Tindyebwa Agaba, 23, whom Thompson and Wise adopted in 2003 when he was 16 and in the Rwandan army.
Thompson was in Dallas recently promoting her new film "Nanny McPhee Returns," which she not only stars in but also wrote and produced. We talked with her about Nanny McPhee, her family and how she juggles her busy life.
Q: For this movie, you've also written a novel ("Nanny McPhee Returns," Bloomsbury, $7.99) that will be released at the same time. How does that process differ from writing a screenplay, and how closely does it follow the film? What happened was, I was writing a diary on set every day, and as I was writing the diary thinking, "Oh, I'm going to write a book as well," I thought I'd start writing the story at the same time. So then I started reading back the notes that I'd made, and I read the diary and thought that was a very interesting way of telling the story. So I wrote the diary and then I wrote a bit of the story and then [I went back to writing the] diary. So you've got the story interwoven with the story of the making of the story into a film. I thought that's quite a new thing.
Q: How did it feel to get your star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame across from a pub called the "Pig 'n' Whistle"? It literally was the best place ever. Because, you know, you step on my star as you walk into the pub. I mean how great is that? Plus, I very rarely went on family holidays abroad, because my parents were not rich. But one time my dad was working in America and being paid slightly more than usual. He was directing "The Norman Conquests," the Alan Ayckbourn plays, in LA and in New York.
We got to go out to LA, me and my sister, and I was about 14, and the only thing he could take us to see, 'cause he was working, was Grauman's Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And so I dedicated the star to him. He died when he was pretty much my [current] age. So it was very touching for me, the fact that it connected to my beloved father and that Hugh Laurie ["House"], who is one of my oldest friends and knew my father and spoke at his funeral, was there, and that made it very meaningful to me.
Q: Is it true that you accepted the role as Sybil Trelawney in "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" to impress your daughter Gaia? Of course, yes.
Q: In a Good Housekeeping interview, Maggie Gyllenhaal quoted advice you gave her while shooting "Nanny McPhee Returns." You said, "Mags, you have got to allow yourself to drop the ball, because nobody can keep all those balls in the air." How do you prioritize when juggling your career, family and charity work? I think, as I would say to my husband, our relationship has to come first. Because if your relationship with your husband isn't good, nothing else is gonna follow. So I say we've got to make sure that we're communicating.
And then the children, you know, make sure we have plenty of time with them, they're dealt with, and they've got their time with us, they're not being farmed out. Then after that, you try and fit in what you can. I mean, writing is great for me, because I can see everyone at home, do some work and then school's over, cook a meal. I can fit all that in.
Filming, for instance, filming this, my husband was brilliant because he just said, "Look, I understand what you need to do this movie, so you should stay in a hotel three or four nights a week, near the studio so you don't have to make the hour-and-a-half journey there and back every day." And that saved my life. It absolutely saved my life. And my daughter, just at the moment she was really fed up with me not being there for three nights a week, came and stayed with me. It was her school holiday, so she just came and worked on set.
Q: I've read that you are against women altering their weight and appearance due to pressure on a film set. What advice do you give your own daughter? I never, ever, talk about dieting or I won't allow it. I don't diet myself. So she hasn't got a super-skinny mum. I tell her and explain to her that all of the photographs of me and other actors have been altered to look better. That they don't represent the real person and that's just a fantasy thing. I've talked to her class at school, about different body shapes and the fact that we live in a time when this body shape is supposed to be the best but it isn't. And I tell her that she's beautiful all the time, which she is.
