Dame Emma Thompson: ‘I find the young a source of fire and inspiration’

Emma, is there a role you consider to be career-defining?

In the end I come back to Margaret Schlegel in Howards End. She’s a sort of prototypical feminist. And I think it’s the only time I was ever offered a part and thought: “I know this person, inside and out.” I knew her naivety, her idealism, her hope, her belief that somehow she could change things for the better, which in the end she does – she creates a community for broken people who don’t quite fit the system. I identify with her even more now, at a time when we have a lot of work to do to create safe spaces in which we can stand and talk, where public debate is allowed, where people are not being threatened. Howards End was published in 1910, just before the First World War. There were clouds on the horizon, something cataclysmic about to happen. I feel we’re in a similar moment: the manosphere, the social media problem. It’s not acceptable.

What else was going on in your life at that time?

I was seeking the nature of female heroism, actually. I had started a women’s group – I was fed up with having to identify with men – and we sat in a room and talked about who the female hero was, what her actions were. Margaret was an ideal heroine. She was just herself. She both challenged the patriarch and married him, which is what so many of us do.

Where does your drive come from?

As you grow, you learn that you might not be able to make better all the things you wanted to. You might see things get a great deal worse. But I think it’s our duty to remain hopeful. It’s not up to you to change the world. You just need to do what you can do.

Where do you draw your inspiration from?

The young. The young I find so inspiring. The younger generations, having been so thoroughly shit-on by their forebears, are so full of ideas, of brilliant writing. My daughters’ friends – the way they think about the world – are a source of such inspiration and fire to me. I’m at the other end of life. I look at them and go, “Oh, I see, you think about it like that...” That helps me a lot.

Emma Thompson wears: (first look) shirt by Eudon Choi, trousers by Reiss, loafers by Grenson; (second look) coat by Givenchy by Sarah Burton. Styling assistant: Sam Deaman