Dame Emma Thompson urges doctors to recommend sex
Dame Emma Thompson believes that sex should be recommended by health professionals.
The 66-year-old actress has urged Britain's National Health Service (NHS) to recommend intimacy to couples at a screening of her film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande – in which she plays a widowed teacher who explores her sexuality with the help of a male escort.
Speaking during a Q+A at The Kiln Theatre in London, Emma said: "We need to learn about our own response to: what if when you're unwell, you can't make connections, but you need sex?
"You need sex because it's part of our health plan, if you like. It should really be on the NHS. It should. It's so good for you."
The Love Actually star also discussed how the 2022 movie, in which she featured alongside Daryl McCormack, has inspired her female friends to make matters between the sheets into their own hands.
Emma explained: "Since the film came out, quite a number of older friends of mine have done that – they've hired escorts."
The Nanny McPhee actress argues that sex work should be recognised as legitimate job instead of being stigmatised.
She said: "Daryl spoke to a lot of sex workers. And the thing he learned most was they were just like accountants. Sex workers are doing a job.
"He made this discovery also about the way in which it's viewed. Katy (Brand, the film's writer) had come from a country in which it is legal; I come from a background where I've worked with a lot of people who have been trafficked, so I have very complicated views about sex work.
"I understand that there are lots of different angles that you can come at it. For instance, in Sweden now, men who buy sex are criminalised. Sex workers aren't criminalised, the buyer is.
"People have views about that. We used to have a trafficking unit in this country – we don't have it anymore, it was absolved into the vice squad (police units dealing with sex work, trafficking and drugs).
"Sex work and trafficking are two very different things but they're often conflated and it's not understood partly because it's not documented. So no one knows about men who buy sex because it's hidden."
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