This Is Emma Thompson’s Favourite Role She’s Ever Done

Isn’t Emma Thompson an absolute treasure? Just one of Britain’s finest actors of all time and generally a delight to watch in any role.

Whether you know her as the quietly devastated wife in Love Actually, as Nanny McPhee or as Elinor Dashwood in the 1995 film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, she always gives a memorable performance.

However, in an interview with GQ, Emma revealed that her favourite performance to date is perhaps one of her lesser-known and actually very recent roles, and the reason behind it is so beautiful.

“My favourite film that I’ve ever done”, she said about the 2022 flick Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.

In this film, Emma plays Nancy Stokes, a widower who hires a male sex worker named Leo Grande. She explains to him that she has never had an orgasm and since her husband’s death, she vowed to never again fake one.

The film is surprisingly tender as Emma’s character is insecure about her body and age, and embarrassed at having hired Leo, who tries to put her at ease throughout.

In the interview, Emma gushes: “It’s such a wonderful script… I knew exactly who [Nancy Stokes] was. She’s like lots of mates I’d had. People who had left school and done the ‘good girl’ thing. Really done it all right.

“As [Nancy] says at the end, ‘I did everything right. I did everything right. And I ended up feeling empty and as though I had never had an adventure.’

“And I bet you there’s a lot of people who feel like that still, because women still don’t have those choices, they simply don’t, and it is still expected of them that they will be mothers otherwise they won’t be ‘natural women’”

She’s right. in fact, in 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) was criticised by pregnancy services for suggesting ‘women of child-bearing age should not drink alcohol’.

Speaking at the time, Clare Murphy, Chief Executive of BPAS said: “It is extremely disturbing to see the World Health Organization risk hard-won women’s rights by attempting to control their bodies and choices in this way.

“By treating all women – for 40 years of their lives – as little more than vessels, the WHO reduces women to little more than their reproductive capabilities.”

The actress went on to say: “This thing of sexual pleasure, supposedly we had the sexual revolution in the ’60′s which really benefitted men more than women.

“Instead of how to deepen our relationship with our own erotic desires, which are often very odd, and deepen our relationship with each other… Sex was sold as this transactional thing.

“The whole aspect of orgasm, endless magazine articles [saying] ‘How to Achieve Orgasm’, as though orgasm was some sort of ‘achievement’, not a natural human pleasure that is remarkable that we have access to.

“Pleasure that you can give yourself, give to another person, that is free. There is so little understanding of female pleasure…. It is quite rare for a woman to achieve orgasm during penetrative sex.”

In fact, according to BBC Women’s Hour, only 20% of cisgender women can orgasm from penetrative sex.

Emma adds that when her character does have an orgasm through masturbation, this felt like a ‘super important’ part of the film. She says: “I think that you don’t see that [on screen]. An older woman having an orgasm, on her own.

“I’ve never seen that, ever. So I was and I am proud of that scene, I think it really works well.”

A Cosmopolitan study looking at the sex lives of women over 60, done in collaboration with The Kinsey Institute, found that in a survey of 3,000 women in the US, 52% of respondents said that they masturbated at minimum once a year and 14% masturbated several times a month.

Emma said that during the press tour, she spoke to the people who were moved by the film. She enthused: “It was fascinating, to me because not only were we hearing from gay couples, particularly male gay couples who would say ‘this film helped us so much’

“And younger women saying ‘I’m 21, I’ve never had an orgasm.’ People [were] actually able to say these things. Nancy’s so ashamed. She’s so ashamed. She knows what she wants but doesn’t know how to get it… To me, it’s heartbreaking. She’s such a heartbreaking person.

“At the end of it, there’s a whole world available to her because she’s found her body.

“So whenever people say ’do you wanna watch a film and do a Q&A afterwards, I generally choose that one. The conversations are so interesting and they’re so surprising.”

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is available to rent on Apple TV.