Emma Thompson's beloved actress mother Phyllida Law has died aged 94.
In a statement confirming the sad news, her manager, Jacky Leggo, shared that the veteran stage and screen star "died supremely peacefully at home, surrounded by all her family."
Glasgow-born Phyllida studied at the renowned Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol, where she met her actor husband Eric. The couple married in 1957 and went on to have two daughters, actresses Emma and Sophie.
Paying tribute to her grandmother, Emma's actress , 26, took to her Instagram story to pay tribute.
"Rest well, my Queen," she penned alongside a red love heart emoji. Emma and Gaia lived together during the Covid-19 Pandemic, an experience which the Love Actually star describes as a "miraculous luxury of three generations together."
© POOL/AFP via Getty Images"Whatever made us think we could live without this? We were stuck on our goals and our aspirations and – God forbid – our dreams. We were too busy to notice how the bodies silently speak to one another, how we breathe each other in, recalibrate and breathe out.
But the meeting of these life forces now feels more essential than ever. We are constantly exchanging ever-altering resonances, and balance occurs," Emma wrote in the Guardian.
© Dave Benett/WireImage"Not perfectly – nothing's perfect – but, consistently, we change and reset one another’s state. So instead of grieving my mother’s ageing, instead of envying my daughter's youth, I find I am buoyed up and calmed down by turn."
A close bond on and off screen
Phyllida had a decorated acting career during which she got to star alongside her famous daughters.
In 1992, she starred in Peter’s Friends, which was directed by Emma’s then-husband, Kenneth Branagh, as well as Kenneth's 1993 version of Much Ado About Nothing also starring Emma.
© PA Images via Getty ImagesIn 1997, she appeared once again alongside Emma in Alan Rickman’s directorial debut The Winter Guest, with the pair playing a mother and a daughter. She also had an uncredited role in 1994 comedy Junior, starring Emma and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a voice role in 2005 fantasy film Nanny McPhee, written by and starring Emma.
Law also appeared as Mrs Bates in Emma, the 1996 Jane Austen adaptation starring Gwyneth Paltrow, in which Sophie played her daughter.
Talking about their relationship, Emma previously said: "Our relationship is unusual, and the reason is that there are three of us in the family left now, me, my sister, and my mother, because my father (Eric) died when my sister was eighteen and I was twenty-one. Pathetic! Now I think if my father were still alive, it would be very different.
"I mean, we know mum so much better because we spent so much time together, we started going on holidays and travelling together, and we all live on the same street, within three doors of each other.
"We're far closer-knit because of that event in our lives; also, we’re three actresses who always had to earn our own living, and we’ve never been supported by anyone. My mum always worked, I always worked when I was married, and my sister works. So that’s created quite a strong kind of triumvirate. It’s a little alarming, actually."
"Because my mum's brother also died young, there has been a lot of death and disease in our family, and that does teach you how to live, because you look at it and you think, there isn’t long and at any point, it could be taken away, so get on with it!"
