Emma, 63: I can’t look at myself in the mirror nude
Actress reveals the struggle of baring all in new film
EMMA Thompson’s latest role sees her bare all as she plays a middle-aged woman in search of a sexual awakening.
But the 63-year-old actress has admitted that she struggles to look at herself in the mirror while naked.
Ms Thompson claims she has an ‘utter incapacity to accept my body as it is’ and is ‘always trying to make myself look better’.
The double Oscar winner stars in the comedy drama Good Luck To You, Leo Grande. She plays Nancy Stokes, a widowed teacher who hires a male escort in the hope of experiencing for the first time the sexual fulfilment that was missing from her marriage.
Towards the end of the film, her character stands completely naked in front of a mirror.
Commenting on the scene at a previous press conference for the film in Berlin, Ms Thompson, who is married to actor Greg Wise, 56, was praised as she told the room: ‘Women have been brainwashed all our lives to hate our bodies – that’s the fact of it.’
She then added: ‘So women, you try standing in front of a mirror, take your clothes off – and don’t move. Just accept it, and don’t judge it. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.’
Addressing those comments, the Love Actually star told the UK’s Times last night: ‘I can’t do it. Nancy does something I’ve never done. When I’m looking in the mirror, I’m always trying to make myself look “better” – turning this way or that, checking out my arse, pulling something in. Simply revealing my utter incapacity to accept my body as it is. But in the movie, at that point, Nancy’s body has just given her these seconds of pure pleasure and she is marvelling at it – not “it” as it looks, but “it” as it has become to her – a place she can be happy, a place she can find genuine bliss.’
But she said: ‘I’m totes relaxed in a communal changing room. There is something so relaxing about being in a room full of naked people, like in a German sauna.’
The mother of two previously revealed that she and co-star Daryl McCormack, 29 – who starred in Peaky Blinders – had rehearsed naked and director Sophie Hyde had also disrobed.
She said: ‘I don’t think I could’ve done it before the age I am. 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.’
Good Luck To You, Leo Grande is released in cinemas on June 17.
‘Utter incapacity to accept my body’