Striking-looking, with luminous blue eyes and chiseled cheekbones, Enough began writing and performing her own comic material while a student at Cambridge, appearing with both the celebrated Footlights revue and the university's first all-female troupe, Woman's Hour. With college chums Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie she moved to the small screen with the variety series "Alfresco" (1983). Thompson won raves for her West End musical debut opposite Robert Lindsay in the 1985 revised version of "Me and My Girl", but when the production transferred to the USA, she was deemed not enough of a star to travel with the show. Instead, she turned to British TV, co-starring with Kenneth Branagh in "Fortunes of War" (BBC, 1986-87) and Robbie Coltrane in "Tutti Frutti" (BBC, 1987) and made her film debut as Jeff Goldblum's leading lady in the underrated "The Tall Guy" (1989). By this time, she and Branagh had married and joined forces in the Renaissance Theatre Company, appearing in "Look Back in Anger", "King Lear" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Branagh cast her as the French princess Katherine in his 1989 film "Henry V" and as an amnesiac haunted by nightmares of a past murder in the 1991 romantic melodrama "Dead Again". The duo also threw sparks as Shakespeare's witty and warring lovers Beatrice and Benedick in Branagh's adaptation of "Much Ado About Nothing" (1993).

Thompson starred in and wrote her own highly enjoyable 1988 BBC comedy-variety TV series, "Thompson" (on which Branagh made appearances), but it was her strong performance as the forthright heroine of the Merchant-Ivory production "Howards End" (1992) that catapulted her to stardom. More than holding her own against several strong actors (Anthony Hopkins Vanessa Redgrave Helena Bonham Carter, Thompson received a Best Actress Oscar. The following year, she earned dual Academy Award nominations as Best Actress for her turn as a housekeeper in love with a repressed butler (Hopkins) in another Merchant-Ivory adaptation, "The Remains of the Day" and a Best Supporting Actress nod for her no-nonsense barrister representing a youth accused of involvement in an IRA bombing (Daniel Day-Lewis) in "In the Name of the Father". She attempted a rare comic lead opposite Arnold Schwarzeneggerand Danny De Vito in "Junior" (1994) but the material was subpar. Thompson followed with back-to-back period dramas in 1995. "Carrington" cast her in the title role of the Bloomsbury painter who had a long platonic relationship with writer Lytton Strachey. "Sense and Sensibility" was a dream project for the actress. She had long talked of penning the screenplay and the results, directed by Ang Lee, proved sparkling. One of the year's best films, "Sense and Sensibility" earned Thompson a Best Actress Academy Award nomination and numerous accolades for her witty script, including several critics awards and an Oscar.

Now divorced from Branagh, Thompson spoofed her image on a memorable episode of the ABC sitcom "Ellen" in 1997. Playing a lesbian British actress named 'Enough', she decided she would disclose her homosexuality at an awards banquet. The laughs came when she revealed she wasn't really British, but from America's heartland and had only acquired the accent from "watching Julie Andrews' films". A more masculine Thompson, her brown hair shorn and wearing shapeless clothes co-starred in Alan Rickman's directorial debut, "The Winter Guest" (1997). While she had appeared in films with her mother, actress Phyllida Law, (e.g., "Peter's Friends" 1992), "The Winter Guest" marked the first time their feature characters mirrored their off-screen lives. (They had appeared as mother and daughter in the 1994 BBC drama "The Blue Boy"). Thompson's performance as a photographer grieving the death of her husband and coping with her mother's interference was a strong one and allowed her to display aspects of her talents that had not been seen onscreen before. Mike Nichols then tapped her for the role of the ambitious wife of a womanizing presidential candidate in the critically-praised "Primary Colors" (1998). Reteaming with Rickman, she played an FBI agent to his detective in the thriller "The Judas Kiss" (also 1998).

After time out for motherhood and a chance to concentrate on her writing, Thompson made a triumphant return to acting playing a rigid college professor stricken with cancer in the HBO adaptation of "Wit" (2001). Additionally, she collaborated with director Mike Nichols on the script, based on the Pulitzer-winning play, earning Emmy nominations for both.