In 1993, she received two Academy Award nominations—Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress—for the respective roles of the housekeeper of a grand household in The Remains of the Day and a lawyer in In the Name of the Father, becoming one of the few actors to achieve this feat.

[3][4] Her mother is Scottish actress Phyllida Law, while her English father, Eric Thompson, was an actor best known as the writer of the popular children's television series The Magic Roundabout.

[42] A turning point in Thompson's career[29] came when she was cast opposite Anthony Hopkins and Vanessa Redgrave in the Merchant Ivory period drama Howards End (1992), based on the novel by E. M. Forster.

The film explored the social class system in Edwardian Britain, with Thompson playing an idealistic, intellectual, forward-looking woman who comes into association with a privileged and deeply conservative family.

In Peter's Friends (1992), the pair starred with Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Imelda Staunton, and Tony Slattery as a group of Cambridge alumni who are reunited ten years after graduating.

The comedy was positively reviewed,[48] and Desson Howe of The Washington Post wrote that Thompson was its highlight: "Even as a rather one-dimensional character, she exudes grace and an adroit sense of comic tragedy.

[53][54] Based on Kazuo Ishiguro's novel about a housekeeper and butler in interwar Britain, the story is acclaimed for its study of loneliness and repression, though Thompson was particularly interested in looking at "the deformity that servitude inflicts upon people", since her grandmother had worked as a servant and made many sacrifices.

Although the male pregnancy storyline was poorly received by most critics and flopped at the box office,[60] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle praised the lead trio.

Roger Ebert remarked that Thompson had "developed a specialty in unrequited love",[62] and the TV Guide Film & Video Companion commented that her "neurasthenic mannerisms, which usually drive us batty, are appropriate here".

[63] Thompson's Academy success continued with Sense and Sensibility (1995), generally considered to be the most popular and authentic of the numerous film adaptations of Jane Austen's novels made in the 1990s.

[69] Directed by Ang Lee and co-starring Kate Winslet, Sense and Sensibility received widespread critical acclaim and ranks among the highest-grossing films of Thompson's career.

[86] Adapted from Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize winning play, it focuses on a self-sufficient Harvard University professor who finds her values challenged when she is diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

[76] In 2004, she played the eccentric Divination teacher Sybill Trelawney in the third Harry Potter film, Prisoner of Azkaban, her character described as a "hippy chick professor who teaches fortune-telling".

[100][101] Commenting on Thompson's screenplay, film critic Claudia Puig wrote that its "well-worn storybook features are woven effectively into an appealing tale of youthful empowerment".

[106][107] Mark Kermode said "Emma Thompson is to some extent becoming the new Judi Dench, as the person who kind of comes in for 15 minutes and is brilliant ... [but then] when she goes away, the rest of the movie has a real problem living up to the wattage of her presence".

[108] Thompson received further acclaim for her work in the London-based romance Last Chance Harvey (2008), where she and Dustin Hoffman played a lonely, middle-aged pair who cautiously begin a relationship.

[109][110] Thompson's two 2009 films were both set in 1960s United Kingdom, and in both she made cameo appearances: as a headmistress in the critically praised drama An Education[111] and as a "tippling mother" in Richard Curtis's The Boat That Rocked.

[76] In 2012, Thompson made a rare appearance in a big-budget Hollywood film[8] when she played the head Agent in Men in Black 3 – a continuation of the sci-fi comedy franchise starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, and Josh Brolin.

[120] Saving Mr. Banks, which depicted the making of Mary Poppins, starred Thompson in a leading role as P. L. Travers, the curmudgeonly author of the source novel, alongside Tom Hanks as Walt Disney.

Her performance, in contrast to her widely panned appearance in Beautiful Creatures, was received enthusiastically, with one journalist writing "Emma Thompson is back, firing on all cylinders.

[126] The romantic comedy The Love Punch (2013) gave Thompson her second consecutive leading role, where she played half of a divorced couple who reunite to steal the man's ex-boss's diamond.

She appeared in the musical for five nights, and her "playful" performance of Mrs Lovett was highly praised; the critic Kayla Epstein wrote that she "not only held her own against more experienced vocalists, but wound up running off with the show".

[130] The period drama Effie Gray, a project that she had been working on for many years, based on the true-life story of John Ruskin's disastrous marriage, was written by Thompson but became the subject of a copyright suit before being cleared for cinemas.

"[144] Manohla Dargis in her review in The New York Times called Effie Gray "The cinematic equivalent of a Brazilian wax, the movie omits much of the story's most interesting material to create something that's been smoothly denatured.

[159] In the same year, she voiced as the Yeti Elder in the stop-motion animated film Missing Link, reprised her role as Agent O in a more substantial part in Men in Black: International, and co-produced and co-starred alongside Emilia Clarke and Henry Golding in the festive romantic comedy Last Christmas, which was based on the song of the same name by George Michael, and was written by Thompson, her husband Greg Wise, and Bryony Kimmings.

"[164] In 2022, Thompson starred opposite Daryl McCormack in the sex comedy-drama Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, written by Katy Brand and directed by Sophie Hyde.

[171][172] The film was shot in the 2024 winter in North Karelia, Finland,[173][174] where Thompson praised the skills of the local working crew,[175] even writing a laudatory letter dedicated to the Finns, published by Helsingin Sanomat.

[117][183] Thompson belongs to a group of highly decorated British actresses including Judi Dench, Kate Winslet and Helena Bonham Carter who are known for appearing in "heritage films" and typically showing "restraint, rendering emotions through intellect rather than feelings, and a sense of irony, which demonstrates the heroine's superior understanding".

Ang Lee, director of Sense and Sensibility, stated that Thompson's comedic approach may be her greatest asset as an actress, remarking, "Emma is an extremely funny lady.

[14] She is an active environmentalist and a supporter of Greenpeace; in January 2009, as part of her campaign against climate change, she and three other members of the organisation bought land near the village of Sipson to deter the building of a third runway for Heathrow Airport.