‘I’ve got quite a lot of stamina when it comes to dancing,’ Emma Thompson admits. 'I don’t think that, generally speaking, people would know about that, and they know now, because of the Adele thing.’
Of course, the 'Adele thing' the Oscar-winning actor is referring to is her appearance at the Adele One Night Only television show, which aired last November and captured her on camera flailing her arms around to the singer’s hit song ‘Rolling In The Deep’, as well as encouraging her fellow attendees to get up on their feet. Unsurprisingly, the video of Thompson’s moves soon went viral.
‘I think that the reason that was popular was because it was slightly unexpected,’ she laughs, admitting that once a year she hires a band and hosts a party at her house solely for the purpose of dancing. ‘I feel like people felt like their favourite old dog had just got up on its hind legs and started to dance about.’
Dancing is one of a plethora of skills the British actor and screenwriter boasts, of course. Over the years, the awarding winning star has stolen our hearts in films such as Sense and Sensibility, Love Actually and Pride & Prejudice, as well as become a blockbuster heavyweight thanks to roles in the Harry Potter film franchise, Beauty and the Beast and her forthcoming appearance in the screen adaptation of the Broadway musical Matilda, in which she plays Ms Trunchball, no less.
However, when it comes which of her characters she’d love to go on a night out with, Thompson says it has to be Nanny McPhee. ‘Few margaritas down her and get her backstory,’ she jokes. ‘She’d be really interesting.’
The actor's latest film, Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, sees the London-born star step out of her comfort zone to play Nancy Stokes, a 63-year-old widowed and retired religious education teacher, who has never experienced an orgasm. As a result, she hires a young sex worker called Leo Grande (played by Daryl McCormack) to enjoy a night of pleasure and learn more about body confidence and the importance of celebrating sex.
‘It challenges so many assumptions. It also asks so many questions and invites so much,’ she says of her reasons for taking part in the film. ‘It’s about pleasure, female pleasure, which is not at the top of anybody’s agenda ever, anywhere…
‘It's extraordinary how difficult we find it to talk about this, because it’s [as if it's] not important to us, and we’re extremely embarrassed by it. We don’t respect sex, really, sexual pleasure. It’s been made taboo,’ she continues.
The film sees Thompson appear nude on screen for the first time in her career. Explaining the importance of the scene, in which her character stands naked in front of a mirror, Thompson says: ‘The bodies of women are not seen. Most actresses who take their clothes off on film have very very tiny bodies that are certainly not bodies you think, Oh well you’ve given birth, or you’ve gone through the menopause, or you’ve done anything that women do, so that was another reason why I wanted to do the movie - to normalise a female body.
'[It was] very hard to do, because I’m not someone who can stand in front of a mirror and be like that, so Nancy actually is much further ahead in her development than I am...
‘There’s no point in hating your body. You can only love it because it’s your only home,’ she adds.
From feeling like a ‘Christmas pony’ on the red carpet, to fangirling over Harrison Ford, find out more from Emma Thompson’s AMA at the top of this article.
Good Luck To You, Leo Grande is out in UK cinemas now.
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Katie O'Malley is the Site Director on ELLE UK. On a daily basis you’ll find Katie managing all digital workflow, editing site, video and newsletter content, liaising with commercial and sales teams on new partnerships and deals (eg Nike, Tiffany & Co., Cartier etc), implementing new digital strategies and compiling in-depth data traffic, SEO and ecomm reports. In addition to appearing on the radio and on TV, as well as interviewing everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Rishi Sunak PM, Katie enjoys writing about lifestyle, culture, wellness, fitness, fashion, and more.
