Phyllida Law, Stage and Screen Performer and Mother of Emma and Sophie Thompson, Dies at 94
Phyllida Law, the Scottish-born stage and screen performer whose career spanned seven decades and whose daughters Emma and Sophie Thompson became two of Britain's best-known actors, died on 18 August 2026, aged 94. Her personal manager, Jacky Leggo, said Law "died supremely peacefully at home, surrounded by all of her family" (The Guardian).
Born in Glasgow on 8 May 1932, Law was evacuated from the city at the age of seven as the Second World War began. She trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, initially intending to work as a stage designer before switching to acting. There she met fellow actor Eric Thompson — the writer and narrator of the children's television classic The Magic Roundabout — and married him in 1957. They remained together until his death in 1982.
Law broke into television in the late 1950s, with appearances in 1960s series including Dr Finlay's Casebook, Dixon of Dock Green and The Troubleshooters. On stage, she replaced Carole Boyer in the original 1967 production of Peter Nichols' A Day in the Death of Joe Egg when it transferred from the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow to the Comedy Theatre in London. She went on to appear alongside Alec Guinness in John Mortimer's A Voyage Round My Father at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in 1971, and in Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus at the Oxford Playhouse in 1973.
In 1979, Law joined the National Theatre, appearing in Somerset Maugham's For Services Rendered and J. B. Priestley's When We Are Married. She was later cast in the first London run of the English-language musical version of La Cage aux Folles.
From the late 1980s, Law's film work brought her onto screen alongside her own family. She appeared in Peter's Friends (1992), directed by Emma's then-husband Kenneth Branagh, and in Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing (1993). She played mother and daughter with Emma in The Winter Guest (1997), Alan Rickman's feature directing debut. She also appeared in the Gwyneth Paltrow-led Austen adaptation Emma (1996) alongside her younger daughter, Sophie.
On television, Law turned up in some of British drama's most-watched prestige series: Waking the Dead, Rosemary & Thyme, Foyle's War, Doc Martin and Agatha Christie's Poirot. She had a recurring role as Aunt Auriel in the Stephen Fry lawyer comedy-drama Kingdom. Her final screen role came in the 2020 romance Then Came You, written by and starring Kathie Lee Gifford.
In 2013, Law and Emma Thompson received honorary doctorates together from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (BBC News). Four years earlier, Law had told The Telegraph that she wanted her funeral held in the afternoon, with "curtain up" at 2.30pm, so that people could get to the theatre afterwards (The Telegraph).
She is survived by Emma and Sophie.
