People: A British woman next door: Emma Thompson turns 65

The fact that Emma Thompson is an actress with a lot to say can be seen in a scene from Berlin. The Brit once spoke at the film festival about the body image women grow up with in our society. Women would be taught to hate their bodies throughout their lives. “That’s the problem,” said Thompson, who turns 65 on Monday (April 15). Everything around you reminds you that you are supposedly imperfect and that you have to look different.

“Try taking off your clothes, standing in front of a mirror and not moving,” Thompson said. You shouldn’t try to pull in something or turn away, but rather accept yourself. “And don’t judge yourself. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” said Thompson, who spoke at the appearance two years ago about a nude scene in her film “My Hours with Leo.”

Where Emma Thompson keeps her Oscars

Thompson, who was born in London in 1959, is one of Britain’s best-known actresses. She not only won an Oscar for her acting performance in the drama “Howards End Again” with Anthony Hopkins, but also one as a writer for the screenplay for “Sense and Sensibility.”

The US presenter Stephen Colbert once asked whether it was actually true that she kept her Oscars in an interesting place. “Do you know what I’m talking about?” he asked on his show “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” And Thompson replied in the most beautiful British English: “They’re in the loo.” They were standing on the toilet. Because they would look ridiculous anywhere else, Thompson decided.

Thompson has already protested for more climate protection, is committed to feminist issues and didn’t think Brexit, i.e. Britain’s exit from the EU, was a particularly good idea. “How can you be so crazy as to split a country off from its closest neighbors? Everyone can now see that it was a disaster. But no one talks about it,” she told the news magazine “Der Spiegel” last year.

A particularly touching scene

She can take on serious as well as funny roles. Thompson starred in the Harry Potter films (Professor Sybill Trelawney), in the fantasy film “The Magical Nanny” and in “Bridget Jones’s Baby” – she is also scheduled to appear in the recently announced new part. Thompson was previously married to filmmaker Kenneth Branagh (“Belfast”) and later married actor Greg Wise, who also starred in “Sense and Sensibility.”

When she played the scary principal Trunchbull in the children’s film “Matilda – The Musical”, she first had to learn how to be terrible, Thompson told “Spiegel”. “At some point, the director said that I should stop hugging all the children on set all the time. After all, they should be afraid of me.”

She had a particularly touching scene in the episodic film “Love Actually”. In one of the stories told there, she played a woman whose husband (Alan Rickman) is flirting with his colleague (Heike Makatsch). As she realizes something is going on, Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” plays in the scene. Maybe that’s why Thompson is so convincing because she often seems like someone from normal life in her films.

“Don’t waste your time”

That was also the case in “My Hours with Leo”. In it, Thompson played a woman who has never had an orgasm and therefore hires a sex worker for hours together in a hotel room. At the festival in Berlin, Thompson was seen with blonde-gray hair, making faxes for the photographers. And she talked about how female pleasure is not taken seriously enough in society. In the film you can also see her looking at herself completely naked in the mirror at one point.

In the interview with Colbert, she also talked about how difficult it was for her because she started hating her body as a teenager. What would she say to her 14-year-old self today? “Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste the meaning of your life worrying about your body,” Thompson replied. The body is our vessel. Our home where we lived. “There’s no point in judging him,” she said, to applause. “Absolutely no point.”