It's an iconic Christmas movie scene: watching Love Actually's Emma Thompson grin and bear her way through the revelation that her husband, Harry, played by the late Alan Rickman, is cheating on her with his secretary Mia.
Every year we're freshly appalled at the heart-wrenching moment where Harry gifts his wife Karen Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now album, inadvertently letting on that he's given the gold necklace (which Karen had already discovered in his pocket) to someone else: his mistress.
While the cheating partner trope is (sadly) nothing new both on and off-screen, it's Dame Emma's character's show of quiet stoicism in front of the couple's, while clearly very much crushed on the inside, that has cemented this scene in the minds (and hearts) of audiences forever more.
And now we know that there's something more – besides Emma's excellent acting credentials – to why her portrayal was so memorable: it's because she based it on her own real life experience.
Indeed, Emma has admitted that her tearful scenes were so persuasive because she was having her heart “very badly broken” by first husband Kenneth Branagh, who was having an affair with Helena Bonham Carter. Kenneth and Emma split after eight years together.
In a November 2022 interview with the New Yorker, Emma has spoken candidly about being “blinded” to the realities of Kenneth's infidelity.
“I was utterly, utterly blind to the fact that he had relationships with other women on set,” she said. “What I learned was how easy it is to be blinded by your own desire to deceive yourself.”
“I was half alive. Any sense of being a lovable or worthy person had gone completely.”
Emma credits her now husband, actor Greg Wise whom she met on the set of Sense & Sensibility, as the person “who picked up the pieces and put them back together”.
- EntertainmentIs Baby Reindeer's ‘Cotton Mouth’ show real?
Speaking about the affair in 2018, Emma said: “That scene where my character is standing by the bed crying is so well known because it’s something everyone’s been through”, she said.
"I had my heart very badly broken by Ken. So I knew what it was like to find the necklace that wasn’t meant for me. Well it wasn’t exactly that, but we’ve all been through it.”
So filming Love Actually for Emma Thompson was really like repeating a real life scenario – no wonder that necklace scene is so tear-jerking.
Emma has often publicly addressed Kenneth's affair. She first did so back in 2013, in an interview with The Sunday Times – where she said she had “made peace” with Helena Bonham Carter.
The statement came after the two women acted together in Harry Potter films– Helena playing Bellatrix Lestrange in the final four films from 2007 to 2011, while Emma played Professor Sybil Trelawney in the second, fifth and eighth films.
Meanwhile, Thompson starred alongside her ex-husband Kenneth, who played Gilderoy Lockhart in the second film: Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets.
In the Sunday Times interview, she referred to Branagh's affair as "all blood under the bridge".
“You can't hold on to anything like that," she said. "It's pointless. I haven't got the energy for it. Helena and I made our peace years and years ago."
She also proved there are no hard feelings between her and Helena, adding that she could see why Branagh might have liked both ladies, quipping: "Being slightly mad and a bit fashion-challenged. Perhaps that's why Ken loved us both. She's a wonderful woman, Helena."
Bonham Carter and Branagh were said to have begun an affair in 1994 when she played his love interest in his adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
