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Emma Thompson Says ‘Evil’ Show Business Causes Anorexia

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 03:38 PST, Mar 30, 2017

Emma Thompson has spoken out about the ‘evil’ side of show business, which according to her includes body shaming and anorexia. The two issues are very common for actresses in their teens, 20s, and 30s in Hollywood, and the Saving Mr. Banks actress has no tolerance for body shaming.

Emma Thompson has revealed during her appearance on the Swedish talk show Skavlan last week how a body shaming incident once nearly forced her to quit a film production. Emma Thompson, whose acting credentials include the Harry Potter film series, Love Actually, and Beauty and the Beast, revealed how she once threatened to quit the production of 2008’s Brideshead Revisited after the producer told her female co-star to “lose some weight,” according to People magazine.

While Emma Thompson said that her co-star, whose name she didn’t reveal in the interview, was “absolutely exquisite” and losing more weight would be a shortcut to anorexia, the Harry Potter star told the body shaming producer she’d quit the film if they ever asked her co-star about this again.

“You are never to do that.”

Emma Thompson says that body shaming incidents are very common in show business. The actress, who turns 58-years-old next month, describes girls being forced into anorexia as “evil,” and says it’s “getting worse” by the year.

“The French fashion industry said they would get rid of size zero and then, you know, they didn’t.”

And Emma Thompson says that not only young girls and adult actresses are subject to body shaming, but also boys and men. But Thompson says anorexia is more common among women into their 30s who are “very, very thin” but want to lose even more weight.

“Sometimes there are just some subjects that you absolutely have to make noise about because it’s so tedious and it’s gone on and on.”

But what decades in show business have taught Emma Thompson, who has absolutely no tolerance for anorexia, is that she needs to come up with a brilliant response to body shaming. And she has one.

“Sorry, do you want me to be an actress or a model?”

Emma Thompson, who was born in London but has spent years in Los Angeles after filming a number of Hollywood productions, says body shaming and obsession with anorexia are two reasons why she would never move to L.A.

“Every time I go to L.A. I think ‘Oh god I am too fat to go there.'”

But not only that. Emma Thompson feels like she’s too “old” to come to L.A. due to the city’s obsession with looks. The Saving Mr. Banks actress, who describes L.A. as “so mad and so hostile” and “a very strange place,” says she “could not live” there.

At least 30 million people in the U.S. suffer from an eating disorder, including anorexia, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness in the U.S.

During the chat with host Fredrik Skavlan, Emma Thompson also revealed how she once nearly ended up becoming the first lady, according to the Washington Post. Thompson revealed how U.S. President Donald Trump – who wasn’t U.S. President at the time – asked her out back in 1997, but the actress blew him off.

Trump asked her out to have dinner together and offered her “accommodation” in one of his luxury properties. At the time of asking Emma Thompson out, Trump had announced his separation from second wife Marla Maples, but he finalized the divorce two years later.

[Featured Image by Axel Schmidt/AP Images]

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