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Cape Town - It’s a scene fans will remember well – Emma Thompson’s character sobbing uncontrollably when she discovers her husband has bought jewellery for another woman.
The movie was 2003’s Love Actually, a romantic drama co-starring Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley, Liam Neeson and Colin Firth which went on to become a global hit.
Revered British actress Emma Thompson (58) has revealed she was so convincing in that scene because it mirrored her own personal experience of being cheated on by her first husband, Irish actor/director Kenneth Branagh (57), Daily Mail reports.
Once the golden couple of British cinema, the two split after eight years together when Kenneth began an affair with fellow British actress, Helena Bonham Carter.
“I had my heart very badly broken by Ken. So I knew what it was like to find the necklace that wasn’t meant for me,” the Oscar-winner told the crowd at a fundraiser event for the Tricycle Theatre in North West London recently.
Emma and Kenneth got together when they starred as newlyweds in the BBC drama Fortunes Of War in 1987. They married two years later and appeared together in films such as Peter’s Friends, Dead Again and Much Ado About Nothing.
However in 1994 Kenneth fell for his Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein co-star Helena Bonham Carter and they embarked on an affair, according to The Telegraph. The following year Emma and Kenneth filed for divorce.
Emma, who has revealed previously she suffered crippling depression after the affair, has since made peace with Helena.
“Being slightly mad and a bit fashion-challenged. Perhaps that’s why Ken loved us both. She’s a wonderful woman, Helena,” she told the UK’s Sunday Times in 2013.
Kenneth and Helena dated until 1999 before splitting. In 2003 Emma married British actor, Greg Wise (51) while Kenneth married film art director Lindsay Brunnock.
Sources: Daily Mail, The Telegraph, Sunday Times
