Emma Thompson is making headlines for revealing that she put her job on the line a decade ago for a fellow actress who was being body shamed.
And now, TheWrap has figured out that the actress Thompson defended was Hayley Atwell.
In a recent interview on Swedish talk show “Skavlan,” Thompson spoke out against Hollywood for triggering anorexic behavior in actors. “The anorexia … there are so many kids, girls and boys now, and actresses who are very, very thin that are into their 30’s and simply don’t eat. They don’t eat,” she said.
(Watch her discuss the problem at the 15:00 mark in the above video.)
Then, Thompson recalled a situation that arose on the set of the 2008 drama, “Brideshead Revisited,” saying: “There was a wonderful actress I was working with and the producer said to her, ‘Will you lose some weight?’ She was absolutely exquisite,” the two-time Oscar winner recalled.
“I said to them, ‘If you speak to her about this again, on any level, I will leave this picture, you are never to do that.’”
It turns out that the actress, who Thompson didn’t actually name during her talk show appearance, was Atwell, who recalled the very incident in a 2015 interview:
I thought, ‘OK, I suppose I should [lose weight].’ Then Emma Thompson [who co-starred] said to me, ‘You’re not a model. You’re an actor.’ In the end, they accepted me for who I was. If I’ve ever had an insecurity about myself in this industry, Emma always has an amazing ability to say something to put it all into perspective, so that you don’t hate yourself.