Emma Thompson is thinking about death.

Having just turned 60 in April, the two-time Academy Award-winning actor and screenwriter is used to the typical media questions about “growing old gracefully” in the film and television world. But she’s more interested in talking about bigger questions.

“With this watershed birthday, I will contemplate what I really want to do next,” she says during an interview from her offices in London, where she’s just wrapped up filming for Last Christmas -- a romantic comedy inspired by the George Michael song -- which she co-wrote with performance artist Bryony Kimmings. “Time is precious, and it is not unlimited. One feels immortal, I think, until one is about 40. Then intimations of mortality come. My big conversation with myself, which has already started, but will go on this year is, ‘How do I feel about dying? Am I ready to look at that?’ We are in such denial about it, and it’s very strange because it’s the one thing we know absolutely will happen.”

Thompson’s life recently has been “dotted with loss,” she says. Her beloved sister-in-law, Clare (who lived just down the road from Thompson and her husband, Greg Wise, in London’s West Hampstead neighborhood), died of cancer in 2017, just a year after the death of Thompson’s close friend and Love, Actually co-star Alan Rickman, also from cancer. “My mate Jeremy Hardy, a comedian, died just 2 weeks ago, and my best mate’s husband died last year. It seems like people are dying all the time in my life. My existence feels very hard-won and precious at the moment. I’m addicted to doing and action and activity, but this year I’m going to look at how it feels to be less addicted to that and more able to sit.”

Probably not for very long, she acknowledges: “That’s the point of this patch of time. Sixty isn’t 50. Sixty is well into ‘How many more years have I got when I can be active and useful and produce good and worthwhile work?’ Maybe 10 or 15? Going longer, I think maybe you should let everyone else have a go.” She pauses. “But if I’m lucky enough to reach that age and no one’s able to shut me up, you can remind me of this interview.”

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