Thompson’s sudden arrival at ‘old’ age

Until recently, Emma Thompson never gave much thought to her appearance, said Giles Hattersley in The Sunday Times (U.K.). The highly regarded 54-year-old actress refuses to submit to cosmetic surgery or erase her wrinkles with Botox. “I have many vile qualities, but vanity is not one of them.’’ Or so she thought. After spending a few years at home with her two children, Thompson recently decided to refocus on her career. “I went to my agent and asked, ‘Do you think you could see what’s out there?’ They came back with three things: Bradley Cooper’s mother, a very old lady in a wheelchair, and”—she laughs—“Mother Teresa. My [friends] said, ‘Maybe you should do a couple of photo shoots and have them retouched?’” She ended up taking a part as P.L. Travers, the 60-something author of the Mary Poppins books in the new film Saving Mr. Banks. Thompson was shocked by how old she looked in the movie. “I said no to Bradley Cooper’s mother, which I was sorry about because when I watched myself as P.L. Travers I thought, ‘Hell, I could have played his grandmother.’”

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