Emma Thompson's Favorite Roles — From 'Sense and Sensibility' to 'Love Actually' and More!

Emma Thompson grew up in a family of actors, but had her sights set on being “a comedian, and I wanted to be Lily Tomlin.”

Instead, she entered the family profession and became an Oscar winner. Here are her ten favorite roles and what the 65-year-old British-born actress says they mean to her.

“I had no ambition of wanting to be a movie star. It didn’t occur to me. The first acting I did on television was Tutti Frutti with Robbie Coltrane. I got that by accident because they needed a woman who could do a Scottish accent and Robbie said, ‘Ask Thompson,’” she said.

“I was embarrassed largely by the press version of our marriage (to costar Kenneth Branagh). I don’t think we wanted to be some power couple. We were lampooned and ridiculed — fair enough if you’re famous and overpaid — but it’s no fun,” she said.

“There was a lot of me in her. She has to break the rules in order to survive ... That was the only time that I actually wrote to someone and said, ‘Please give me this role. I know how to do it,'" she said of playing Margaret Schlegel in the film.

“I did find the Oscar stuff quite hard. Both times, I got seriously ill. I found the pressure and glare of it too much. But I’m lucky — I think it must be awful if you’re James Bond,” she shared.

Life imitated art on the set of the presidential pic when Thompson received a phone call from future president Donald Trump. “He said, ‘I think we would get on very well, maybe we could have dinner sometime.’ I just said, ‘Erm, I’ll get back to you.’ I wish I had — think of the stories!” she recalled.

"I’m really not sure what I believe in, but you know love is nice, actually, when you come to think about it. Maybe we should consider it for a moment," Thompson said of the romantic movie.

"Nanny McPhee is a great Heroic presence. She always has to leave those that she loves. She’s about nonattachment. Perhaps that’s why she’s such a powerful figure to me, because I’m far too attached to pretty much everything,” she gushed.

Thompson found her role as Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers to be her most difficult “because she was so complicated, and she was so inconsistent. But that is what made her such a blissful joy to embody.”

After three near-misses, she worked with Robert Redford. “It was bliss working with him — we have very good chemistry, which doesn’t always happen. We got onto the set and started talking and wouldn’t stop. We sort of had to be pried apart at the end of the day,” she said.

On baring all: “It’s just a disguised version of, ‘It’s brave of an old fat lady to take her clothes off.’ It’s not really even an insult … I’m glad at least they’re saying brave and not ugly or unacceptable.”