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 "I haven't got very much time, so what do I really want to do?" Actually what I want to do is be uplifting." Emma Thompson is one of the most celebrated actors of our times. A regular face on British television in the earlier part of her career, she eventually won the hearts of Americans with her feature film work on movies ranging from The Tall Guy to Men in Black 3. She has also successfully navigated the challenges of ageism in the entertainment industry. 

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British actor Emma Thompson has enjoyed a decades-long career as an actress during which she's enjoyed both critical and commercial success. Thompson is also the only person to have won an Oscar in both performing and writing categories. Along the way, she's earned a reputation for her activism and honesty. Here's a closer look at Emma Thompson's illustrious career.

The Birth of an Icon

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Emma Thompson was born in London on April 15, 1959 to parents were "in the business." Her father, Eric Thompson, played the narrator on a beloved British children's television show while she was growing up. Thompson's mother was native of Glasgow, and the family summered in Scotland. Thompson attended high school at the Camden School for Girls. 

While Thompson's sister, Sophie, hoped to follow their parents into the footlights, Emma was initially uninterested in a career in the performing arts. That changed when she attended Cambridge University. Although she majored in English literature, Thompson's friends noticed her quit wit and encouraged her to try out for Cambridge Footlights, the school's prestigious amateur theater club. She was chosen for the group, which also included fellow future stars Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. Footlights won a festival price at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1981. This led to the offer of a London theater run. 

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After Thompson graduated from college in 1983, she landed a role -- alongside Fry and Laurie -- on a television comedy sketch series. That gig didn't last long, but it led to a series of other parts, including a 15-month stage revival of the 1930s musical Me and My Girl, for which Thompson earned rave reviews. Soon after that, she got the lead in the 1987 BBC television miniseries Fortunes of War. Her co-star was Kenneth Branagh, who she married in 1989. 

Thompson and Branagh eventually divorced, but not before working together on several film projects, including 1989's Henry V, 1991's Dead Again, and 1992's Peter's Friends. Their collaboration led to comparisons to other famous husband-and-wife teams in the entertainment industry, including Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne and Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. 

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Taking Hollywood by Storm

Thompson is known for having turned down several big roles, including Basic Instinct and The Piano. Instead, she sought out different kinds of movies, such as Merchant and Ivory's 1992 period drama Howard's End alongside Anthony Hopkins. The choice was a good one: Thompson's work on the film earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress. Wrote New York Times reviewer Vincent Canby of Thompson, "[She] comes into her own as the wise, patient Margaret Schlegel. Hers is the film's guiding performance. Ms. Thompson even manages to be beautiful while convincingly acting the role of a woman who is not supposed to be beautiful, being all teeth and solemn expressions." 

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Thompson followed up Howard's End with two more films: another Merchant-Ivory project, Remains of the Day; and Much Ado About Nothing with Branagh. Unfortunately, the British press was not always kind to the couple. Thompson later joked of the experience, "It would perhaps be a little unhealthy if one weren't satirized and lambasted regularly." The press coverage was especially brutal, however, when rumors began to fly about the couple's marriage and imminent divorce. Thompson kept her chin up during this time and focused on her work: adapting Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility for the screen. This went on to become her second Academy Award.

In the early 1990s, Thompson turned her attention from acting to writing, and was involved in several projects, including HBO's acclaimed telefilm adaptation of the stay play Wit, which was directed by Mick Nichols. Thompson found more success on the network -- and with Nichols --with the 2003 miniseries, Angels in America.

Thompson's career was a prolific one, and she embraced a diverse range of projects, including The Winter Guest, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Love Actually, Stranger than Fiction, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Imagining Argentina. She also adapted the screenplay for 2005's Nanny McPhee, in which she also starred.

In addition to being celebrated for her writing and acting talents, Thompson's commitment to activism is admirable. She has devoted herself to the fight against climate change, and recently led a protest in London. In an address to her fellow protestors and reporters Thompson said, "Our planet is in serious trouble. We are here on this island of sanity and it makes me so happy to be able to join you all and to add my voice to the young people here who have inspired a whole new movement." 

Thompson also works fervently for women's rights - both in and outside the industry. She has said of her involvement with the MeToo movement, "I  am well aware that centuries of entitlement to women's bodies whether they like it or not is not going to change overnight. Or in a year. But I am also aware that if people who have spoken out – like me – do not take this sort of a stand then things are very unlikely to change at anything like the pace required to protect my daughter's generation."

In shifting her career from acting to writing, Thompson shined the light on the obstacles women face in the industry. "Actresses have a short shelf life. It stops at about 40, apart from those at the very top, like Anjelica Huston or Glenn Close. An actress has to find a future for herself."

This is precisely what Thompson set out to do. In the process, she not only discovered her other talents, but also attained success at the level of Huston and Close nonetheless. She's even admitted to finding better roles in middle age than she did in her youth. "It used to be that if I got a script that said, 'A fabulously beautiful woman walks into the room,' I'd stop reading," she said.