Latest news with #EmmaThompson
Spectator
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Emma Thompson is wrong about sex
I watched most of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande when it was on TV some months back. I wondered whether to write something about it. But I can't write about every representation of sex that offends me. Who am I – Mary Whitehouse? Thankfully Dame Emma Thompson, the star of that film, has now handed me an opportunity. Can I first say something about her? I can't stick her. Is she a good actress? I don't know. I can't tell – it seems to me that she leaks her personality into every role. In Sense and Sensibility it seemed she was merging the character of Elinor Dashwood with the character of Emma Thompson, the famous self-righteous know-it-all celebrity, and I did not want such a merger. Actors are meant to get their own personalities out of the way, aren't they? I can't think of any other roles except for the sad wife in Love Actually, a film I greatly despise. So, in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, an annoyingly named film, Emma merges her personality with that of a retired teacher who, though married, has never been sexually satisfied, and so engages a young male prostitute. She is oh so English, oh so awkward, oh so middle-class, and oh so brave for pursuing her desires despite the cultural weight of repression. Her dialogue is full of sub-Alan Bennett stuff about wondering whether she should be shopping at Waitrose – a distraction from the fact that the prostitute is about to have sex with her. The young man, by the way, is a paragon of modern sensitivity – a male tart with a heart, even a sort of gentle Jesus figure for our day. At one point she calls him a 'sex saint'. Maybe the film is written by Richard Curtis – I can't be bothered to find out. Whether or not is it, Emma has been, in a sense. Meaning that her screen persona is a product of his claim to portray the English soul in a modern way. It is a bogus claim – but I am making enough enemies for one day. It is excruciating to watch this woman being very polite between bouts of sex – but not excruciating in the edgy way the film intends. It is excruciating because one is being preached at by thickos. The message is this: sex is just sex, it's a human need like having a good dentist – but more profound. So we should ditch the moralistic idea that sex belongs in long-term relationships, that casual sex and paid-for sex are somehow wrong. Emma herself has now underlined this message. At a screening of the film – presumably for some 'charity' event – the dame explained that sex is very good for one's health and wellbeing: 'It should really be on the NHS. It should. It's so good for you.' She claimed that some of her older, lonelier friends had started to hire escorts, just like the brave lady in the film. She added: 'We need to learn about our own response to: 'What if when you're unwell, you can't make connections, but you need sex?'' Therefore, she said, sex-workers should not be stigmatised: they are 'just like accountants – sex workers are doing a job'. She is oh so English, oh so awkward, oh so middle-class, and oh so brave for pursuing her desires despite the cultural weight of repression OK, deep breath. And apologies if you have heard this before from me – in relation to Lily Phillips or some smutty reality show on Channel 4. Sex is quite complicated. In fact, it is two things. It is a strong human appetite – one that we notoriously share with lesser creatures, in fact. And it is also the almost-opposite of this: an act of commitment to one person, with whom one enjoys great psychological intimacy – for whom one forgoes the anarchic-appetite side of sex. We could call this sex in the full sense. The duality is difficult and confusing. People like Dame Emma – and whoever wrote the film – who very strongly assume themselves to be very intelligent, are advised to tread a bit more carefully. Am I saying that casual sex and paid-for sex are 'wrong'? Not quite – but I am saying that they are different from sex in the full sense: sex accompanied by long-term psychological intimacy. Casual sex and paid-for sex are ambiguous at best; only sex in the full sense is worthy of celebration. The fault of the film, and of Dame Emma's remarks, is that the boundary is blurred, and its message is muddled. The film implies that it is psychologically healthy and liberating to detach sex from commitment – to treat it as a mere physical need. But on the other hand, it places a lot of emphasis on the therapeutic nature of the encounter – on the young man's sensitivity, on the woman's sense of gaining a sort of enlightenment as she at last tastes carnal pleasure. So it is subtly disingenuous: it implies that an emotional and even spiritual connection is part of 'good sex', even as it preaches liberation from boring old relationships. Our culture needs to think about sex more.
Daily Mail
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Greg Wise calls his Nanny McPhee star wife Dame Emma Thompson the Winch Wench
She starred in Nanny McPhee, and the Harry Potter films. But in her downtime Oscar nominee Dame Emma Thompson loves nothing more than a bit of woodwork. The 66-year-old's husband said Dame Emma is known as the 'Winch Wench' for getting creative at home on the banks of Loch Eck in Argyll. Speaking on Virgin Radio, Greg Wise, 59, told show host Chris Evans of the BAFTA-winner's fondness for his 'madly dangerous' power tools. 'I have something called a portable capstan winch Em fell in love with and became the Winch Wench,' he said. The couple have owned their Scottish home - near the picturesque Clyde town of Dunoon - for 20 years. Such is their involvement in the local community that they recently threw their weight behind a campaign to save local arts venue Dunoon Burgh Hall. In an effort to highlight the plight of the venue and the efforts to save it, Dame Emma, 65, and Wise, who married near the town in 2003 and have a house nearby on the shores of Loch Eck, recorded a video message. In it, Dame Emma said: 'It's the most extraordinary building - so beautiful but inside, so vibrant and alive. 'They have the most wonderful art shows and the most wonderful resources for the elderly, the young. It's a community hub like no other and we are so lucky to have such a thing in Dunoon.' Wise, 58, who described the hall as 'extraordinary', then said: 'So please help as much as you can, spread the word, help raise funds, keep this wonderful building open. 'It's a crown for Dunoon and it would be an absolute travesty were it to disappear.' Dame Emma, who spent much of her childhood in Scotland, then ended the video saying: 'Help us save this precious treasure.' The Tutti Frutti, Harry Potter and Love Actually star's mother is Glasgow-born actress Phyllida Law, 92. As well as their home near Dunoon, Dame Emma and her husband own a £3million house in Hampstead, north London, and another property in Venice.
Telegraph
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Left-wingers who defend ‘sex work' are virtue-signalling hypocrites
For a good few years now, 'sex-positive' Left-wing activists have been vigorously attempting to 'destigmatise' prostitution – or, to use their preferred euphemism, 'sex work' – by arguing that it's a perfectly normal and legitimate form of employment. Indeed, they insist, it's really no different from any other job. Hence their noble mantra, 'Sex work is work.' They will doubtless have been delighted, therefore, to read the comments this week from Dame Emma Thompson, the impeccably progressive actress. During an audience Q&A in London the other evening, Dame Emma reflected on Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, the 2022 film in which she played a sexually repressed middle-aged woman who hires a young gigolo, played by Daryl McCormack. Mr McCormack, she recalled, had researched his role by interviewing numerous prostitutes. 'And the thing he learnt most,' said Dame Emma, 'was they were just like accountants. Sex workers are doing a job.' This sort of talk is of course wonderfully enlightened and well-meaning. Even so, I'm afraid that I'm not entirely convinced by it. Because if, as Left-wingers tirelessly claim, 'sex work' is just another job, no less worthy than any other, would they be happy to see it promoted by careers advisers in their daughters' schools? 'Good morning, Jacintha, do take a seat. I was so sorry to see that you didn't get the A-level results you needed for that degree in accountancy. But don't despair, because I have an alternative career path to suggest. The hours are long and demanding, it requires a wide range of people skills, and the work is very much 'hands-on'. But it can be extremely well-paid, and I think it would suit you down to the ground…' Such a scenario may sound a touch improbable. But don't rule it out. A lot of schools these days seem to be on-board with the 'sex-positive' ethos, too. On Monday the Conservative peer Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne wrote to Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, complaining that sex education has become far too explicit. Schoolchildren as young as 10, she went on in disgust, should not be 'exposed to concepts like [...] rainbow kisses'. (If you aren't familiar with this term, please don't google it, or it'll ruin your breakfast, lunch, dinner, and every other meal for the next fortnight.)
New Indian Express
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Sense and Sensibility-based film to star Daisy Edgar-Jones
Sense and Sensibility has been the subject of multiple films, including an eponymous 1995 feature, starring Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman, and Hugh Grant, and 2000's Kandukondain Kandukondain, starring Aishwarya Rai, Tabu, Mammootty, and Ajith Kumar. The upcoming project starring Edgar-Jones is set to offer a fresh iteration of the classic novel from the 18th century. Edgar-Jones was last seen in On Swift Horses, also starring Will Poulter and Jacob Elordi. Her upcoming projects also include filmmaker Chloe Domont's thriller A Place in Hell, co-starring Michelle Williams and Andrew Scott. On the other hand, Oakley's most popular work is her critically acclaimed directorial debut Blue Jean, starring Rosy McEwen, Kerrie Hayes, and Lydia Page, among others.
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
JK Rowling shares barbed critique of Harry Potter star Emma Thompson's view on sex workers in sarcastic online post
JK Rowling has shared a barbed critique of Emma Thompson 's view on sex workers in a sarcastic online post. The Oscar-winning actress, 66, made comments during a live Q&A at a screening of her 2022 film Good Luck to You that sex should be recommended by the NHS because it is so important to our health and wellbeing. Thompson, who played Professor Trelawney in the films, said: '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.' She then admitted that some of her friends even hire escorts for this purpose. Now, the Harry Potter author has hit out at the comments sarcastically writing on X: 'Yes, funny how you never hear, 'we're so delighted - Tatiana got straight As, so now she's trying to choose between law, medicine and prostitution! 'It's her decision, of course, so we're trying not to influence her, but Nigel and I both think she'd make a MARVELLOUS sex worker.' She brutally continued: 'I'm going out on a limb here, but I suspect most sex workers didn't have the life choices available to a Cambridge-educated actress raised in Hampstead.' And when one user said Rowling should not 'look down on sex workers', she hit back again to defend her position. 'When did you last meet someone who was trafficked into accountancy? In your experience, do an unusually high number of addicts and abuse survivors tend to become plumbers? Does the average quantity surveyor face a significantly elevated risk of early death because of his job? 'I don't look down on sex workers, I look down on the trade in vulnerable people's bodies, and on the immense arrogance and wilful blindness of privileged people who think that by reframing the sale of human bodies as 'a job like any other', inconvenient and ugly facts about that trade simply disappear.' The two former colleagues have not often had similar views in the past with Rowling being a prominent advocate of gender critical views, where as Dame Emma Thompson signed an open letter in support of trans rights in Scotland in 2019. The author has had similar run-ins with some of the other franchise stars such as Sean Biggerstaff, who savaged JK Rowling on social media, calling her an 'obsessed billionaire' and 'bigoted' for her views on transgender rights. The 59-year-old has repeatedly made headlines for her vocal 'TERF' views and has celebrated the Supreme Court's landmark judgment that trans women are not legally women. Justices in London ruledin April that in the 2010 Equality Act, the definition of the term 'women' relates only to biological women, and Rowling reportedly helped fund the campaign group which brought the case. Amid widespread protests following the ruling, Harry Potter actor Biggerstaff - who portrayed Oliver Wood in three of the movies - has passionately condemned Rowling. Biggerstaff showed his solidarity with the wizarding franchise's leading stars Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, who have all spoken out against Rowling. In his diatribe against Rowling, Biggerstaff responded to her controversial post about the Supreme Court ruling, in which she raised her glass and smoked a cigar on her $150million superyacht in celebration. After the billionaire author was hit by accusations she was 'smoking a blunt', she hit back on social media, clarifying that it was 'objectively, provably and demonstratively a cigar'. Responding to her post, Biggerstaff claimed she had no sense of humour about the comments, writing: 'Bigotry rots the wit.' He also showed his support for one person who compared her to Andrew Tate for puffing on a cigar, much like he does in his own videos, which many argue stir violence against women.
