Emma Thompson has accepted Academy Awards, Baftas and even a damehood over a glittering career, but there was one offer she had to turn down.
The actor says she once got asked out on a date by Donald Trump on the same day her divorced was confirmed.
Thompson said she was in her trailer filming Primary Colors in 1998, a political satire based on Bill Clinton’s presidential rise, when the phone rang.
“It was Donald Trump,” Thompson told an audience at the Locarno film festival in Switzerland, where she received the Leopard Club award for career achievement.
“He said: ‘Hello, this is Donald Trump.’ I thought it was a joke and asked: ‘How can I help you?’ Maybe he needed directions from someone.
“Then he said: ‘I’d love you to come and stay at one of my beautiful places. Maybe we could have dinner.’ I said: ‘Well, that’s very sweet. Thank you so much. I’ll get back to you.’”
At the time, Trump had just split from his second wife, Marla Maples. Thompson, meanwhile, had just finalised her divorce from Kenneth Branagh.
Only later did she twig the timing. “I realised my divorce decree had come through that day,” she said on Saturday. “I bet he’s got people looking for a nice divorcee to take out on his arm.
“And he found the number in my trailer,” she joked. “I mean, that’s stalking.”
Thompson, a lifelong Labour supporter who publicly backed Jeremy Corbyn’s 2017 and 2019 election campaigns, is a high-profile environmental activist who has campaigned for refugee and women’s rights.
She told the audience she could have altered geopolitics if she’d accepted Trump’s offer. “I could have gone on a date with Donald Trump, and then I would have a story to tell,” she said. “I could have changed the course of American history.”
The talk at the festival also covered Thompson’s film career and one of her most famous roles in Richard Curtis’ Christmas romcom, Love Actually. In the 2003 classic, Thompson plays Karen, whose marriage to Harry, played by Alan Rickman, comes under strain when Harry becomes tempted into an affair with his secretary.
Reflecting on the film’s everlasting popularity, she said: “I mean, it’s honestly a constant source of astonishment to me that that film lasted – not that I don’t like the film. I like it very much, but it’s weird.”
Discussing the movie and the moment Karen discovers her partner has been unfaithful, she said she believes its appeal “touched a nerve because [when] we get a heartbreak, especially women, we have to hide it because we don’t want people to see it”.
