At 62 years old, Dame Emma Thompson has achieved a lot in her acting career. But it was a scene in her upcoming film that proved one of the most challenging.
Premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande stars Thompson as a widowed schoolteacher who, in the search for a new sexual experience, hires a male escort (Daryl McCormack).
Thompson revealed that one scene required her to stand in front of a mirror fully nude, an experience which she says was “very challenging” at 62.
Discussing her experience on a Cinema Cafe panel, Thompson said her co-star McCormack and director Sophie Hyde also stripped down in rehearsals.
“Sophie, Daryl, and I rehearsed entirely nude and talked about our bodies, talked about our relationship with our bodies, drew them, discussed the things that we find difficult about, things we like about them, described one another’s bodies.”
Speaking about the pressure’s women face when it comes to their bodies, Thompson said she wouldn’t have felt comfortable showing her naked body at a younger age.
“I don’t think I could’ve done it before the age that I am,” she said. “And yet, of course, the age that I am makes it extremely challenging because we aren’t used to seeing untreated bodies on the screen.”
“Nothing has changed in the dreadful demands made upon women in the real-world world but also in acting,” Thompson said. “This thing of having to be thin is still the same as it ever was, and actually in some ways I think it’s worse now.”
In our August issue of MiNDFOOD, Emma Thompson gets candid about her role, telling MiNDFOOD: “It’s very challenging to be nude at 62, especially in a world where nothing has changed in the dreadful demands made upon women.” Pick up the issue to read the full feature.
