made in atlantis - actor biographies
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 Birth Date: April 15, 1959
Birth Place: Paddington, London, England, UK
Emma Thompson was born in London. Her father was theatre director Eric Thompson, also the creator of the successful children's series, The Magic Roundabout. Her mother is actress Phyllida Law. She read English at Cambridge and whilst there, she appeared in many Footlights performances including Cambridge's first all-women revue, Woman's Hour and The Cellar Tapes, which won the Perrier Pick of the Edinburgh Fringe and was later broadcast by the BBC.
After Cambridge, Thompson made appearances on television and in 1985 she played opposite Robert Lindsay in the original cast of the musical Me and My Girl.. That same year, her own TV special, Up For Grabs, aired on Channel 4. Following this, she played Suzi Kettles in the John Byrne BBC TV series Tutti Frutti and then played opposite Kenneth Branagh in The Fortunes of War. For these performances, she won her first BAFTA for Best Actress.
She went on to write and record her own series, Thompson, for the BBC. She followed this with her first feature film, The Tall Guy, directed by Mel Smith, co-starring Jeff Goldblum and Rowan Atkinson for Working Title and then returned to the BBC to film The Winslow Boy, directed by Michael Darlow.
In 1988, she filmed Henry V, directed by and co-starring Kenneth Branagh and the next year filmed Impromptu directed by James Lapine. Thompson then joined the Renaissance Theatre Company and toured the world playing play Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Fool in King Lear.
In 1990 Thompson filmed Dead Again, directed by and co-starring Kenneth Branagh. Roles followed in Peter's Friends and Much Ado About Nothing, both directed by Branagh. She played opposite Anthony Hopkins in the Merchant-Ivory film The Remains of the Day for which she was nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. She then filmed Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father with Daniel Day-Lewis for which she was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. Thompson won the 1993 Academy Award for Best Actress, as well as the Golden Globe Award; the New York, Los Angeles and National Film Critics Awards; and the BAFTA Award, all for her role in the Merchant-Ivory production of Howard's End.
In 1994, she appeared in The Blue Boy, an independent feature shot on location in Scotland for America's PBS, and Junior, a comedy co-starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito for director Ivan Reitman.
A year later she starred in the title role in Carrington, Christopher Hampton's story of the strange love affair between artist Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey. She also starred in and wrote the screenplay adaptation (based on Jane Austen's novel) of Sense and Sensibility for director Ang Lee. For her writing accomplishments on that film, she received an Academy Award for Best Screenplay Based on Material Previously Published, as well as a Golden Globe Award, the USC Scripter Award and Best Screenplay awards from the Writers Guild, the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Broadcast Film Critics, the Chicago Film Critics, the Los Angeles Film Critics and the New York Film Critics. She also received a nomination from the British Academy of Film and Television. For her performance in Sense and Sensibility, she received her third BAFTA and National Board of Review awards for Best Actress, along with an Academy Award nomination, a Golden Globe nomination and a Screen Actors Guild nomination.
Thompson followed that with starring roles in a succession of films including The Winter Guest, shot on location in Scotland and co-starring her mother Phyllida Law for director Alan Rickman; Primary Colors, with John Travolta, Billy Bob Thornton and Kathy Bates for director Mike Nichols; and the independent feature Judas Kiss with Alan Rickman, this time as co-star.
More recently Thompson starred in the HBO telefilm Wit, for which she received a Screen Actors Guild, Golden Globe and Emmy Award nomination, and (as the film's co-screenwriter) the Humanitas Award, director Mike Nichols' screen adaptation of Angels in America, co-starring Meryl Streep and Al Pacino, for which she received an Emmy Award nomination, and opposite Antonio Banderas, in writer/director Christopher Hampton's film adaptation of Imagining Argentina.
Most recently, Thompson starred in Richard Curtis' directing debut Love Actually, for which she received the BAFTA award for Best Peformance by an Actress in a Supporting Role, the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Actress, and the Empire Award for Best British Actress.
She has completed filming Stranger Than Fiction, co-starring Will Ferrell, Dustin Hoffman, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Queen Latifah, to be released in 2006. Stranger than Fiction was directed by Marc Forster and produced by Lindsay Doran, marking Thompson's fourth collaboration with producer Doran.
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