The extraordinary British actress Emma Thompson affirms that she was “humiliated” by her ex-husband, also an actor Kenneth Branaghwhen he had an affair with the interpreter Helena Bonham Carter. The two-time Oscar winner admitted she was “completely blind” when the hit director’s extramarital affair ended her relationship in 1995.
The actor’s infidelity ended a six-year marriage between two of the most relevant and acclaimed stars of the English scene. Kenneth had an affair with the actress from Harry Potter, after starring together in 1994 Frankenstein, de Mary Shelley.
At that time Emma was recording Sense and Sensibility, with which he won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, but the news of their breakup had not yet been made public. The more her work was recognized, the more “humiliated” she felt by her husband’s affair and the more surprised by her self-deception, as she has acknowledged in a recent interview.
the star of Love Actually, film in which she represents a woman who goes through a similar situation with her husband, she has admitted that “I was completely, completely blind to the fact that he had relationships with other women on the set. What I learned was how easy it is to be blind by one’s own desire to deceive oneself”.
Emma acknowledged that her now husband of 27 years, Greg Wise, also a co-star in Sense and Sensibility, was the one who then “picked up the pieces and put them back together.” Emma and Greg married in 2003 and have two children, Gaia, 22, and Tindyebwa, a former Rwandan child soldier whom they adopted when she was 16.
Emma starred in two films with her sentimental opponent, Bonham Carter: Howard’s End in 1992 and the series Harry Potter 2007. The respected actress is now happy with her solid family: “I have learned more from my second marriage just by being married. As my mother says, ‘The first twenty years are the hardest,'” she declared with satisfaction.
Kenneth: a romantic but unfaithful
Thompson and Branagh met during the filming at the BBC of the series Fortune of War in 1986 and began a courtship. The romantic way in which the also winner of an Oscar for Belfast the protagonist and screenwriter of Sense and Sensibility in 1989: in Central Park, where several walkers heard him shout “Let’s get married, let’s get married!” she accepted.
Precisely at the time they began their life together, Kenneth was at his best professional moment with two Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Actor for his film Henry V, in which Emma had a role as queen of France.
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Among the many occasions in which they worked together, the film A lot of noise and few nuts, which in 1992 starred, produced, adapted and directed by Kenneth Branagh, and where his wife was the protagonist. Interestingly, this adaptation of the homonymous comedy by William Shakespeare focuses on love and the damage that misunderstandings or betrayal can cause.
The same year that Emma married for the second time, Kenneth did the same with the art director Lindsay Brunnock. With Bonham Carter she kept her relationship alive until 1999. The versatile actress remarried in 2001 with the film director Tim Burtonwhom he met during the filming of Planet of the Apes, with whom he has two children: Billy Ray (born 2003) and Nell (born 2007). After divorcing Burton in 2014, she is currently in a relationship with the writer. Rye Dag Holmboe.