Celebrity
Everything You Need To Know About Emma Thompson's Husband & Two Kids
The actress has a beautiful family.
Emma Thompson has become a constant in our lives. The kind of consistently amazing actress who delivers again and again, whether she’s dressed in period costume to play Elinor Dashwood in Sense & Sensibility or Bridget Jones’s OB/GYN in Bridget Jones’s Baby. But how much do we really know about Emma Thompson’s life off of our TV screens? Her husband? Her children? Here’s everything you need to know about her beautiful family.
Emma Thompson has been married to Thomas Wise since 2003.
Before her relationship with Thomas Wise, Thompson was married to Irish director and actor Kenneth Branagh for six years, from 1989 to 1995, when they announced they were getting a divorce due to difficult work schedules. Branagh quickly moved on in a relationship with actress Helena Bonham Carter, prompting rumors that he had cheated on Thompson with Carter, which Thompson confirmed in an interview with The New Yorker in 2022. “I was utterly, utterly blind to the fact that he had relationships with other women on set,” Thompson said. “What I learned was how easy it is to be blinded by your own desire to deceive yourself. I was half alive. Any sense of being a lovable or worthy person had gone completely.”
Thompson’s marriage to Branagh was coming to an end when she began filming the 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, where she worked with rising star Kate Winslet, and Greg Wise as the dastardly Willoughby, love interest to Winslet’s character Marianne. At the time, Wise was convinced that he was meant to meet the love of his life, and it was Winslet who convinced him that he should ask Thompson on a date when her marriage ended. “[Kate] pointed out that we were right for each other and told me that Emma’s marriage was over,” Wise said during an interview with Express, per People. “It was all meant to be.”
Wise and Thompson continued dating and eventually married in 2003, recently celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary. What’s their secret? According to Thompson, it’s not romantic love. “It's philosophically helpful and uplifting to remember that romantic love is a myth and quite dangerous. We really do have to take it with a massive pinch of salt. To think sensibly about love and the way it can grow is essential.” Thompson told Radio Times in a 2023 interview, “Long-term relationships are hugely difficult and complicated. If anyone thinks that happy ever after has a place in our lives, forget it.”
Their daughter Gaia is 24 years old.
Thompson and Wise welcomed daughter Gaia Wise in December 1999, and quickly found their own way of raising their daughter. Including their decision to homeschool her in their home garden after Gaia told them that school “wasn’t for her,” opting instead for tutors. “She loves learning and she’s terribly focused and hardworking, but she didn’t like the sausage factory of formal education,” Wise explained to The Telegraph. “I’ve no argument with that.”
Gaia has acted with her mom.
It is perhaps not terribly surprising that Gaia has followed in her parents’ footsteps and became an actress, working alongside her mom in 2008’s Last Chance Harvey and 2015’s A Walk in the Woods.
Thompson and Wise adopted son Tindyebwa “Tindy” Agaba when he was 16 years old.
Thompson met her future son Tindyebwa “Tindy” when he was 16 years old and daughter Gaia was 3 years old in 2003. Thompson, who went went through several rounds of IVF in an attempt to have another child after Gaia was born, told The Guardian in 2010, “I couldn't have more children, and that was hard; but perhaps if I had [had more], I'd have missed out on this extra act of mothering that I've had with Tindy. Because there was space in my life for him, and I don't think there would have been space if I'd had another young child around.” Tindy was a child soldier in Rwanda when she met him at a party organized by the Refugee Council and brought him back to England with her. He has since gone on to graduate from Exeter University with honors and planned to move on to pursue his MA in Human Rights Law.
In other words, Thompson’s real life is just as incredible as her screen presence. We might have known.
