Emily Watson, actor
6/20/202653 min
Emily Watson is an award-winning actor, widely regarded as one of the finest character actors of her generation.
She began her career on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company before rising to prominence in 1996, when she was cast as Bess McNeill in Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves. The role earned her an Academy Award nomination. She received a second Oscar nomination for Hilary and Jackie, for which she learned to play the cello to portray Jacqueline du Pré.
Watson has built a reputation for a level of commitment that is as intense as it is acclaimed. She describes her craft not merely as a profession but as a profound internal necessity, stating: "I love the sense of creating and inhabiting something. That feeling of making it feel magically real. That's the addiction".
She grew up in London and was a passionate reader before leaving home to study English at Bristol University. Her parents were members of the School of Economic Science which proscribed that followers eschew TV and popular culture. Emily joined in with the university drama productions and followed her passion, with her parents’ blessing, to pursue a career in acting.
Emily Watson lives in London with her husband, and they have two children.
Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Sarah Taylor
Desert Island Discs has cast other actors away over the years including Emily’s fellow actor from Hamnet, Jessie Buckley. The writer, Maggie O’Farrell is in there too along with Emily’s friend from university, the writer David Nicholls. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or our own Desert Island Discs website.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsLauren Laverne· Host0:00
Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening. [waves crashing] [instrumental music] My castaway this week is Emily Watson, one of the most respected character actors of her generation. She began her career on stage, joining the RSC in 1992. Her breakthrough film roles in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves and as Jacqueline du Pré in Hilary and Jackie followed a few years later. She was nominated for Academy Awards for both. She learned how to play the cello for Hilary and Jackie, an early indication of the commitment that has helped her maintain a 30-year run of critically acclaimed performances. Angela's Ashes, Gosford Park, Punch-Drunk Love, The Book Thief, Small Things Like These, Appropriate Adult, Chernobyl, Hamnet, the billion-dollar TV franchise Dune. If there is a common thread in her work, it might be exploring ideology,