Emma Thompson is the only person to have won Academy Awards for both acting and screenwriting, taking Best Actress for Howards End and Best Adapted Screenplay for Sense and Sensibility.
She came from Cambridge Footlights and sketch comedy, which is visible in the timing even in serious work, and she is very funny in Love Actually in a role of about ten minutes that contains the film’s best scene.
The Remains of the Day is the performance to argue for, opposite Anthony Hopkins, playing someone trying to reach a man who has sealed himself off.
She has written extensively, including the Nanny McPhee films, and is politically outspoken in a way that has periodically cost her work.
