Emma Thompson’s Breakdown in ‘Love Actually’ Was Kenneth Branagh-Inspired

It’s the best-known and most-discussed scene in Love Actually, give or take Hugh Grant shimmying to the Pointer Sisters. Emma Thompson on Christmas Eve, having just been gifted a Joni Mitchell CD by her husband (Alan Rickman) but, unbeknownst to him, aware that he bought a piece of fancy jewelry at the department store earlier and is apparently going to give it to his remorselessly flirty co-worker. Thompson retreats quietly to her bedroom to “get ready,” puts on the CD to cover her soft sobs, and while Joni delivers a melancholy cover of her own “Both Sides Now,” she has a quietly devastating breakdown. It’s the best scene in the film; it’s the only thing that Love Actually haters have nothing bad to say about; it’s among the top 5 scenes of Emma Thompson’s career, and for a two-time Oscar winner, that is truly saying something.

And now, in an as reported by the UK’s Telegraph, Thompson reveals that part of the motivation she found for her character in that scene comes from real life, and in particular the betrayal she felt in the dissolution of her marriage to actor/director Kenneth Branagh. The couple divorced in 1995, and it soon after came out that Branagh had cheated on her with co-star Helena Bonham Carter.

“I had my heart very badly broken by Ken,” Thompson said. “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.”

She says the scene “is so well known because it’s something everyone’s been through.”

Having been married since 1989 and starred together in films such as Dead Again and Much Ado About Nothing, Thompson and Branagh were kind of Britain’s star thespian couple for a while in the early ’90s, at least by American standards. He’d been Oscar-nominated for Henry V; she won Best Actress in 1992 for Howards End. Branagh and Bonham Carter’s relationship began when he directed her in the 1994 film Mary’s Shelley’s Frankenstein (in which he also starred). Adding additional sting, Bonham Carter had played Thompson’s sister in Howards End.

Thompson has later said that she and Bonham Carter have mended fences (Bonham Carter’s relationship with Branagh ended in 1999). “That is… all blood under the bridge,” Thompson said. “You can’t hold on to anything like that. It’s pointless. I haven’t got the energy for it… Helena and I made our peace years and years ago… she’s a wonderful woman.”

Where to stream Love Actually