Emma Thompson was born in London on April 15, 1959, into a family of actors - her father was Eric Thompson, who has passed away, and her mother, Phyllida Law, has co-starred with Thompson in several films (her sister, Sophie Thompson, is an actor as well).

Emma took some acting classes when she was 9, she didn't seem very interested in it. Instead, she loved to read.

Emma graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge University in 1982 and had intended to become a writer, however whilst at Cambridge she was persuaded to join the Footlights and so impressed agent Richard Armitage that he signed her to a contract while she was still two years away from graduation.

Unfortunately, tragedy struck just as Emma was joining an acting road company. Her father had a stroke and could no longer speak. Soon after that, her grandmother and uncle died. Emma returned home to West Hampstead and took on the task of helping her father to speak again.

Following the success of Henry V, Emma Thompson had a hilarious turn as a frivolous aristocrat in Impromptu (1990) and then collaborated with Branagh on the noirish suspense thriller Dead Again in 1991.

In 1992 Emma won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award for her role opposite Anthony Hopkins in Howards End. She followed this in 1993 with Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Gareth Pierce in In the Name of the Father with Daniel Day-Lewis, and Best Actress for the role of Miss Kenton in The Remains of the Day again with Anthony Hopkins.

Emma Thompson is now married to fellow actor Greg Wise, who had played Willoughby in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995). Thompson and Wise have one child, Gaia, born in 1999.