Emma Thompson’s Marriage to Greg Wise Was Predicted by a ‘Witchy Friend’

Emma Thompson’s marriage to actor Greg Wise was prophecized in the stars. It did, however, take a while for Greg to get the message. When his psychic friend Helen predicted that he would meet his future partner while filming the movie rendition of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Greg knew who it had to be. Of all his co-stars in the Ang Lee film — including Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, and Emma Thompson — only Kate Winslet wasn’t married.

Emma told the story on The Graham Norton Show. “He assumed it wasn’t me because I was married and quite a lot older than him so he thought it might be Kate,” the Academy Award winner explained. So Greg asked his co-star Kate on a date to a Glastonbury festival. “But it was the wrong call,” Greg admitted to The Express.

Luckily, Kate had noticed the chemistry between Greg and Emma, who incidentally was also the film’s screenwriter. “She pointed out that we were right for each other and told me that Emma’s marriage was over,” Greg remembered. Greg got it right the second time. Nowadays, he tells the story of how they met a little bit differently “Before I started filming Sense and Sensibility, a witchy friend of mine said you are going to meet the love of your life and 25 years later, I am still with Em!” he said in 2019.

For Emma, the relationship also seemed to come at just the right time. The same year, the British actress, born in London England, had divorced her husband of six years amid rumors that her husband had an affair with actress Helena Bonham Carter. Emma had met Kenneth Branagh way back in 1987 when they co-starred in the BBC TV miniseries Fortunes of War, for which Emma won a BAFTA Award. After marrying Kenneth in 1989, the pair continued to work together and even started their own production company before their divorce in 1995.

“The only thing I could do was write,” the Harry Potter star told The Telegraph. I used to crawl from the bedroom to the computer and just sit and write, then I was alright, because I was not present. Sense and Sensibility really saved me from going under, I think, in a very nasty way.” According to the Nanny McPhee star, she channeled her heartbreak when for her iconic scene in Love Actually.

“I’ve had so much bloody practice at crying in a bedroom, then having to go out and be cheerful, gathering up the pieces of my heart and putting them in a drawer,” the Golden Globe winner explained.

Things turned around when Greg and Emma started dating. Four years after meeting, the couple welcomed their daughter Gaia into the world. Another four years after that, The Crown actor and Late Night actress were married in Dunoon, Scotland, with Gaia as their flower girl.

The same year they were married, the family welcomed an adopted son named Tindyebwa Agaba into their clan. “Tindy” was a Rwandan orphan and former child soldier who fled the genocide to find refuge in the U.K.