Actress Emma Thompson has revealed that her personal experience with spousal infidelity inspired her acting for a particular scene in "Love, Actually" (2003). Thompson was married to actor/director Kenneth Branagh, who allegedly had an affair during the marriage.
Thompson played Karen in the 2003 film, a woman who was married to Harry, played by the late Alan Rickman. Karen and Harry were shown to be comfortably married with two children, although Harry began to have romantic feelings for his new secretary. Karen eventually discovered her husband's affair when she realized that the necklace she thought her husband bought for her was actually for another woman.
Karen was then shown standing alone in her bedroom, listening to a Joni Mitchell CD as she cried.
According to a report by The Huffington Post, Thompson said that she had a similar experience. "That scene where my character is standing by the bed crying is so well known because it's something everyone's been through," Thompson told the audience at a fundraiser in London on Feb. 25.
Thompson and Branagh got married in 1989, following a relationship that reportedly began on the set of the 1987 BBC production "Fortunes of War." There were rumors that Branagh became romantically involved with actress Helena Bonham Carter, who was his co-star in the 1994 film "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein."
In 1995, Thompson filed for divorce. She is now married to actor Greg Wise, with whom she has two children.
"I had my heart very badly broken by Ken," Thompson said, adding, "So I knew what it was like to find the necklace that wasn't meant for me.
The Sunday Times also reported Thompson saying in 2013: "I've had so much bloody practice at crying in a bedroom, then having to go out and be cheerful, gathering up the pieces of my heart and putting them in a drawer."
However, the alleged affair seemed to have caused at least some good. It was in the wake of her divorce from Branagh that Thompson wrote the screenplay for the 1995 film "Sense and Sensibility," adapted from the Jane Austen novel and directed by Ang Lee. Thompson went on to win two Academy Awards that same year as script writer and actress, becoming the only person to win Academy Awards for both acting and writing.
Thompson also said that while her experience with Branagh's infidelity inspired the way she portrayed the "Love, Actually" scene, she considered the matter "blood under the bridge." She has reportedly forgiven Branagh, and has said that she and Bonham Carter have made their peace with each other.
