SPOILER ALERT: This post contains plot details from the first two episodes of Gossip Girl Season 2.
12.11.2022 - 01:19 / usmagazine.com
Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh were only married for six years, but the scandal that led to their split made headlines for decades.
The Love Actually actress and the Hamlet director met in 1987 while filming the BBC series Fortunes of War and tied the knot two years later. The duo were one of the most A-list couples in England at the time, collaborating several times during their marriage. Branagh directed his wife in a string of films released between 1989 and 1993: Henry V, Dead Again, Peter’s Friends and Much Ado About Nothing.
By 1994, however, their romance hit a serious speed bump. While filming his movie adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Branagh began a relationship with Helena Bonham Carter, who’d previously acted alongside Thompson in 1992’s Howards End.
Thompson and Branagh announced their split in September 1995, but at the time, they blamed their breakup on their busy work schedules. The Late Night actress had spent much of that year working on Sense and Sensibility, adapting the screenplay from Jane Austen’s novel of the same name and starring as lead character Elinor Dashwood.
After it emerged that Branagh had an affair with Bonham Carter, Thompson spoke candidly about how her ex-husband’s infidelity affected her. In February 2018, the Emmy winner revealed that the moment in Love Actually where her character, Karen, discovers her husband’s affair was inspired by her own 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 said during a fundraiser for the Tricycle Theatre at the time. “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
SPOILER ALERT: This post contains plot details from the first two episodes of Gossip Girl Season 2.
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Love 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.
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 in 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 , Emma has spoken candidly about being “blinded” to the realities of Kenneth's infidelity.
Reflecting on a dark time. Emma Thompson opened up about her split from ex-husband Kenneth Branagh, who had an affair with Helena Bonham Carter during their marriage.
Nick Carter is mourning the death of his little brother.