Emma Thompson has recently been in the news, but for matters other than acting.
The two-time Oscar winner joined last month's Extinction Rebellion climate protest, adding her celebrity voice to the London sit-ins, the centrepiece of which was a pink tugboat.
She was immediately criticised for flying back from Los Angeles (a trip of over 5,400 miles (8690km)) to attend the event.
So does Thompson regret speaking out? Quite the contrary.
She tells Sky News: "I've stuck my head above the parapet since I was 19 and had s*** thrown at it since I was 19.
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Image: Thompson gestures as police surround the Extinction Rebellion pink tugboat in central London
"When it first happened, I was protesting the Gulf War at which point the press called me 'Saddam Hussein's best friend'. If you protest about anything, you have to be prepared for whatever slings and arrows."
The 60-year-old actress is currently playing the role of late-night talk show host Katherine Newbury – a character who is equally as fearless as Thompson herself.
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Unfortunately, this is a purely fictional scenario – in real life, there is no such thing.
Late-night US chat shows are a male-dominated affair, only briefly interrupted by Joan Rivers for a few years in the late '80s.
In the UK we don't tend to care for too much late-night chat full stop. And when we do (stand up Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton) it is again, a male-only gig.
Image: Emma Thompson (L) and Mindy Kaling (R) promoting Late Night in Las Vegas in April
The late Caroline Aherne's creation, The Mrs Merton Show, is a close contender, but of course she had to fictionalise her 70-year-old female host to make her palatable for mainstream TV.
Even in the fictional world of her new movie Late Night, a woman at the helm of her own show is a hard pill to swallow, and Thompson's Newbury quickly finds herself fighting for her job.
An up-and-coming, and somewhat misogynistic male stand-up artist is lined up to take her role.
In the film, it is this crisis point which reignites Newbury's passion for her job and teaches her to play to her own strengths.
The character is, as she summarises, "an English woman who's never watched a Superhero movie".
To help her save her job, her all-male, all-white writing team is shaken up with the addition of "diversity hire" Molly, played by Mindy Kaling, who also wrote the film.
So what is the reality of being a woman over 50, working in Hollywood?
Quite simply, Thompson is clear she is not. A woman working in Hollywood, that is.
Image: Thompson at the Extinction Rebellion protest in Marble Arch
"I've always lived in London… And I rarely work in Hollywood."
That aside, she admits she had a "real bald patch" in her 40s, where the only interesting roles she was offered were the ones she'd written herself.
"I got offered an awful lot of wives who were saying to their husbands, 'Don't go and do the brave thing, stay here with me'.
"So I said no to loads of that stuff. And I wasn't sex'cougar' – style roles. I wasn't ever going to get those. So, I was in between two stools.
"But once I turned 50, I started playing things like Robert Carlyle's serial killer mother who was 77. And I got that fantastic Saving Mr Banks."
She says the Disney role, playing Mary Poppins author P L Travers, was one of her favourite roles to date, alongside this one.
Both are strong women, who don't necessarily foster a smooth working relationship with their colleagues.
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Newbury is a woman who has reached the top of her game, but who is not an ally to her female colleagues down below.
So where does this propensity for women to hate other women come from? Or at the very least not go out of their way to help sisters in need?
Big Brother will return next year on ITV2 and online
Big Brother, one of the original UK reality TV shows, will return to screens in 2023, years after being axed by both Channel 4 and later Channel 5.
The show, which launched careers of ITV presenter Alison Hammond and Radio 1 DJ Adele Roberts, will be revived by ITV2 and new streaming platform ITVX.
A promotional video aired during the Love Island series finale on Monday evening.
Officials said the famous house will return with a “contemporary new look”.
The returning programme – which was originally on for 18 years – will see a cast of “carefully selected housemates from all walks of life” live together under strict surveillance for up to six weeks.
Similar to previous editions, the public will regularly vote contestants off in live evictions, as well as deciding on an overall cash prize winner.
“This refreshed, contemporary new series of Big Brother will contain all the familiar format points that kept viewers engaged and entertained the first time round, but with a brand new look and some additional twists that speak to today’s audience,” said Paul Mortimer, ITV2’s reality TV chief.
“We’re beyond excited to bring this iconic series to ITV2 and ITVX where it should especially engage with our younger viewers.”
The series, which takes its name from the all-seeing ruler in George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, first appeared on Channel 4 in 2000, and was won by Liverpudlian builder Craig Phillips.
It was influential, both as a public social experiment and also in creating a new form of celebrity, with normal people prepared to have their every waking (and sleeping) moment caught on camera and broadcast to the world.
Celebrity editions aired, featuring the likes of Katie Price, Gemma Collins and Mark Owen.
Despite its early success and influence, the National TV Award-winning programme soon found itself embroiled in controversy over reports of bullying, racism, fixing, and general toxic behaviour in the house, with complaints being made to both the police and Ofcom.
The show moved to Channel 5 in 2011 but was axed in 2018 amid a ratings slump. Channel 5 controller Ben Frow later said he had no regrets over the decision and that the media landscape had become “very crowded with reality shows”.
‘Jumping the shark’
Speaking on the BBC Sounds Podcast, Unreal: A Critical History of Reality TV, this summer, Big Brother’s creative director Philip Edgar-Jones said audiences “very clearly hated it” when producers intervened in the programme too much.
“We call it ‘jumping the shark’ in television, when you the hand of the producer is too overt and you feel like the show has therefore lost that sense of authenticity – that’s when the audience gets more angry.
“Being authentic to the show, you create this world with its own internal logic, and you can’t break that internal logic, otherwise you break the magic and you lose the trust of the audience.”
At the time, Big Brother producers said they were open to “future possibilities”, apparently leaving the door open for a return one day.
Irish singing duo Jedward, the identical twin brothers who twice appeared on the celebrity version of the show, have made an early bid online to host the returning series.
Kim Kardashian ‘wasn’t planning on’ a relationship with Pete Davidson
Kim Kardashian did not see loe coming with Pete Davidson.
In a conversation for Hoda Kotb’s “Making Space” podcast, Kardashian explained that she’d been single for about 10 months before she was ready to date again.
“I think that, you know, sometimes things happen when you just least expect it. It was the last thing that I was really planning on,” she said, “And so when it did happen, we were kind of, like, ‘Oh, my God, I wasn’t planning on this. And this isn’t even what I was thinking of,’ and it just makes it that much sweeter and so much more fun.”
In February 2021, Kardashian filed for divorce from Kanye West.
Kardashian and Davidson appeared in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch together last fall where they shared a kiss. They became Instagram official in March.
“I definitely took my time,” Kardashian said. “I took, you know, 10 months or something before I dated or talked to anyone. And I just wanted that time to really figure out and go through the motions: ‘Am I making the right decision? How do I feel about this?’ So once I went through all of the motions, I finally was, like, ‘OK, guys, I am so ready to meet someone.’ And I randomly did.”
Despite their very public relationship. Kardashian says she is keeping some aspects of her time with Davidson private.
“I do think that I am holding, you know, a little bit more close to my heart on certain aspects of my relationship with Pete, and it feels good just to know that, like, we have this connection and we have our little bubble of a relationship world that we live in that, like, not a lot of people know about,” she said.
For now, Kardashian said just being with Davidson puts a smile on her face.
“We were driving in the car yesterday and I just, like, looked at him and I was like, ‘Thank you.’ And he was like, ‘What?’ And I was like, ‘For running errands with me, like, this is so much fun just to, like, go to a doctor’s appointment or go to the dentist and just, like, run errands. I’m having so much fun.'”
Fast cars, martinis and Bond girls are core parts of the formula for 007 films, but one of those elements is set for a change in the latest adventure.
Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who is working on the script for the 25th Bond film, is on a mission to make sure the movie will "treat women properly" – even if the spy does not.
Image: Cast members (l-r): Lea Seydoux, Ana de Armas, Naomie Harris and Lashana Lynch at the launch of the new Bond film
Ahead of the release of the as-yet-untitled film, Waller-Bridge told Deadline: "There's been a lot of talk about whether or not (the Bond franchise) is relevant now because of who he is and the way he treats women.
"I think that's b*******. I think he's absolutely relevant now. It has just got to grow.
"It has just got to evolve, and the important thing is that the film treats the women properly.
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"He doesn't have to. He needs to be true to this character."
Image: The Bond films have been criticised for their sexism Image: Dr No featured the famous scene with Ursula Andress walking out of the sea in a white bikini
Waller-Bridge says she intends to ensure the female characters, including those played by Lashana Lynch, Lea Seydoux and Ana de Armas, feel "like real people ".
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She added: "I just want to make sure that when they get those pages through, that Lashana, Lea and Ana open them and go, 'I can't wait to do that'.
