Regardless of your view of Love Actually, a film which has inspired more takes than there are minutes within the film, there is one undeniable truth to the film: Karen, played by Emma Thompson, deserved better.
There is something so profoundly heartbreaking about the scene where Karen opens her Christmas gift to realise it’s not the necklace she saw her husband (Alan Rickman) buy. Instead, it’s a copy of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” album which any Joni-loving woman in her mid-40s in 2002 would already own a copy of.
The gift is supposed to be a show that he knows her deeply: instead, it reveals how careless and lazy his love is – and on top of that, it confirms Karen’s husband is having an affair. In short, folks, it makes me feel a lot.
Turns out there’s a reason why it’s such a standout in the film. Speaking at a fundraiser event for Tricycle Theatre in London in 2018, Emma revealed that she drew upon personal experience for the scene.
“That scene where my character is standing by the bed crying is so well known because it’s something everyone’s been through,” she said. “I knew what it was like to find a necklace that wasn’t meant for me…”
MOTHER. (Credit: Love Actually)
Emma was referring to her marriage with British thespian (and yes, he played Gilderoy Lockhart too) Kenneth Branagh, from 1989 to 1995. Kenneth had an affair with Helena Bonham Carter, beginning in 1994 when they met on set of Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein.
“I had my heart very badly broken by Ken,” said Emma at the event. “So I knew what it was like to find the necklace that wasn’t meant for me…. Well it wasn’t exactly that, but we’ve all been through it.”
It’s a sentiment Emma has expressed before: in 2013, she told The Sunday Times she understood her Love Actually character on an innate level.
“I’ve had so much bloody practice at crying in a bedroom,” says Emma, “then having to go out and be cheerful, gathering up the pieces of my heart and putting them in a drawer.”
Don’t we all. If it’s any consolation, in that same interview Emma explained that she long ago made peace with Helen, explaining that it was all “blood under the bridge”. Which, as an outlook, is very ‘Both Sides, Now’, actually.
Image credit: Love Actually
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