Emma Thompson is an acclaimed actress, but she is also a screenwriter.
The 60-year-old has no less than 17 writing credits to her name, including screenplays for successful films such as Sense and Sensibility, Nanny McPhee, and Bridget Jones’s Baby.
And now, the Academy Award winner is taking a stand for writers throughout Hollywood.
Speaking to The Guardian, Emma revealed that films often begin shooting before the script is even done.
“One of the reasons is that they need stars – big stars – who work all the time and have to be fitted into timescales,” she said. “What happens is there’ll be an idea for a story. It will be in development, and then suddenly two of the big stars come free, and everyone says, ‘right, let’s shoot it, we’ll work it out as we shoot’. One thing I know, after 30 years of doing this, is you can’t work it out while you shoot… It always ends up just making things so much more difficult in post-production.”
The Love, Actually star says, “I know that I don’t want to make films with unfinished scripts.”
Her next project aims to change that as it will be a collaboration with her husband Greg Wise, based on a script they have worked on for 7 years, called Last Christmas.
