No matter how many times you watch Love Actually (especially every Christmas), there’s one devastating moment that will break your heart every single time. Yep, you guessed it, it’s that Emma Thompson Love Actually end scene – arguably one of the most iconic movie moments of all time.
The heart-wrenching scene depicts Karen (Thompson’s character) discovering her husband, Harry (Alan Rickman), has betrayed her, when she realises the necklace she found in his pocket was never intended for her, but for his office mistress instead.
After Karen opens her gift – a Joni Mitchell CD – and makes the connection, she retreats to her bedroom where a flood of emotions washes over her while the heartbreaking lyrics of Mitchell’s Both Sides Now plays.
The Emma Thompson Love Actually scene became even more devastating, when she revealed just how closely her own real-life experience with heartbreak inspired her character’s reaction to that scene.
At a fundraiser for the Tricycle Theatre in London, the actress told the audience that she’d gone through something similar with her now ex-husband, Kenneth Branagh, who had an affair with Helena Bonham Carter.
“That scene where my character is standing by the bed crying is so well known because it’s something everyone’s been through,” she said, according to The Telegraph. “I had my heart very badly broken by Ken. So I knew what it was like to find the necklace that wasn’t meant for me. Well, it wasn’t exactly that, but we’ve all been through it.”
*Cries*
Thompson wed Branagh in 1989, and in 1994 Branagh reportedly began an affair with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein co-star Helena Bonham Carter. The couple announced their separation in 1995 and Branagh and Bonham Carter went on to date until 1999.
“I’ve had so much bloody practise at crying in a bedroom, then having to go out and be cheerful, gathering up the pieces of my heart and putting them in a drawer,” Thompson told The Telegraph.
Later, she described her experience as a humiliating affair and one that took many years of reflection to overcome.
“I was utterly, utterly blind to the fact that he had relationships with other women on set,” she told The New Yorker. “What I learned was how easy it is to be blinded by your own desire to deceive yourself.”
“I was half alive. Any sense of being a lovable or worthy person had gone completely.”
She went on to rebuild, eventually marrying actor Greg Wise, who she counts as having “picked up the pieces and put them back together.”
And as for her relationship with both Bonham Carter and Branagh now?
“That is…all blood under the bridge,” Thompson told The Sunday Times about Bonham Carter years after the affair. “You can’t hold on to anything like that. It’s pointless. I haven’t got the energy for it…Helena and I made our peace years and years ago…she’s a wonderful woman.”
The three have obviously since moved on, having all worked together on the Harry Potter franchises together. Fans will recognise the actors as Professor Lockhart, Professor Trelawney, and Bellatrix Lestrange.
But just because Emma Thompson has been able to forgive and forget, doesn’t mean we’ll be forgiving Love Actually’s Harry any time soon.
Related articles:
- Where Are The Cast Of ‘Love Actually’ Now?
- Emma Thompson Was ‘Utterly Blind’ To Her First Husband’s Affair
- Every Plotline In Love Actually, Ranked
