Emma Thompson is one of the most beloved actresses in Hollywood.
She’s known for her sharp wit and incredible ability to get into the minds of the characters she portrays on screen but behind-the-scenes she’s also a wife and a mum to two adult children.
Over the weekend, she made a rare public appearance with her daughter Gaia at the premiere of their new film, The Dead of Winter.
Here’s everything we know about Emma Thompson’s family:
WHO IS EMMA THOMPSON MARRIED TO?
Emma Thompson met her husband Greg Wise on the set of the 1995 period drama Sense and Sensibility.
Emma starred as Elinor Dashwood while Greg played John Willoughby. At the time, the Love Actually star was married to Kenneth Branagh, but their marriage soon ended after Emma discovered Kenneth was having an affair with Helena Bonham Carter.
“You can’t hold on to anything like that. It’s pointless,” Emma later shared. “I haven’t got the energy for it. Helena and I made our peace years and years ago.”
Before filming started, Greg had visited a “witchy” friend who told him that he would meet the love of his life on the set of the film.
“He assumed it wasn’t me because I was married and quite a lot older than him, so he thought it might be Kate [Winslet],” the 66-year-old explained during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show in 2021.
Greg later said it was actually Kate who suggested he should be dating Emma instead.
“[Kate] pointed out that we were right for each other and told me that Emma’s marriage was over. It was all meant to be, just as my friend Helen had predicted,” he told The Express.
Emma later said that she was “half alive” after the split but Greg coming into her life changed everything.
“I used to crawl from the bedroom to the computer, and then I was all right. Sense and Sensibility saved me from going under in a very nasty way… Work saved me, and Greg saved me. He picked up the pieces and put them together again,” she told BBC Radio 4 in 2010.
The couple tied the knot in 2003 in the small Scottish town of Dunoon.
INSIDE EMMA THOMPSON’S FAMILY LIFE WITH HER TWO KIDS
Emma and Greg welcomed their daughter Gaia in 1999, who they conceived via IVF.
“I would have desperately liked to have had more children, and it’s been a great agony for me,” the actress later told The Telegraph. “There’s been an awful lot of grief to get through in not being able to get pregnant again, but there are thousands and thousands of women like me who can’t have children.”
In 2003, they adopted their son Tindyebwa ‘Tindy’ Agaba Wise, a Rwandan orphan who was 16 at the time.
Emma had met Tindy at a Christmas charity event she created in partnership with the Refugee Council and the pair immediately bonded through a combination of “sign language, laughing [and] smiling”.
In an essay for The Times of London, Emma spoke about the challenges Tindy has faced as a refugee.
“When a person has been ‘othered’, their humanity is often reduced in other people’s eyes. Witnessing Tindy growing up has been a continual lesson in the day-to-day challenges that refugees and asylum seekers face: from language, to finding the right kind of schooling, to facing everyday racism,” she wrote.
“And they take nothing for granted unlike, let’s face it, a lot of us who haven’t come here under those circumstances,” she continued. “So what they have to offer as citizens of this country is often profoundly valuable.”
Tindy now works for the Metropolitan Police assisting refugees who are in the same position he was when he first came to the UK.
“He’s an extraordinary young man, and he knows more than his fair share of death and grief. Because he has suffered, he can understand what others go through. That is a fantastically powerful force to have around at the moment,” Greg said during an interview with The Mirror in 2021.
Gaia, meanwhile, has followed in her famous parents’ footsteps and is now an actress herself. The 25-year-old is currently starring as the younger version of Emma’s character in the new film The Dead of Winter. She’s also starred in Last Chance Harvey, A Walk in the Woods, and the latest Lord of the Rings film.
Over the weekend, the pair posed for photos on the red carpet in a rare public appearance.
Gaia has spoken openly in the past about how her parents “saved her life” when she was battling an eating disorder.
“Anorexia makes you really good at gaslighting people, making it sound like they’re insane. My parents would say, ‘Gaia, we heard you working out at 3am.’ And I’d say, ‘No you didn’t, it was just the house moving. I was asleep,” she told The Sun.
She said she agreed to a three-month stint in a rehab facility after he father said: “I don’t know where my child is any more”.
“I had to listen to the people I loved most in the world who, at the time, I’d really forgotten about, tell me what I was doing,” she told the publication. “That’s when I said I’d go to rehab. I went on December 29, 2017, and stayed for three months. Since then I’ve had a lot of therapy — and I’ll always be grateful for that, because it saved my life.”
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