Emma Thompson Says She Was 'Half Alive' After Ex-Husband Kenneth Branagh's Affair With Helena Bonham Carter

Emma Thompson is opening up about the numbing effect after her ex-husband, Kenneth Branagh's, affair with Helena Bonham Carter.

The Oscar-winning actress told The New Yorker that finding out about the affair turned her into an emotional wreck, and she likened it to "shattered dishes." What's more, Thompson admitted that she felt humiliated upon finding out about it.

"I was utterly, utterly blind to the fact that he had relationships with other women on set," she said. "What I learned was how easy it is to be blinded by your own desire to deceive yourself."

The affair cut deep, so much so that doubt weighed down Thompson in the worst of ways.

"I was half alive," she said. "Any sense of being a lovable or worthy person had gone completely."

Thompson and Branagh met on the set of the 1987 series Fortunes of War, and she fell for him over something he did that reminded her of her father. She told The New Yorker that, while on break between takes, Branagh tried making her laugh by singing to her.

"I burst into tears because he sounded exactly like my father singing on The Magic Roundabout," she said. 

Thompson and Branagh tied the knot in 1989, but the marriage came crashing down after she found out about his affairs. Branagh met Bonham Carter on the set of the 1994 film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. By 1995, Thompson said her marriage had collapsed due to the affair, but word of said collapse hadn't been made public. They divorced that year.

However, one man stood out "who picked up the pieces and put them back together" -- actor Greg Wise. He and Thompson met on the set of the 1995 period film Sense and Sensibility. They've now been together for nearly 30 years and married for 19.

"I’ve learned more from my second marriage just by being married," she said. "As my mother says, 'the first twenty years are the hardest.'"

Back in January 2020, Thompson appeared on The Graham Norton Show and revealed that she almost lost her chance at true love with Wise. She explained how he initially approached one of her co-stars, Kate Winslet. 

"Before he did the job, he went to see a friend of his who was a bit witchy and she said he would meet his future partner on the film [Sense and Sensibility]," Thompson explained. "He assumed it wasn’t me because I was married and quite a lot older than him so he thought it might be Kate [Winslet]."

So Thompson's now-husband took Winslet to the Glastonbury music festival on a date. 

"She was so bored, and he thought, ‘This isn’t going to work, who can it be?’" Thompson recalled. "Then things happened that probably shouldn’t have happened, and it’s been 25 years in May.”

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