Born on April 15, 1959 in London, England, Emma Thompson is a two-time Academy Award-winning actress who is well-known for a variety of roles in a career that spanned more than two decades. The daughter of two actors, Thompson said that having spent a part of her life in Scotland, she sometimes feels Scottish. S he attended Camden School for Girls and studied English at Newnham College in Cambridge University. She became the vice-president of the university’s theatrical club called the Footlights. Still two years away from graduation, she was signed to a contract by agent Richard Armitage. In 1982, soon after she graduated, she bagged the leading role in the West End revival of the musical Me and My Girl. In 1984, she appeared in a television sitcom called The Young Ones with House star Hugh Laurie.
Emma Thompson’s first major film role was in The Tall Guy, a romantic comedy. This was followed by more serious roles, such as in the 1992 film Howards End, where she won her first Oscar for Best Actress. She won her next Oscar four years later in 1996 for the doing the screenplay of Sense and Sensibility, where her lead character also bagged a nomination. Her other screen credits include, In the Name of the Father, The Remains of the Day, and Carrington.
Thompson’s relatively recent screen credits include Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Love Actually, Stranger Than Fiction, and Nanny McPhee, which she also wrote.
During her stay at Cambridge, Thompson had a romantic relationship with Laurie, who was then a student actor himself and a member of the Footlights. She married Kenneth Branagh in 1989 and eventually divorced in 1995. The two starred in several movies together such as Dead Again, Henry V, and Much Ado About Nothing. She married actor Greg Wise and the have a daughter.