Emma Thompson says she was ‘utterly blind’ to her ex husband having an affair with Harry Potter star

Emma Thompson admitted she was ‘utterly blind’ to her ex husband Kenneth Branagh having an affair with Helena Bonham Carter.

The unfaithfulness ended the actress’s six-year marriage in 1995 to the actor, who she wed in 1989 just two years after they met while filming.  

Kenneth had an affair with the Harry Potter actress Helena, 56, after starring in a Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein together in 1994. 

Honest: Emma Thompson admitted she was ‘utterly blind’ to her ex husband Kenneth Branagh having an affair with Helena Bonham Carter

Emma told the New Yorker that she was ‘humiliated’ by the affair and she was shocked by the self-deception. 

At the time she was filming Sense and Sensibility which she won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, but the news of their break up had not yet gone public. 

The Love Actually star said: ‘I was utterly, utterly blind to the fact that he had relationships with other women on set. What I learned was how easy it is to be blinded by your own desire to deceive yourself.’ 

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The unfaithfulness ended the actress’s six-year marriage in 1995 to the actor, who she wed in 1989 just two years after they met while filming (pictured in 1993)

Emma told the New Yorker that she was ‘humiliated’ by the affair and ‘learn’t how easy it is to be blinded by your own desire to deceive yourself’

She added: ‘I was half alive. Any sense of being a lovable or worthy person had gone completely.’

Emma explained in the interview that her Sense and Sensibility co-star and now husband of 27 years Greg Wise was the one to ‘pick up the pieces and put them back together’. 

Emma and Greg married in 2003 and share two children together, a daughter Gaia, 22, and a son Tindyebwa, a former child soldier from Rwanda whom they informally adopted when he was 16.

The same year the happy couple got tied the knot Kenneth married art director Lindsay Brunnock. 

Incredible: Emma explained in the interview that her Sense and Sensibility co-star and now husband of 27 years Greg Wise was the one to ‘pick up the pieces and put them back together’ (pictured in 2021)

Family life: Emma and Greg married in 2003 and share two children together, a daughter Gaia, 22, and a son Tindyebwa, a former child soldier from Rwanda whom they informally adopted when he was 16 (pictured in 2018)

Helena has two children, Billy and Nell with her partner film director Tim Burton.

Emma has starred in two films with Bonham Carter in Howard’s End in 1992 and the Harry Potter series from 2007.

Emma concluded: ‘I’ve learned more from my second marriage just by being married. As my mother says, “The first twenty years are the hardest.”

Moving on: Emma (left) has starred in two films with Bonham Carter (right) in Howard’s End in 1992 and the Harry Potter series from 2007 (pictured in 1994)