Emma Thompson is the only person with Oscars for acting and writing
Plenty of actors write and plenty of writers act, but only Emma Thompson has won Academy Awards for both. She took Best Actress for Howards End, then wrote and starred in Sense and Sensibility and won for the screenplay. It started with a Cambridge comedy troupe and a punk haircut.
Thompson was born in Hammersmith, London, on 15 April 1959, into an acting family. Her Scottish mother is Phyllida Law; her father, Eric Thompson, was best known for writing the children's series The Magic Roundabout, and she credits him with her love of words. Her sister Sophie also acts. She grew up in West Hampstead, spent long childhood stretches in Scotland, and went to Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1977 to read English. There a book about Victorian women writers, The Madwoman in the Attic, turned her towards feminism and performing. She joined Footlights, cut her hair short and red, rode a motorbike and dreamed of being a comedian like Lily Tomlin.
Her break came in 1985 with the West End revival of Me and My Girl. Two BBC dramas in 1987, Tutti Frutti and Fortunes of War, won her a BAFTA for best TV actress, and in the early 1990s she made several films with her then husband Kenneth Branagh, including Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing.
Howards End in 1992 brought the Oscar and BAFTA for Best Actress. The following year she was nominated twice in one Oscar season, for The Remains of the Day, where she played a housekeeper, and for her supporting turn as a lawyer in In the Name of the Father, a rare double. Her adaptation of Sense and Sensibility in 1995 won the screenplay Oscar. Later praise followed for Love Actually, Saving Mr. Banks and Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, and she wrote as well as starred in Nanny McPhee.
Her range is wide: Professor Trelawney-style roles in the Harry Potter films, Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd at Lincoln Center in 2014, and three Peter Rabbit books written with the blessing of Beatrix Potter's publishers. Across four decades she has collected two Oscars, three BAFTAs, two Golden Globes and an Emmy, and in 2018 she was made a dame for services to drama.
Source: Emma Thompson
