Emma Thompson says the Oscars left her ‘seriously ill’
Thompson won the Oscar for best screenplay for "Sense and Sensibility
By Lianne Kolirin, CNN
We’re in the midst of awards season, but the experience might not be as joyful or glamorous as viewers might think.
Emma Thompson has two Academy Award wins to her name, but she’s revealed that the Oscars left her feeling “seriously ill.”
The British actress, who stars as Miss Trunchbull in “Matilda the Musical” on Netflix, was responding to a question about whether she has found fame “difficult to grapple with” in an interview with the Radio Times.
She won an Oscar in 1993 for her lead role in movie “Howards End” and another for the screenplay of “Sense and Sensibility” three years later.
The 63-year-old, who also starred in the movie directed by Ang Lee, wrote the screenplay based on Jane Austen’s classic novel.
The “Nanny McPhee” star told the magazine: “Both times I had to do the Oscars I got seriously ill. I found the pressure and glare of it too much. It’s astonishing — and then afterwards you want to lie down in a dark room. You think, ‘Please don’t ask me any questions or make me talk about myself.'”
She added: “I quickly developed a sort of allergy to that part of the job. I’m lucky — I think it must be awful if you’re James Bond.”
Thompson did not elaborate about her illness or the circumstances of either event.
A fuller interview was available on the magazine’s Radio Times podcast, in which Thompson said that she felt fame can be a “highly toxic condition” but that being grounded helps.
She said she divides her time between her house in Scotland and another in northwest London.
“I have lived in a constrained continuum in the sense that I have lived in the same street in London all my life,” she told the podcast, adding that: “You can’t really get away with swanning about in a Louis Vuitton taxi … so that’s a help.”
Last year, Thompson described how the collapse of her marriage to Kenneth Branagh in 1995 impacted her mental health. It came after she discovered Branagh had been involved with her “Howards End” co-star, Helena Bonham Carter.
“I was half alive. Any sense of being a lovable or worthy person had gone completely,” she said.
In 2003, Thompson went on to marry Greg Wise, her co-star in “Sense and Sensibility.” The couple share two children.
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