Film
Emma Thompson
Actor and screenwriter, Academy Awards for acting and for writing
Born 1959
Photo: Kalai Ramu · CC BY-SA 4.0
«Newnham taught me how to think.»
Emma Thompson is the only person to have won Academy Awards both for acting and for screenwriting, the second for her adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. She has worked across Shakespeare, comedy and blockbusters with equal ease.
Key achievements
- Academy Award for Best Actress, Howards End, 1993
- Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Sense and Sensibility, 1996
- Only person to win Oscars for both acting and writing
Universities
Cambridge, England
Read English at Newnham College from 1978 and performed with the Footlights comedy troupe.
Facts
- She was one of the first women admitted to the Footlights, the Cambridge comedy club that produced Monty Python and much of British comedy.
- Her Footlights contemporaries included Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, and they toured together after graduating.
- She spent five years writing the Sense and Sensibility screenplay, her first.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.