“I’ve had so much 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”


Emma, actually


Queen of stage and screen, British actress Emma Thompson is a national treasure. But she’s also opened up publicly about her battle with depression


Born in London in 1959, Emma Thompson is one of our most cherished and acclaimed actresses – and has won plenty of awards to prove it, including two Oscars, an Emmy, three BAFTAs and two Golden Globes (and no doubt there will be more to come). You could say showbiz is in Thompson’s blood: her father,


actor Eric Thompson, was the narrator of the much-loved children’s television programme The Magic Roundabout, while her mother is the well-known Scottish actress Phyllida Law. Emma’s sister Sophie Thompson followed her into the profession too. But while most of us know her as the star of unforgettable


movies such as Sense and Sensibility, Howards End, Love Actually, Nanny McPhee, Saving Mr Banks and the Harry Potter series, few may realise Thompson has been battling behind-the-scenes with depression – a common mental health condition. Indeed, she has said that at her lowest times she struggled to get out of bed every morning. Thompson told the magazine The Hollywood Reporter that


she experiences occasional mild depression, "which I think is a very common thing. It’s a very much hidden thing people don’t talk about. I think it should be discussed.” Married to actor Greg Wise with whom she has a daughter


and a son, Thompson has revealed how having difficulties getting pregnant had an impact on her mental wellbeing,


6 All About health


especially after having her daughter Gaia. “I’ve certainly been there, in various depressions, when you


never wash and wear the same things all the time,” she told Easy Living magazine. “It was hellish after Gaia was born, trying to have another baby through IVF. That was terrible – I blamed myself, and no one could persuade me that it wasn’t my fault. And that led to another depression. “It was bad. I counted other people’s children for years. But I’m fine about it now.”


Marriage breakdown Many things can lead to depression, including the breakdown of a relationship – something Thompson has herself experienced. She revealed how the split from her first husband – actor Kenneth Branagh – affected her while being interviewed for the Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs. The only things that helped get her through that “very


rough” period, she said, were her work – including writing her first screenplay for Sense and Sensibility, the movie she also starred in and for which she won an Oscar for Best Screenplay – and the fact that she started a romance with her now husband, who she met on the movie’s set. “I used to crawl from the bedroom to the computer and


then I was all right. Sense and Sensibility saved me from going under in a very nasty way. Work saved me and Greg


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