Emma Thompson has accepted Academy Awards, Baftas and even a damehood over a glittering career, but there was one offer she had to turn down.
The actor says she once got asked out on a date by Donald Trump on the same day her divorced was confirmed.
Thompson said she was in her trailer filming Primary Colors in 1998, a political satire based on Bill Clinton’s presidential rise, when the phone rang.
“It was Donald Trump,” Thompson told an audience on Saturday, August 9, 2025, at the Locarno film festival in Switzerland, where she received the Leopard Club award for career achievement.
“He said: ‘Hello, this is Donald Trump.’ I thought it was a joke and asked: ‘How can I help you?’ Maybe he needed directions from someone.
“Then he said: ‘I’d love you to come and stay at one of my beautiful places. Maybe we could have dinner.’
“I said: ‘Well, that’s very sweet. Thank you so much. I’ll get back to you.’”
At the time, Trump had just split from his second wife, Marla Maples.
Thompson, meanwhile, had just finalised her divorce from Kenneth Branagh.
Only later did she twig the timing. “I realised my divorce decree had come through that day,” she said. “I bet he’s got people looking for a nice divorcee to take out on his arm.
“And he found the number in my trailer,” she joked. “I mean, that’s stalking.”
Thompson, a lifelong Labour Party supporter who publicly backed Jeremy Corbyn’s 2017 and 2019 election campaigns, is a high-profile environmental activist who has campaigned for refugee and women’s rights.
She told the audience she could have altered geopolitics if she’d accepted Trump’s offer.
“I could have gone on a date with Donald Trump, and then I would have a story to tell,” she said. “I could have changed the course of American history.”
PHOTO CAPTION: Emma Thompson In 1998.
