‘Love Actually’ turns 20: Emma Thompson was robbed of an Oscar nomination
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Emma Thompson has turned in a host of eclectic, effective, excellent performances throughout her illustrious career. She started out with period dramas such as “Howards End” and “The Remains of the Day” before later moving into fantasy with roles in “Nanny McPhee” and “Harry Potter.” Add to that top-tier performances in the likes of “Sense and Sensibility,” “Saving Mr. Banks,” “Cruella,” and “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” and you’ve got one hell of a performer.
However, Thompson has stated herself that the role she gets the most praise for is actually… “Love Actually.” The classic Richard Curtis Christmas movie, which turns 20 this year, tells the interconnected love stories of eight different sets of people with Thompson delivering the most emotional and heartbreaking storyline of all of them. Thompson’s Karen is an under-appreciated stay-at-home mother who spends her days looking after the kids, making costumes for their school nativity, and doing the Christmas shopping for her husband, Harry (Alan Rickman). However, while Karen devotes her time to her family, Harry becomes allured by his assistant, Mia (Heike Makatsch). Eventually, he buys her a necklace and Karen finds the necklace in Harry’s jacket, thinking he’d bought it for her.
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Come present-opening time, however, Karen opens a Joni Mitchell CD and realizes that Harry had bought the necklace for Mia. What follows is, simply put, one of the most iconic and affecting crying scenes in cinema history. Thompson’s Karen plays Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” in her bedroom as she realizes what her husband has done and the gravity of the situation sinks in. While a lot of performers would go full-hog in a crying scene, Thompson smartly realizes that most people, when crying, actually try to stop themselves from sobbing. Karen, then, struggles to hold it together as tears leak out. The combination of Thompson’s measured, intelligent, and heart-wrenching performance with Mitchell’s moving song is so effective. Karen then goes downstairs and has to resume normal motherly duties, getting her kids ready to leave the house. She struggles to do this and there’s another wonderful moment when Karen pauses in the living room, out of sight of her family, as she pulls herself together and stops the tears flowing again.
Her confrontation with Harry is another excellent scene, too, as her sadness quietly bubbles with rage, confusion, and disappointment. Thompson’s withering glare is searing but it’s her delivery of her next line that hits home like a sledgehammer: “You’ve made a fool out of me. You’ve made the life I lead foolish, too.” And with that tearful line, she snaps back into mother mode and embraces her children as if nothing happened. It’s, frankly, a tour de force performance with so many intricacies and layers and Thompson deserved an Oscar nomination for it. Let’s take a look at how close she came to securing that bid.
Firstly, she was nominated at the 2004 BAFTAs for Best Supporting Actress, one of three awards the film was nominated for along with Best British Film and Best Supporting Actor for Bill Nighy. Thompson was part of an eclectic lineup of nominees in this category as Renée Zellweger (“Cold Mountain”), Holly Hunter (“Thirteen”), Judy Parfitt (“Girl With a Pearl Earring”), and Thompson’s “Love Actually” co-star Laura Linney (“Mystic River”) were all nominated. Zellweger won.
Thompson was also nominated at several key critics groups, including the London Critics Circle Film Awards (which she won), and the Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards. However, she somehow didn’t get in at any of the other major precursors. At the Critics Choice Awards, Zellweger and Hunter were nominated alongside Patricia Clarkson (“Pieces of April”), Marcia Gay Harden (“Mystic River”), and Scarlett Johansson (“Lost in Translation”). At the Golden Globes, Zellweger, Hunter, and Clarkson were nominated alongside Maria Bello (“The Cooler”) and Hope Davis (“American Splendor”). And at the Screen Actors’ Guild Awards, Zellweger, Hunter, Clarkson, and Bello were joined in the nominees lineup by Keisha Castle-Hughes (“Whale Rider”). Zellweger won at all three precursors.
Zellweger was the rock-solid sure thing guaranteed a nomination while Hunter was also a lock as she was the only other actress nominated at all four major precursors. Clarkson was nominated at three of them, so she was a pretty safe bet, too, while Bello snagged bids at two precursors. She had a good chance at a nomination, too. Thompson, like Davis and Johansson, was only nominated at one major precursor, making her chances of an Oscar bid pretty slim.
However, come the time of Oscar nominations, Bello was left out. Zellweger, Hunter, and Clarkson were all nominated as expected while it was Harden who also got in after she appeared in the Critics Choice Awards lineup. The fifth and final nomination slot, however, went to a complete wild card: Shohreh Aghdashloo, who reaped a bid for her performance in “House of Sand and Fog.” It was Zellweger who won the Oscar.
This meant that there was no room for Thompson, who had to settle for that singular BAFTA bid for “Love Actually.” This is not surprising as BAFTA does love to nominate its own. Multiple British actresses have found success in this category even when they aren’t nominated at other awards groups. Julie Christie was nominated for “Finding Neverland” in 2005, Brenda Blethyn was nominated for “Pride & Prejudice” in 2006, Emily Blunt was nominated for “The Devil Wears Prada” in 2007, Judi Dench was nominated for “Skyfall” in 2013, Kristin Scott Thomas was nominated for “Darkest Hour” in 2018, and Carey Mulligan was nominated for “She Said” in 2023.
And don’t feel too sorry for Thompson. She has a rich Oscars history regardless of her “Love Actually” omission with two wins and five nominations in total. She won Best Actress in 1993 for “Howards End” before adding a Best Adapted Screenplay gong to her shelf in 1996 for adapting Jane Austen‘s “Sense and Sensibility” into a film. Thompson was also nominated for Best Actress for that Ang Lee movie while she previously scored a Best Actress bid in 1994 for “The Remains of the Day.” That same year, she landed a Best Supporting Actress nomination for “In the Name of the Father.”
Still, “Love Actually” should have provided Thompson with a sixth Oscar nomination. Her performance has more than passed the test of time and only gets more iconic with each passing year. Out of all of the supporting performances by actresses that year, Thompson’s is the most memorable by far. But, she’s won Oscars and she’s been snubbed. I guess she’s seen both sides now.
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