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15th January 2025
03:05pm GMT
Emma Thompson has recalled how “humiliated” she felt after her husband of six years had an affair with Helena Bonham Carter.
Dame Thompson is one of the biggest names in acting, having won two Oscars and three Baftas for her performances on screen over the years.
To a certain generation, she may be best known for her role as Divination teacher Professor Sybill Trelawney in Harry Potter, appearing alongside Bonham Carter who starred as Bellatrix Lestrange.
Before either of the pair appeared in the franchise, Thompson had been married to another Harry Potter actor, Kenneth Branagh.
He played Gilderoy Lockhart in The Chamber of Secrets and married Thompson in 1989.
The pair’s marriage ended acrimoniously though, when they separated in 1995 after Branagh had an affair with Bonham Carter.
Branagh and Bonham Carter are said to have started the affair in 1994 when they played each other’s love interests in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
According to Thompson, Bonham Carter wasn’t the only woman he had a relationship with during their marriage, and she recently spoke to the New Yorker about how betrayed she felt at the time.
She admitted she had felt “humiliated” by the affair, telling the publication: “I was utterly, utterly blind to the fact that he had relationships with other women on set. What I learned was how easy it is to be blinded by your own desire to deceive yourself.
“I was half alive. Any sense of being a lovable or worthy person had gone completely.”
Thompson has also spoken in interviews about how she and Bonham Carter buried the hatchet “years and years ago” though.
Speaking to the Telegraph back in 2013, she explained: “I’ve had so much bloody practice at crying in a bedroom, then having to go out and be cheerful, gathering up the pieces of my heart and putting them in a drawer.
“That is… all blood under the bridge. You can’t hold on to anything like that. I just think… pfft. It’s pointless. I haven’t got the energy for it. Helena and I made our peace years and years ago… she’s a wonderful woman.”
Thompson went on to marry Greg Wise, whom she met whilst the pair were filming Sense and Sensibility together in 1995.
The couple married in 2003, and Thompson has previously said Wise “saved” her from the depression to fell into after her divorce from Branagh.
“He picked up the pieces and put them together again,” she told the Observer.
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