rather than spoonfuls of sugar. As herself, the English actress and
author is pearly of tooth and creamy of complexion, mischief beaming
from almond-shaped eyes.
“Nanny McPhee Returns,” a corking fantasy in which
pigs fly and birds do not, multiplexes this week. Last week Thompson,
screenwriter and star of the sequel to the 2005 charmer, enchanted 100
children at the
and snapping her elastic voice like an instrument, she explained how
special-effects wizards made the piglets take wing. Know, however, that
the crow perched on Nanny’s shoulder is real. Thompson confided that
she surreptitiously fed it so it stayed put.
The grown-ups in the audience were more interested
in the disciplinary special effects of Nanny M, under whose magical
influence quarrelsome brats stop fighting and start sharing. Given the
inquisitive children at the library, the adults didn’t have a chance to
ask their questions.
But prior to her animated session with the youth
from Kids for Change, which supports children at risk, and Project
H.O.M.E., a shelter program for homeless woman and children, Thompson,
the mother of Gaia, 11, considered how she might disarm a toxic tween.
Not that it’s necessary in her house. (She is wed to
Willoughby in “Sense and Sensibility,” for which she won a screenplay
Oscar, mate to her best-actress statuette for “Howards End.”)
“Rudeness we don’t like,” she says, merry eyes
mitigating somber precept. “If it happens, stern words will occur,” she
says. “We don’t do punishment. Conflicts can be resolved in a quieter
manner.” In the unlikely event that Gaia did explode with “Mummy, you
are such a ‘epithet rhyming with ‘stitch'” Thompson would respond, “I
suspect you’re right. Anything else you want to tell me?”
Still, Thompson, who is also mother to Tindyebwa
Agaba, 23, a Rwandan refugee whom she and Wise adopted when he was 16,
is no stranger to the extremes of filial love and hate. On the
corkboard above her writing desk at home in
are two letters from Gaia. “You’re the best Mum in the universe,” reads
one. The other: “Mom, you’re the worst mother. You just don’t
understand.”
“They’re both right,” says Thompson, amused and
happy to be the fulcrum on which Gaia finds her balance. Thompson’s
easy child-side manner may be genetic: Her father, actor
she enjoyed watching with her father. She conceived of Nanny as a Shane
of the nursery: a figure who comes to help the household and leaves
when her work is done.
At 51,
power.” She wields her power wisely. As both an actress and a
screenwriter, she creates women and men who are complex, difficult,
indelible.
dramatic (“Howards End,” “The Remains of the Day”) or comic
(“Impromptu,” “Much Ado About Nothing”), but her forte is the serious
comedy (“Sense and Sensibility”). She appeals equally to adults
(“Primary Colors,” “Last Chance Harvey”) and juveniles (“
The graduate of
“She helped me, nourished me, and mentored me
through that process,” Thompson recalls. “I learned about screenwriting
at her feet.” The result was “Sense and Sensibility,” which Doran,
known wryly in
circles as “the script whisperer,” produced and in which Thompson
co-starred. Thompson walked away with a screenwriting Oscar and down
the aisle with co-star Wise.
Since then, Thompson and Doran have worked together
on “Stranger Than Fiction” and the two “Nanny McPhees” and have become
collaboradorers, colleagues who dote on each other.
Scriptwriting is now Thompson’s second career. She
is working on a rethink of “My Fair Lady” — “a kneading of the
emotional center,” as she puts it, highlighting the relationship
between flower-seller
While “
has been lovely, welcoming, kind — and quite generous, considering that
I’m a foreigner,” there are things that Thompson doesn’t get about the
film capital.
“I don’t like the body fascism of
the expectation “that you have to be this shape or that. Or that you
have to be this young. I find it anxiety-producing,” she says.
And then, there are things
doesn’t get about Thompson. “They don’t get her integrity,” says Doran,
who recalls that when “Sense and Sensibility” was about to be released,
Thompson refused permission to publish a “novelization” of her
screenplay with her as the author. “Emma had to explain, ‘There’s a
perfectly fine
(Ultimately, Thompson’s “Sense and Sensibility: The
Screenplay and Diaries” was published, an invaluable volume with a
lovely foreword by Doran.)
“In
when I hear, ‘We don’t have a class system,’ I always laugh,” Thompson
says. “There certainly is a star system, something that
“In my country, success can be dealt with but it’s
something to be vaguely ashamed of. We don’t put our artists on
pedestals,” she says. “And if that happens, the brickbats come flying
fast and furious.”
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