You know her for her iconic Hollywood career spanning four decades and several industry accolades. But you likely don’t know much about Dame Emma Thompson’s family life.
That’s by design. The Oscar-winner, 66, has remained relatively tight-lipped about her personal life and her two children over the years.
So, fans were thrilled when the Harry Potter star stepped out with her 25-year-old daughter Gaia Wise for a rare public outing together.
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Gaia joined her mother at a photocall for the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland ahead of the premiere of their new film The Dead of Winter.
Thompson wore a two piece black and white set complete with a cherry pattern while Gaia wore a sheer sparkling shirt with matching shorts.
The pair embraced each other as they smiled for photos together at the European event.
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Later that same day, the pair changed outfits – Thompson in a sparkly silver top and white pants, Gaia in a sheer black dress – to attend the film’s screening.
The Dead of Winter marks the first time the mother-daughter duo have shared the screen.
Thompson and Gaia are rarely pictured together and the recent photos remind us of the private life behind the Hollywood icon.
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The Cruella actor shares Gaia and her adopted son Tindyebwa Wise with her husband Greg Wise.
The couple first met on set of the 1995 film Sense & Sensibility. Thompson starred as Elinor Dashwood while Wise played John Willoughby.
At the time, Thompson was married to Kenneth Branagh who she married in 1989. But their marriage soon fell apart after Thompson learned Branagh had an affair with Helena Bonham Carter.
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Speaking with The New Yorker in 2022, Thompson revealed that she “was half alive” after the split.
“Any sense of being a loveable or worthy person had gone completely,” she said.
In the early days of that heartbreak, it was her work and her relationship with Wise that got her through.
“Work saved me and Greg saved me,” she said, per the Independent.
“He picked up the pieces and put them together again.”
Their relationship blossomed from their and they welcomed Gaia, their first child together, in December 1999.
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In 2003, they married in a private ceremony in Scotland and adopted their son Tindyebwa Agaba Wise that same year – completing their family.
Thompson met Tindyebwa, a Rwadan orphan who was 16 at the time, at a Christmas charity event she created in partnership with the Refugee Council. Soon after, he joined their family.
Tindyebwa spoke minimal English and the time and he and the actress connected through “a combination of sign language, laughing [and] smiling”, Thompson revealed in an essay for The Times of London
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Tindyebwa went on to learn English and build a life with an “extraordinary” wife and “a fascinating, very challenging job” within England’s Criminal Investigation Department.
Meanwhile Gaia followed in her mum’s footsteps becoming an actress herself.
She has had roles in A Walk in the Woods, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim and of course most recently The Dead of Winter.
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