For most of us, picking the right career path is no easy feat. In fact, it’s more common than not to spend a decade switching from one path to another (with all of the anxiety that approach entails). Spare a thought then for Emma Thompson, who this week told how, after being heavily criticised for her forays into comedy in her twenties, she reluctantly made a switch to straight roles. Thompson may have won Oscars for both her acting and her screenwriting work, but it turns out that as a twenty-something she had her heart set on being a comedian – not a “serious” actor.
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Throwback 40 years, and Cambridge University student Thompson was part of its famous Footlights Dramatic Club. She tried her hand at solo comedy shows like her peers Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, launching her own BBC series called Thompson in 1988. But it didn’t go to plan. “Thompson was ripped apart by critics,” she recently told Stuff.co.nz. “They said it was ‘man-hating’. You can't imagine how terrible they were, so destructive and deeply, unutterably misogynistic. I absolutely know that now, but I didn't then. At the time, I couldn't get out of bed. I thought, ‘All right, maybe I shouldn't be doing this’. So I got into serious acting. I'm quite good at serious acting.”
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But Thompson doesn’t completely regret her choice. “I think my response was a sensible one," she continued. "I had to support myself. I had to earn money. I really mean that, especially as a woman. You must be able to earn your own living. You cannot be dependent upon someone else’s wage. Money is so important to young women.”
Plus, she’s having the last laugh now. Her comedic work may have been criticised early on her career, but old clips of Thompson doing stand-up in 1983 are finally getting the attention they deserve, having been featured in her latest film, Late Night with Mindy Kaling.
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