“She’s like lots of mates”: Emma Thompson names the greatest role of her career
Emma Thompson’s career is filled with a staggering amount of success when considering how many different fields she has mastered.
She started off as a television star and eventually became the most successful actor to emerge from the ‘90s era of period dramas, winning Oscars for both ‘Best Actress’ in Howard’s End and ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ for Sense and Sensibility, which she also starred in.
She even has the rare distinction of being Oscar-nominated for two roles in the same year, being recognised for The Remains of the Day and In the Name of the Father, in the ‘Best Actress’ and ‘Best Supporting Actress’ categories, respectively, and beyond arthouse titles, she’s also embodied important roles in franchises like Harry Potter, Nanny McPhee, and Men in Black, alongside receiving accolades for television work like Wit and Angels in America.
Ask any film fan, and they might give a different pick for what Thompson’s greatest work is; a hardcore literary scholar might say Howard’s End, a comedy buff might cite Love Actually, a Shakespearean admirer might say Much Ado about Nothing, and a younger genre enthusiast might point to one of the Harry Potter films, but her own answer is a bit more surprising, as she picked the 2022 comedy Good Luck To You, Leo Grande as her proudest achivement.
“It’s such a wonderful script,” Thompson said before praising the character of Nancy Strokes, “She’s like lots of mates I’d had. People who had left school and done the ‘good girl’ thing. Really done it all right”.
The actor has frequently discussed the issues that women face in artistic fields, so it isn’t a complete surprise that she enjoyed Good Luck to You, Leo Grande for its empowering message.
“I bet you there’s a lot of people who feel like that still, because women still don’t have those choices, they simply don’t,” she said, “It is still expected of them that they will be mothers, otherwise they won’t be ‘natural women’.”
The film had a somewhat unusual release pattern globally, as it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022 before being released over the summer in the United States on Hulu, but its cinematic release internationally allowed it to contend for Bafta awards, where Thompson was nominated for ‘Best Actress’, and also scored a Golden Globe nomination, which is rare for a streaming exclusive.
Although it’s odd that a raunchy comedy would be her pick over the many great roles she’s had, it does make sense because of its originality. In Howard’s End or Henry V, she was playing characters that have existed for centuries, and In the Name of the Father and Saving Mr Banks called upon her to play real people, but Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Thompson was able to take true authority of a strong, three-dimensional character that was totally her own, and proved that there was still an opportunity for older women to be represented on screen.
