Dame Emma is officially entertainment royalty

ONE OF Britain’s most acclaimed actresses, Emma Thompson has been a stalwart of the big and small screen since the late 1980s but has maintained an unstarry air throughout her dazzling career.

But it is for her services to drama that the star, 59, has earned a damehood in the Queens’s Birthday Honours list, continuing a long list of achievements that includes Oscars, Baftas, Golden Globes and Emmys.

She has also enjoyed success at the box office and with critics, with literary adaptations such as for which she won an Oscar for writing the adaptation;

which scored her a best actress Oscar, and

She also starred in as crowd-pleasers such as the Nanny McPhee films, which she also wrote, and the Harry Potter blockbusters.

Keira Knightley has also received an OBE for her services to drama and charity.

The Royal honour comes more than 15 years after the twice Oscar-nominated film star scored her breakthrough role as a football-loving teenager in

Since then, Knightley, 33, has gone on to star in several blockbuster films.

She achieved global fame as Elizabeth Swann in Disney’s

alongside Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom when she was only 17.

Tom Hardy, who received a CBE, also for services to drama, made his name with a series of hardman roles. The 40-year-old actor is known for and

The privately educated star has spoken about how he suffered from alcohol addiction in his youth. Hardy checked himself into rehab in 2003 and has been clean ever since.

Hardy, an ambassador for The Prince’s Trust, said: “I love what I do, but it’s driven by a fear of not being able to do it.”