Emma Thompson Quotes & Sayings

London has always been a haven for victims of cruelty, and been improved by them. Yet I can see it changing now. Outsiders are demonised, there are little bits of legislation, people are scared. — Emma Thompson

This morning, I went to wipe my hands on a tea towel, and while I was using it, it seemed like it felt a bit light. I unfolded it and realized my daughter had cut little bits out of it to make frocks for her dolls! — Emma Thompson

I think it's [the AIDS fight] the most important and most pressing one - I think it's a global emergency and I think in a way we all have to address it and engage with it because I think it's the biggest threat to the human race that we have ever faced. — Emma Thompson

We have to reinvest, I think, in the idea of articulacy as a form of personal human freedom and power. — Emma Thompson

Constantly worrying about your reflection and criticizing your body, shape and size is an act of violence against yourself. — Emma Thompson

During an election, it's like they're doing my job: they're going around banging the drum for their party and selling their movie. You know, it's the same thing. — Emma Thompson

(On period costume posture coaching
We all stand about like parboiled spaghetti being straightened out. — Emma Thompson

There is a painful difference between the expectation of an unpleasant event and its final certainty. — Emma Thompson

The flashbacks are parallel for me. You experience two storylines at the same time, and I'm not switching from one time to another. — Emma Thompson

Laughter is a celebration of our failings. That's what clowns are for. And that's what I am. — Emma Thompson

You can't imagine what satisfaction can be gotten from throwing a pie into someone's face. — Emma Thompson

My worst quality is impatience. — Emma Thompson

Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn't listening. — Emma Thompson

One is a child when one has a child. No one says, 'You will never be the same again.' Which is the truth! And we're all supposed to be happy all the time. What is that about? — Emma Thompson

The best way [to survive] the red carpet is by wearing Ugg boots. But unfortunately, I have not yet managed to persuade the people who style me at these times to let me do that. — Emma Thompson

It's not funny at all that we do all that advertising for children. Why is advertising for children allowed? What possible reason can there be for having those effing adverts on TV for all this crap that's made by poor people in poor countries that we sell our children who have too much? — Emma Thompson

Sometimes you'll have some things, and sometimes you'll have other things. And you do not need it all at once; it's not good for you. — Emma Thompson

It's not my fault that there is this gap between rich and poor, it is the fault of governments. I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter. — Emma Thompson

If you don't want women to do whatever they need to do then you must provide them with food, you must provide them with shelter and their basic human rights. — Emma Thompson

I think books are like people, in the sense that they'll turn up in your life when you most need them. — Emma Thompson

It's such a cold night and it's the only time I've actively been grateful for menopause. I've been entirely comfortable. — Emma Thompson

I present the nominees, well, not me the Voice of God, for Best Screenplay. — Emma Thompson

We've hired the calmest babies in the world to play the hysterical Thomas. One did finally start to cry but stopped every time Chris [Newman (assistant director)] yelled 'Action' ... Babies smiled all afternoon. Buddhist babies. They didn't cry once. We, however, were all in tears by 5 p.m. — Emma Thompson

I understand what it's like to come with your family, and to uproot yourself and come to another culture. You need a lot of support. People say, 'She's got her daughter; she's got her husband.' Yeah, but she hasn't got anyone else. — Emma Thompson

I do think that despite my best efforts to resist it, I am now a grown-up. It's due to lots of very difficult decisions that you make over a long period of time - about motherhood, wifehood, and work, and all the things that one has to make decisions about. — Emma Thompson

I've a problem with the word charity because I think that NGOs, as I prefer calling them, really do take the work of moral and social responsibilities that ought to be taken on by governments. — Emma Thompson

Marianne Dashwood looks at gray skies and sees blue. That's all very well, and it's not something you ever want entirely to lose. But you must lose a little of it; otherwise you're going to get wet. — Emma Thompson

I hate the way market forces try to separate us out in to the appropriate demographic - basically in order to sell us things. We need to find stories that we can enjoy together, not separately. — Emma Thompson

Press conference [on the movie Carrington] yielded the usual crop of daftness. I've been asked if I related personally to Carrington's tortured relationship with sex and replied that no, not really, I'd had a very pleasant time since I was fifteen. This elicited very disapproving copy from the Brits ... No wonder people think we don't have sex in England. — Emma Thompson

Why do we wear them? They're so painful. — Emma Thompson

I have to write for everyone. What really fascinates me is how you make films or make stories that can genuinely be shared by different groups. — Emma Thompson

I think our hearts are very chemical and we change the way we see people according to how we feel about them. That's what love is, in a way. — Emma Thompson

Shooting Willoughby carrying Marianne up the path ... Male strength
the desire to be cradled again? ... I'd love someone to pick me up and carry me off. Frightening. Lindsay assures me I'd start to fidget after a while. She's such a comfort. — Emma Thompson

Children don't need much advice but they really do need to be listened to and not just with half an ear. — Emma Thompson

I seem finally to have stopped worrying about Elinor, and age. She seems now to be perfectly normal
about twenty-five, a witty control freak. I like her but I can see how she would drive you mad. She's just the sort of person you'd want to get drunk, just to make her giggling and silly. — Emma Thompson

Horror. I can't manage it. I become
well
horrified. Self-help books have a similar effect.
When asked, "Any literary genre you simply can't be bothered with?" - (By the Book: Writers on Literature and the Literary Life from the NYT Book Review, by Pamela Paul) — Emma Thompson

When you need me, but do not want me then I must stay. But when you want me but no longer need me, I have to go — Emma Thompson

Up 5.15 a.m. thinking, packpackpack. I appear to have accumulated more things. How did this happen? I haven't shopped. Think my bath oils have bred. — Emma Thompson

What was important was trying to create something that families could watch together and enjoy together. — Emma Thompson

Sense and Sensibility signs litter Devon
arrows with S & S on. Whenever Ang [Lee] sees a B & B sign he thinks it's for another movie. — Emma Thompson

Indeed - judicious, consistent parenting is a dream of mine. No judgements, learning space and listening carefully are my goals. — Emma Thompson

Jane reminds us that God is in his heaven, the monarch on his throne and the pelvis firmly beneath the ribcage. Apparently rock and roll liberated the pelvis and it hasn't been the same since. — Emma Thompson

My mother has never approved of high heels. As a result, I have never been able to walk in high heels - and they were all I ever wanted. So of course, my daughter has two pairs. — Emma Thompson

The Catholic Church - it's so difficult because I don't want say anything offensive but it makes me very angry that religious leaders from this faith have tried to respond negatively to sexual education and to the promotion of condom use — Emma Thompson

Well, I met Sandy Bullock at an awards thing a couple years ago, and she said to me, 'If I were gay, you'd be the one.' and I said, 'I'm there!' — Emma Thompson

But certainly in Uganda, Mozambique and South Africa, people don't really talk about sex and certainly religious leaders - some of them - up to now have been very unwilling to accept, for instance, the promotion of condom use — Emma Thompson

We belabour, I think, under a very heavy crust of consumerism really. — Emma Thompson

A lot of very beautiful women can be a pain because all they're thinking about is how they look. — Emma Thompson

Got up this morning and could not find my glasses. Finally had to seek assistance. Kate [Winslet] found them inside a flower arrangement. — Emma Thompson

The insanity of consumption bothers me. Talk about the opiate of the masses. It ain't religion anymore. It's stuff. — Emma Thompson

I think people say you shouldn't work with children or animals, but you must only work with children. — Emma Thompson

There is that thing about not working with animals and children - I don't think that's true. Although you should never work with donkeys. — Emma Thompson

I think that the Bible as a system of moral guidance in the 21st century is insufficient, to put it mildly. I feel quite strongly that we need a new moral lodestone if we can't rely on what is inside our own selves. Which I think, actually, is pretty reliable. — Emma Thompson

Tell him I mind having to look pretty, that's what I mind, because it is so much more of an effort. — Emma Thompson

Sometimes I get to put on posh frocks and be Madam Glamour, the vendor of my wares. My lovely friend Kath, a stylist, puts me into things I'd never dream of. But my real life is very different. It's very, very home-based - an intense domestic life, that's the core of everything. — Emma Thompson

If there's a role you're playing and there's a great deal of material to explore because the person was real then it's a completely different preparation time and message to playing someone fictional. — Emma Thompson

We've got people looking at our seamy side and our sad side a lot of the time because that's easier. It's much more difficult to make a film about happiness with lots of jokes in it. — Emma Thompson

Once you're a mom, you've been split into two people. It's like Peter Pan and his shadow. — Emma Thompson

I am who I am, and there is nothing I can do about that. — Emma Thompson

I was brought up by very witty people who were dealing with quite difficult things: disease and death ... I was brought up by people who tended to giggle at funerals. — Emma Thompson

Hugh Laurie (playing Mr. Palmer) felt the line 'Don't palm all your abuses [of language upon me]' was possibly too rude. 'It's in the book,' I said. He didn't hit me. — Emma Thompson

Being disabled should not mean being disqualified from having access to every aspect of life. — Emma Thompson

If you're actually allowing your creative part to control your writing rather than a more commercial instinct or motive, then you'll find that all sorts of interesting things will bubble up to the surface. — Emma Thompson

Difficult for actors to extemporise in nineteenth-century English. Except for Robert Hardy and Elizabeth Spriggs, who speak that way anyway. — Emma Thompson

Anyone who tries to deny #ClimateChange looks a little bit bonkers. — Emma Thompson

Maybe I don't take myself so seriously any more. And I don't care how I'm judged. I'm past all that. — Emma Thompson

Very nice lady served us drinks in hotel and was followed in by a cat. We all crooned at it. Alan [Rickman] to cat (very low and meaning it): 'Fuck off.' The nice lady didn't turn a hair. The cat looked slightly embarrassed but stayed. — Emma Thompson

Let's stop feeling so guilty about global warming — Emma Thompson

[Fighting Climate Change] is important for every single person on the planet, which is why it has to be the greatest grassroots movement of all time. This is the battle of our lives. We're fighting for our children. — Emma Thompson

Film is so much to do with perfection and how differently you can feel about someone at the beginning of the film and the end of the film. — Emma Thompson

Don't ever go on a diet. Just don't. Walk away. Diets are the spawn of Satan. — Emma Thompson

I was in Los Angeles making 'Dead Again' and the producer, Lindsay Doran , asked me if I'd be interested in adapting this book, .. Austen is my favorite author and I thought, 'Well, of course, I'd be very interested, but I don't know how. I don't know where to start, A, writing a screenplay and B, sort of adapting it from a great novel. — Emma Thompson

And it's absolutely true that male sexual behaviour and female responses to male demands change a lot when they start communicating - and the levels of the communication that I've seen on the ground in very, very poor areas are so high and I think why don't we have that here? — Emma Thompson

Piracy is our only option. — Emma Thompson

Is love a fancy or a feeling.... or a Ferrars? — Emma Thompson

But when I lose my temper, I find it difficult to forgive myself. I feel I've failed. I can be calm in a crisis, in the face of death or things that hurt badly. I don't get hysterical, which may be masochistic of me. — Emma Thompson

The trouble is it's very difficult to pin-point the most important thing because Aids affects everyone in different levels of society, differently and you have to respond to it differently. — Emma Thompson

I have had lots of friends who've been affected by Aids and a very good friend of mine, Oscar Moore, died of Aids and I was with him in his last year quite a bit. And of course he was a man living in a very rich culture with a wealthy family who was able to afford health care. — Emma Thompson

Girlfriends are vital ... Maggie [Gyllenhaal] and I will always see each other when Maggie's in London or I'm here. We'll always make time to sit and catch up properly. — Emma Thompson

I think the point about ActionAid is what it's asking people to do is engage with poor people in developing countries and understand what their lives are like and understand how the way we live our lives impacts on theirs. — Emma Thompson

British aren't really known for their physical loveliness but firemen, generally speaking, are gorgeous. — Emma Thompson

My godfather sad that story was abut taking the chaotic jigsaw of life, making it into a picture and putting a frame around it so that we could look at it, have control over it. Story and art are the humanizing elements of us. — Emma Thompson

The trick is to age honestly and gracefully and make it look great, so that everyone looks forward to it. — Emma Thompson

I don't have technique because I never learnt any. — Emma Thompson

My husband is here and I'd like to thank him, for many things, but first of all for pointing out that I had a big hole in my frock and then that my nipples were pointing in different directions. It's good to have an expert there to help you with that sort of thing. — Emma Thompson

It doesn't matter how good the movie is. What matters is what it takes during the opening weekend. It's slightly distressing sometimes but that's how it works. — Emma Thompson

I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter, and able to give people a clean drink of water. I don't want images of starving babies at the breast in my mind. I want that to change. And if I want that, I had better do something about it. — Emma Thompson

Families are weird. You'd think that people who live and eat and sleep in the same place would always have a lot in common. But sometimes they don't have anything in common AT ALL. You can have a brother who really likes ballet and a sister who thinks it's girlie. You could probably have Darth Vader and Mickey Mouse in the same family; they're that weird. — Emma Thompson

I Don't Need the nicotene patch, Penny - I smoke cigarettes. — Emma Thompson

Children are much more understanding of the suddenness and arbitrariness of death than we are. The old fairy tales contain a lot of that, and we've stolen from them, just as they stole from Greek myth, which has that same mixture of pre-Christian chaos. — Emma Thompson

When husbands and fathers leave, their wives and daughters tend to value themselves less as a result. — Emma Thompson

We need men and women to sit down and talk to each other about sex honestly and openly. That would help us fight Aids so immediately. But our lack of communication is hugely problematic. — Emma Thompson

I don't mean being famous is a perk, because one knows that it's not necessarily a perk, but there are certain perks to being well-known and respected in one's field. Public perks. Like, I don't know, general friendliness and willingness to please, just to point out two. — Emma Thompson

The thing that influenced me most in relation to 'Nanny McPhee' were the Westerns I watched with my father. All the Spaghetti Westerns; all the Virginians; all the High Chaparrals. Because if you think about the form, it's a stranger from out of town. — Emma Thompson

I think my first bout of that was when I was doing me and My Girl, funnily enough. I really didn't change my clothes or answer the phone, but went into the theatre every night and was cheerful and sang the Lambeth Walk. She said: "The only thing I could do was write. I used to crawl from the bedroom to the computer and just sit and write, and then I was alright, because I was not present. "Sense and Sensibility really saved me from going under, I think, in a very nasty way. — Emma Thompson

The fact is that young people are going to have sex whether you like it or not. — Emma Thompson

I've never been on the cover of Empire. I'm very bitter. I've got an award but now I feel sad and cross. — Emma Thompson

The only way you can have it all is by delegating all the running of the home to other people - which I don't ever want to do ... So you do it yourself, and it takes time and energy and effort. And if you give it the time, it's profoundly enjoyable. — Emma Thompson

A lot of people in my world - in the acting world - have either lost friends to Aids or live with HIV because its origin in our culture, in New York for instance, was in the gay community. — Emma Thompson

I don't think people understand that being poor means you have to work from dawn until dusk just to survive through the day. I think there's some notion that poor people lie about all day not doing anything. — Emma Thompson