Emma Thompson on how she discovered an unusual recipe for wedded bliss (2024)

• Emma Thompson returns to cinema screens in a new film The Love Punch
• Here she tells us about kissing scenes with the irresistible Pierce Brosnan
  
• She says that a break from marriage can be a beneficial thing

By James Peachey

Published: 22:30, 11 April 2014 | Updated: 23:10, 11 April 2014

Emma Thompson seems to be suffering some sort of mid-life romantic crisis.

First she pronounced that dancing with Prince Charles was 'better than sex', then she told us all how the perm she'd had for her role as Mary Poppins author PL Travers in movie Saving Mr Banks had put a serious dent in her love life.

Now, she's positively drooling over Pierce Brosnan, her co-star in comedy heist movie The Love Punch.

'We play a divorced couple and had some kissing scenes to do,' explains Emma. 'I just kept messing up the scene in so many different ways, as often as I could, because Pierce was such a good kisser and I didn't want the scene to end. When we finally got it right, Pierce turned to me and said, “Have we been kissing all day?” And I said, rather sheepishly, “Well yes, I rather think we have.”

'But how can you resist Pierce?! He has an enormous amount of glamour but he's also very surprising to the point where you suddenly expect him to whip out some knitting. He has the most extraordinary grace. He's like a ballerina, he has this remarkable way of moving and yet he can also sit there and do the crossword and be very normal.'

'You can't really be a movie star if you can't walk or run and some people just can't. I don't mean they can't get about, they obviously can, but you don't want to watch them moving about because they aren't attractive when they do so, they don't do it with grace. Pierce does. That's why he was such a successful Bond. Watching him move in that role was so wonderful.'

Emma - looking younger than her 54 years - is cast as Kate, the ex-wife of Pierce's character Richard in The Love Punch.

The couple have been divorced for eight years following Richard's numerous affairs but are brought together again by unfortunate circ*mstances.

'Richard's company is stripped of its assets. All their income that's paying for their children's education, the mortgages on their respective homes, is taken from them,' explains Emma.

'They join forces to try and gain revenge on the businessman who asset-stripped the company and who's spent £10 million on a diamond for his fiancée. Stealing the gem, and selling it, would solve Richard and Kate's financial problems so they travel to France to try and pinch it.'

Aided and abetted by their best friends Jerry and Pen (Timothy Spall and Celia Imrie), they become unlikely burglars, intent on stealing back the diamond by whatever means necessary. Working as Home Counties versions of The Pink Panther also reawakens the passion between them, although even at the beginning of the movie there's not a lot of animosity between Richard and Kate.

'The truth is, she's more amused by his failed relationships with much younger women than upset by them. She thinks he's nicer than he used to be and much less of a twit.

'There was an earlier draft of the script where the couple had only been divorced for a short while and there was still a lot of rage and pain between them. But I think this works better, it's lighter and it's funnier. This movie is about lifting people's spirits and God knows that's what we all need from time to time!

'Also, I wonder whether we haven't stumbled on something important here. Richard and Kate have taken a proper break from their marriage, a beneficial break, and I wonder whether this isn't the way forward for a lot of married couples? You look at it and think that maybe every marriage should have a kind of sabbatical, that couples should be forced to take a break from each other every so often, if just for a year or so. It's actually not a bad idea.'

'You look at it and think that maybe every marriage should have a kind of sabbatical, that couples should be forced to take a break from each other every so often. It's actually not a bad idea.'

She's warming to her theme now. 'You need to go off perhaps, although not to be with other people. I think that would make things very difficult: that free love stuff has been tried and tested and doesn't work and has been proven to make relationships very, very tricky. But I'm sure a sabbatical could work if it were done properly. The Love Punch proves it. It's about two people who know each other very, very well coming back together again and loving each other in a different kind of way second time around.'

So is Emma thinking of taking a sabbatical from her own marriage to actor Greg Wise, whom she met when they were both appearing in the 1995 movie Sense And Sensibility? 'Oh no,' she says, looking somewhat shocked. 'I'm not talking about myself, I'm talking in general terms about long-term relationships.'

She's equally matter-of-fact on the subject of holding grudges, the kind that drive Kate and Richard to seek revenge in The Love Punch.

Twice an Oscar winner for her performance in Howards End in 1992 and for her script for Sense And Sensibility, you might imagine there are people in Emma's life against whom she might legitimately hold a grudge.

Kenneth Branagh, perhaps, her first husband, whose affair with actress Helena Bonham Carter on the set of Frankenstein put the skids under his marriage to Emma in the early 90s?

But no, she says, grudges just aren't her thing. 'I don't hold grudges. I really ought to hold them slightly more - I'm rubbish at them. It's actually one of my best qualities, not to hold grudges. I have many vile characteristics but that's quite a nice one. Frankly, I haven't got the energy. It takes a lot of energy to hold on to grudges and I don't really see the point of them.'

What she does see the point of is making a sequel to The Love Punch, if the opportunity arises. She clearly had a ball filming this first movie, which was shot entirely on location in France.

'I was surprised, in particular, at how much I enjoyed all the action scenes, whether it was playing beach volleyball, slipping into a rubber diving suit or driving a car very fast through the streets of Paris. The highlight was definitely the driving.

'I was allowed to do a lot of it and I had Pierce sitting next to me in the passenger seat as I manoeuvred this car down a very steep flight of steps. He was genuinely frightened at the prospect of tipping over. Imagine that! Stunt driving with an ex-James Bond beside you, and he's the one that's frightened!

'I've definitely got the taste for a full-on action movie now. Maybe, if enough people come to see this film and it makes enough money, we could do a sequel where Jerry and Pen are on holiday in some exotic location, and Richard and Kate have to rescue them from pirates? I'd be keen to do that.'
James Peachey

The Love Punch is in cinemas from Friday and will be available on DVD and Blu-ray from 18 August.