Emma Thompson knows how love can make one oblivious to reality.
The two-time Oscar winner opened up about the end of her marriage to Kenneth Branagh in an interview with the New Yorker.
Thompson and Branagh tied the knot back in 1989 after meeting two years before while on-set of their drama series “Fortunes of War.” The couple eventually went separate ways in 1995, and news broke of Branagh’s relationship with actress Helena Bonham Carter who played opposite him in “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” in 1994. Branagh and Bonham Carter went on to date for five years.
“I was utterly, utterly blind to the fact that he had relationships with other women on set,” the “Love Actually” star claimed. “What I learned was how easy it is to be blinded by your own desire to deceive yourself.”
Thompson recalled how the end of her marriage affected her mental health, “I was half alive. Any sense of being a lovable or worthy person had gone completely.”
For her part, Bonham Carter described the drama around her relationship with Branagh in a 2020 interview with the Guardian, “all blood under the bridge.”
The 63-year-old eventually met Greg Wise when the two starred in “Sense and Sensibility.” The couple married in 2003, and Thompson credited Wise for picking up “the pieces and put them back together.” The pair share children: Gaia Romilly and Tindyebwa Agaba.
“I’ve learned more from my second marriage just by being married. As my mother says, ‘The first twenty years are the hardest,'” she shared.
Thompson eventually reconnected with both Branagh and Bonham Carter when they joined the “Harry Potter” franchise. Branagh made his first appearance in the franchise’s second film, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” as Gilderoy Lockhart while Thompson joined the cast as Professor Trelawney in the third movie “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” Helena made her debut as Bellatrix Lestrange in the fourth movie, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.”
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