Emma Thompson grew up in a theatre family. Her father was a stage director, her mother an actress, and they started Thompson acting while she was still a child. While a student at Cambridge, she wrote, directed, and produced the college's first all-female comedy revue. Her career took off after graduation, and her stand-up and stage credits won her a comedy series on British television.

She met her husband, actor-director Kenneth Branagh, when she joined his Renaissance Theatre Company. She and Branagh married a year later, and performed together on-stage in King Lear and on TV in Look Back in Anger. She made her film debut as Katherine in Branagh's screen version of Henry V, and returned for three more of his pictures, Dead Again, Peter's Friends, and Much Ado About Nothing.

Their on-screen collaborations may have come to an end, though, with the couple's break-up in October 1995. Thompson won her first Academy Award for her role in the Merchant Ivory production Howard's End. Her performance as a housekeeper opposite Anthony Hopkins in The Remains of the Day secured a second Best Actress nomination, while her role as Daniel Day-Lewis's lawyer in In the Name of the Father earned her a nomination for Best Supporting Actress that same year.

American audiences might also remember Thompson for her guest appearance on Cheers as Frasier Crane's ex-wife, the horny children's performer, Nanny Gee. The witty and winning Thompson can be forgiven for accepting roles in the incest-innuendo-laden vehicle My Father, The Hero and the Arnold Schwarzenegger-as-expectant-mother "comedy," Junior.

The Academy awarded her with a second Oscar, this one for Best Screenplay, for 1995's Sense and Sensibility.