Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh’s Relationship Timeline: The Way They Were
usmagazine.comLove actually … not? Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh went from working together to falling in love in real life — while also weathering his affair with Helena Bonham Carter — before the pair ultimately split.The British actors met in 1987 while filming the series Fortunes of War and started to date shortly after.
Two years later, Thompson and Branagh tied the knot and continued to work on various projects together.“He was incandescent with ambition and performance energy,” the Nanny McPhee actress recalled of her former flame in an interview with The New Yorker in November 2022. “Like two mating lobsters, we clashed claws.”In September 1995, however, they announced their separation — citing their conflicting work schedules as the reason for their split.
It later came out that the Henry V actor had an affair with Bonham Carter while he was married to the Oscar winner, which caused their romance to take a turn for the worse.“I was utterly, utterly blind to the fact that he had relationships with other women on set,” Thompson told The New Yorker in a profile published in November 2022. “What I learned was how easy it is to be blinded by your own desire to deceive yourself.”She added: “I was half alive.
Any sense of being a lovable or worthy person had gone completely.”The Love Actually star revealed in February 2018 that she took inspiration from her experience with Branagh’s infidelity to deliver her iconic emotional scene in the holiday film.“That scene where my character is standing by the bed crying is so well known because it’s something everyone’s been through,” Thompson said during a fundraiser for the Tricycle Theatre at the time. “I had my heart very badly broken by Ken.
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