Food for thought from Emma Thompson ...

Some of my friends know that I'm in love with Emma Thompson, literally. She's at the top of my pantheon of Actresses That I Fancy. She's one of the few people that I have not interviewed personally in my line of work, though I did ask her a question at a via satellite press to-do that she really liked. That alone made me swoon privately, so I'm not sure how I would react to an actual one-on-one interview. I'm sure I would comport myself professionally - at least until the minute I got home, at which point I would jump up and down and carry on like a banshee.

But I digress.

The reasons I admire Ms. Thompson so much are ...

* Because she is supremely talented,

* Because she keeps her two Oscars in her loo (that's bathroom in British),

* Because she doesn't seem to take herself too seriously,

* Because she can do Shakespeare and Austen without effort, but also can probably tell the dirtiest jokes and drink you under the table should the occasion arise.

* Oh, and did I mention she's a total babe?

Now, thanks to my friend Beth, I have yet another reason to admire the fair Emma. It seems that recently she held a dinner party for a group of her chums, including a young actress named Hayley Atwell. Thompson and her fellow countrywoman are starring in a big-screen adaptation of Brideshead Revisited right now and obviously were breaking bread during a break from filming. But Emma wasn't happy that Hayley was just picking at her food. Upon inquiry, Thompson learned from Atwell that her nibbling wasn't a commentary on the cuisine, but was because she was under orders from Miramax, which is producing Brideshead, to lose weight.

By the way, this is Hayley Atwell ...



Yeah, she really needs to push away from the pasta bar. Not.

Needless to say, Emma was not amused by this news. Actually, she was rightly pissed - pissed enough to tell the fussbudgets at Miramax that if they insisted in making her co-star unnecessarily shed more pounds, they would be losing a lot more than that. They would be losing Emma Thompson as well. And that, as they say, was that - Atwell is now off the weight-loss hook. And Emma, of course, rocks hard even more than ever.

Guess those Oscars - and that feisty attitude - do come in handy from time to time.