Phyllida Law, the Scottish stage and screen actress and mother of Emma and Sophie Thompson, has died at the age of 94, her granddaughter Gaia Wise confirmed. Her personal manager Jacky Leggo said she died supremely peacefully at home, surrounded by family. Born in Glasgow in 1932, Law trained at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and began appearing with Bristol Old Vic in the 1950s, where she met and later married actor Eric Thompson in 1957. Her stage career included runs in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, John Mortimer’s A Voyage Round My Father with Alec Guinness, membership of the National Theatre, and the first London run of the English-language La Cage aux Folles. From the late 1980s she appeared in films alongside her daughters, including Peter’s Friends, Much Ado About Nothing and the 1996 Emma, and she played mother to Emma Thompson in Alan Rickman’s The Winter Guest. Law’s television credits included Waking the Dead, Rosemary & Thyme, Foyle’s War, Doc Martin, Agatha Christie’s Poirot and a recurring role in Kingdom. Her final screen credit was the 2020 romance Then Came You; she is survived by her daughters Emma and Sophie Thompson.
