Emma Thompson

About

Emma Thompson is a cave-aged Comté of an actor: complex, deeply controlled, and she has been maturing in the cellar for over four decades without once losing her shape. Watch her in Howards End. Margaret arrives in a grand house already knowing exactly who she is, and Thompson lets you see the intelligence working behind every polite gesture, the rind showing only when the mask slips. The Remains of the Day is the same cheese kept cooler still; Miss Kenton moves through a stately home carrying an entire life of quiet longing that she will never speak aloud. Thompson plays the performance beneath the performance, the thing the character cannot say. Sense and Sensibility, which she wrote as well as starred in, shows a different register entirely. Elinor is the practical sister, the one holding everything together, and Thompson lets the control crumble only when she is alone. Stranger Than Fiction paired her with Will Ferrell as a reclusive author, and she brought warmth without softening the character's edges. Late Night handed her a late-career role where she could finally stop being polite, and the relief in the performance is almost audible. Thompson knows exactly how long to let a scene age before she cuts into it. The flavour is always worth the wait.