Emma Thompson On Feminism And The Emotional Life of Crockery

If we could sit down with any actress in the world, we’d consider Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep, or even Lena Dunham or Tina Fey, but eventually we think we’d have to choose Emma Thompson. The one-woman fire cracker has long been known to speak her mind with eloquence and plenty of spark. Her 1996 Golden Globes acceptance speech for her?Sense &?Sensibility?screenplay is one we oft return to when we want to be reminded as to what a real linguistic and comic wizard can do. Check it out for yourself:

And who could forget the 2014 awards season when she?photobombed Lupita Nyong’o and got drunk before presenting at the SAGs.

She sat down for a recent interview with?Vulture and agreed to have a’spiel?about any topic they threw at her so you know it’s going to be a good’un.

On Feminism in Hollywood

Thompson confesses she is shocked by the amount of women in the public sphere?who shy away from the word.??I’ve been a card-carrying, radical feminist since I was 19…Any woman who says they’re not a feminist is basically saying that they don’t believe in equal rights for women?. She also makes the perfect point that?the women who proudly describe themselves as feminists are the ones who have something interesting to say.

She also covers the ridiculous age gap?between leading male and female roles in cinema. In her new movie Walk in the Woods, Thompson plays the wife of Robert Redford, a man twenty-three years her senior.?Maggie Gyllenhaal also recently spoke out about being turned down as ‘too old’ to play the love interest of a 55-year man. Gyllenhaal was 35 at the time. Just let that sink in for a minute. Thompson believes the gap has only increased since the beginning of her acting career. “I thought when I was 35, that they’d have to exhume somebody to play my leading man…Nothing has changed since then. If anything it’s gotten worse”. She confesses that when someone suggested she was “too old” to play Hugh Grant’s love interest in?Sense &?Sensibility?(she is a year old than Grant) she rightly told them where to go.

On the Endless Factoryline of Superhero Remakes

“If I see yet another?Spider-Man?I’m going to have to actually hang myself” said Thompson, referring to yet another remake of the franchise. And if you’re thinking it’s the one after the Toby Maguire – Kristin Dunst one no, it’s a new one after the Andrew Garfield – Emma Stone one, although how anything can be classified as ‘new’ at this point is beyond us.

On Playing a Teapot

Thompson is set to take up the role of Mrs. Potts in the live action version of?Beauty & The Beast, a role voiced by Angela Lansbury in the movie. The new version?has an amazing looking cast, in both looks and acting calibre, with Emma Watson, Luke Evans, Stanley Tucci, Kevin Kline and Ewan McGregor all set to star. Dan Stevens will play the most aristocratic Scandivanian-looking ‘Beast’ we’ve ever imagined.

When asked how she prepared for the role Thompson said with a laugh “I just had to make her as warm and round and scouting as possible…I spent a lot of time considering the emotional life of crockery”.

We’re already looking forward to this, have we mentioned that Ian McKellan will play Cogsworth? Roll on 2017.

We sincerely hope that, despite her’distain for the awards circuit, Emma Thompson?gets a few nods and makes the increasingly dull Oscars a little more jovial. We could all use more Emma Thompson in our lives.