Emma Thompson says Kenneth Branagh's infidelity fueled Love Actually performance

In the 2003 film Love Actually, our hearts broke for Emma Thompson's character Karen whose husband (played by Alan Rickman) was having a poorly hidden affair with his assistant. In one scene (shown above), Karen dissolves into tears after realizing a necklace she'd found in his coat pocket prior to Christmas was actually meant for another woman.

Recently, Thompson revealed that she pulled from personal strife to draw out the necessary emotion.

"That scene where my character is standing by the bed crying is so well known because it's something everyone's been through," Thompson said at a fundraiser for the Tricycle Theatre in North West London on Sunday, according to the Telegraph.

The Sense and Sensibility actress fell in love with her first husband Kenneth Branagh on the set of the 1987 BBC drama Fortunes of War. They married in 1989 and went on to star in films such as Peter's Friends, Dead Again, and Much Ado About Nothing together. Unfortunately, their love story came to an end in 1995 when Branagh began an affair with Helena Bonham Carter, whom he'd met while filming Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

"I've had so much bloody practice at crying in a bedroom, then having to go out and be cheerful, gathering up the pieces of my heart and putting them in a drawer," Thompson told the Telegraph.

The now 58-year-old actress has since married Greg Wise (The Crown) and had two children. As for her feelings about the once "other woman"? Thompson says she and Bonham Carter have moved beyond the ugliness.

"That is… all blood under the bridge. You can't hold on to anything like that. It's pointless. I haven't got the energy for it… Helena and I made our peace years and years ago… she's a wonderful woman," she said.