Gaia Wise, daughter of legendary actress Emma Thompson and actor and producer Greg Wise, seems to share her mum’s iconic sass. The 24-year-old recently shared the most Gen Z-coded reference to her mum’s ex-husband, Kenneth Branagh, on her Instagram Stories. Clearly, Thompson’s daughter was not feeling the “Kenergy”, sharing a meme showing a still from the 1993 film Much Ado About Nothing starring Thompson and Branagh, where Thompson’s Beatrice is “everything” and Branagh’s Benedick? “He’s just Ken.
” The former couple got married in 1989 and split in 1995 after the Murder on the Orient Express (2017) actor had an affair with Helena Bonham Carter. Gaia Wise, named after the Greek goddess known as the personification of Earth, clearly inherited her mum’s sense of humour – but what else do we know about her? What does Gaia Wise do for work? Wise followed her parents into the world of entertainment and has worked as a stage, screen and voice actress. She is best known for A Walk in the Woods (2015) and Last Chance Harvey (2008), both of which also starred her mum.
She made her theatre debut in 2015 at the English National Opera with Sweeney Todd , which starred Thompson as Mrs Lovett. Recently, Wise was cast as the English-language voice actress for Héra in the upcoming anime film, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim . “What I loved about Hèra is she’s fierce, she’s complex, she’s rebellious”, Wise told Entertainment Weekly about her upcoming role.
She was homeschooled {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"ImageObject","caption":"Gaia Wise at an event for MCM and Honey Dijon in June 2023. Photo: @gaiawise_/Instagram","url":"https://img.
i-scmp.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,format=auto/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/08/06/7adb1184-2497-4144-9aad-ed7601309e27_7390c88c.jpg"} Gaia Wise at an event for MCM and Honey Dijon in June 2023.
Photo: @gaiawise_/Instagram At 15, Wise revealed that she started homeschooling after her mum withdrew her from her public school because her peers at London’s Highgate School labelled her a “green hippy”, per British media. This was after Wise came back from a Greenpeace expedition to the Arctic Circle with her mother and started speaking out against climate change. Thompson said her daughter didn’t like the environment of a formal education that is much like a “sausage factory”, and she has “no argument with that”.
She struggled with anorexia In 2021, Wise opened up on Instagram about her battle with anorexia and her health journey to spread awareness and offer support to others who may be going through something similar. She called anorexia “the most deadly mental illness that exists in humans” and gave herself a pat on the back for her dedication to recovery. She also told The Sun that at one point her parents had gathered all those she loved most to stage an intervention.
“Anorexia makes you really good at gaslighting people, making it sound like they’re insane,” the young actress said. “My parents would say, ‘Gaia, we heard you working out at 3am.’ And I’d say, ‘No, you didn’t, it was just the house moving.
I was asleep.’” Wise eventually agreed to go to rehab in 2017 after her dad said to her during the intervention that he didn’t “know where my child is any more”, which she said she’ll always be grateful for because “it saved my life”. She is involved in breast cancer awareness {"@context":"https://schema.
org","@type":"ImageObject","caption":"Gaia Wise walks for a Pink Ribbon Foundation charity fashion show in 2023. Photo: @gaiawise_/Instagram","url":"https://img.i-scmp.
com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,format=auto/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/08/06/80808fe8-df58-406e-9116-f81ebf65cce5_7390c88c.jpg"} Gaia Wise walks for a Pink Ribbon Foundation charity fashion show in 2023. Photo: @gaiawise_/Instagram On top of being a climate change advocate, Wise is the ambassador of the Pink Ribbon Foundation, which supports those affected by breast cancer.
In 2023, she designed a clothing collection with her stylist bestie Steve Vyse for the foundation under the label Mad Love London, the profits of which supported those who are battling the disease. Perhaps Wise’s devotion to bringing attention and help to this cause is because she had watched her beloved aunt, Clare Wise, battle breast cancer and later die from bone cancer. It was a traumatic experience that Wise told The Sun contributed to her anorexia.
Who is Gaia Wise dating? Wise is reportedly dating The Witcher actor Basil Eidenbenz. They were first linked in 2022 when they were pictured showing PDA at the opening night of Tango After Dark at the Peacock Theatre in London. Eidenbenz is 31 and was born in Zurich, Switzerland.
He was still appearing in cute pics posted by Wise to her Instagram earlier this year, so it seems the adorable couple is still going strong. The actress shared a snarky dig at her mum’s ex Kenneth Branagh, a meme with the Barbie movie quote ‘he’s just Ken’; he had an affair with The Crown star Helena Bonham Carter while married to Thompson She’s a vocal advocate for issues such as climate change and breast cancer awareness, which can be traced back to her upbringing that included Greenpeace expeditions and losing a loved one to cancer.
