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| Extraordinarily gifted and appealing actress who catapulted to stardom with her brilliant, Oscar-winning performance as Margaret Schlegel in the Merchant-Ivory adaptation of Howards End (1992). Thompson began acting at Cambridge University with the comedy troupe Footlights, and after experience on television with fellow troupe members Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, she starred in her first stage musical, "Me and My Girl," opposite Robert Lindsay. She won a British Academy Award for her work on the BBC series "Tutti Frutti" and "Fortunes of War" and became friends with her "Fortunes" costar, Kenneth Branagh, who cast her as Katherine of France in his Oscar-winning adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V (1989). Branagh and Thompson were married after the film's release and since then, she has starred in many of his films: in the dual role of a present-day Californian and a forties European woman in Dead Again (1991), in a deliciously funny performance as a nerdy, neurotic cat lover in Peter's Friends (1992), and most memorably, as Beatrice opposite Branagh's Benedick in the rousing Much Ado About Nothing (1993). They starred, as well, in a BBC production of Look Back in Anger (1993). Thompson has also appeared in The Tall Guy (1990) and Impromptu (1991), and was featured in a memorable episode of television's "Cheers." She reteamed with her Howards End costar Anthony Hopkins in the Merchant-Ivory film The Remains of the Day (1993), and played a lawyer defending an accused IRA terrorist in In the Name of the Father (1993), earning Oscar nominations for both performances. She made an unbilled cameo as Gerard Depardieu's girlfriend in My Father the Hero and teamed with her least likely costar, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in Junior (both 1994) before taking the title role in Carrington (1995). |
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