Thompson explains 10-year writing gap

Nanny McPhee reunites Thompson with Love Actually co-star Thomas Sangster

Actress Emma Thompson has said the reason she took a 10-year gap between writing her first screenplay and her second, Nanny McPhee, was due to artistic integrity.

Thompson won a best adapted screenplay Oscar in 1996 for her version of Sense And Sensibility, her debut film writing effort.

Ten years later and she has now finished two new scripts - Nanny McPhee and an original screenplay with Nick Hornby which they are hoping to film next year.

"The gap was so long because it needed to be. It took that time - that's the time it took," Thompson told the BBC.

"I don't see why actors, or writers or anyone, should keep producing things at some sort of regular pace.

"We're not factories, we're not producing bottles or biscuits, we're producing things that should have everything that we've got inside them.

"It should take a long time. It should be bloody hard work, it should really wring you out. And then at the end of it you've got something you can be proud of.

"Then it doesn't matter who goes to see it. It doesn't matter if it's five people or five million people - if it's what you meant, then you have been true to your art. That's all that matters in the end."

Dark elements

Thompson said that fond recollections of reading the original Nurse Matilda books by Christianna Brand had made her want to be part of making the film. She also stars as the nanny in the film.

In particular, she remembered "the pictures of this really strange-looking nanny with a single brow and little boot-black button eyes, and a nose like two potatoes stuck together and a tombstone tooth sticking out over her lip, and these big hairy warts.

From my point of view as a parent - and I'm an hysteric - I wish I had half the judicious and consistent calm that Nanny McPhee has Emma Thompson

"It was so visual. And then realising that as things start to change within the children and their behaviour, she changes physically, I loved that - it's like the Norwegians say, that which is loved is truly beautiful.

"You don't know whether she's the ugly version or the pretty version, because she's the same all the way through - but their perception of her is very different."

Thompson explained that the film deliberately does not explain why this change occurs.

"How do you explain it? It's magic. There is no explanation in the book - and nor should there be, in the same way that she's both there and not there.

"She's a trick of perception, and that's what fascinated me about it."

The actress said that book was even "philosophically interesting," but her intention in making the film was to do something for everyone.

She pointed out that the story has dark elements, such as bereavement and death.

And she also said that making the film had helped her in her own life in dealing with her children.

In one scene, in which the nanny talks to the children's father, Mr Brown - played by Colin Firth - she says "the lesson is to listen."

"That's all she says. And from my point of view as a parent - and I'm an hysteric - I wish I had half the judicious and consistent calm that Nanny McPhee has," Thompson added.

"But what I did learn from her, in a way, is that if a child has a problem and comes into the house saying, 'I've had this horrible thing happen to me,' actually a more useful response... is just to say, 'really?', and then leave a space.

"Children can work their own stuff out, and I reckon, of all the lessons that she teaches, that, for the grown-ups, is the most useful one."