Emma Thompson

Emma Thompson is pausing to have a conniption. This is the real McCoy, an up-from-the- gut bellow of exasperation. Her forehead, usually a creaseless plane of goodwill, scrunches up like a vexed accordion. Smoke rises, the invisible kind that occurs when boundaries have been trespassed. The Oscar-winning empress of high-tea cinema ("Howards End," "The Remains of the Day," "Carrington") is in a snit because she has come to talk about Exhibit A and has been asked about Exhibit X.

Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh, Britain's premier show-biz couple, have separated. "Our work has inevitably led to our spending long periods of time away from each other and, as a result, we have drifted apart," the couple said in a statement published today by Press Assn., Britain's domestic news agency.

Accomplished farceurs specialize in making the ridiculous plausible, and certainly few films can claim to be as unlikely as "Junior." In cheeky defiance of the laws of nature, it presents us with the spectacle of ultimate male Arnold Schwarzenegger heavy with child. If the French had thought of it first, it might've been called "One Man and a Baby."

Director Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List" and New Zealand director Jane Campion's "The Piano," both widely lauded by film critics, led the 51st annual Golden Globe Awards nominations announced Wednesday. Each film is nominated in six categories.

They are reigning darlings of the art-house crowd. Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson--Oscar winners and co-stars, first paired last year in the surprise hit "Howards End," the film adaptation oM. Forster's classic novel. This year, they are re-teamed in a second movie from the Merchant-Ivory team, "The Remains of the Day," from the 1988 British novel by Kazuo Ishiguro.

The Hollywood adage that "nobody knows anything" apparently doesn't apply to the Oscar race. Hollywood seems to know quite a bit--or talks like it does. Conversations with two dozen players about their picks to win Academy Awards--most of whom returned calls from the set, the car or in between meetings--might as well have taken place on a conference call. Most comments were off the record, naturally.

Emma Thompson is planning for the future. No matter that the long-limbed and literary British actress is starring in the widely acclaimed Ismail Merchant-James Ivory production of "Howards End," that she has another movie, "Peter's Friends," in post-production and that this summer she will play opposite her husband, Wunderkind Kenneth Branagh, in a filmed version of "Much Ado About Nothing."

We Angelenos can be jaded when it comes to stars, with America's hot new thing squeezing fruit across the aisle in the supermarket or standing in front of you at the Chinese takeout window. "Married . . . With Chutzpah" (Aug. 18), Kent Black's article on Kenneth Branagh and his wife, Emma Thompson, pointed out one of the wonderful, often-forgotten things about Los Angeles. There aren't too many cities where one has a chance to run into Branagh trying his California accent while getting popcorn.