IN new comedy caper The Love Punch, Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan play a former husband and wife who grudgingly join forces to recover their stolen retirement fund.

As their adventure gathers pace, the at-odds pair begin to rediscover the qualities they loved about each other before their marriage crumbled.

Thompson has been happily married to actor Greg Wise since 2003, but the film got her thinking about whether couples should "take a kind of sabbatical" every so often.

"It's actually not a bad idea to say, 'OK, just for a year, you need to go off'," she says.

"Not be with other people - I think that's very difficult, all that free love stuff which has been tried and tested and proven to be very, very tricky.

"But it's interesting that two people who know each other very well come back together again and love each other in a different way, a better way."

Wise needn't start packing his bags just yet, as the frank and forthright star quickly clarifies: "I'm not talking about myself. I'm talking in general about long-term relationships."

Time apart clearly seems to have worked for Thompson and Brosnan's Love Punch characters, Kate and Richard. After heading to France to steal a diamond worth $10million from the financier who has defrauded them, they end up bonding again over dodgy disguises, boozy dinners and a car chase down an alarmingly steep set of steps in Paris.

Most Oscar-winning actresses would happily pass driving duties to a stunt double, but the decidedly unstarry Thompson insisted on getting behind the wheel.

"I was just having too good a time. Each time we did it, I drove up another of the steps so instead of being three steps up, we'd be four steps up.

"The angle got more acute, and Pierce's terror became more apparent, which of course made me want to go further," she recalls with relish.

"It made me want to do more of that kind of thing. I really enjoyed the dare­devilness of it, and being allowed to do something that's illegal."

Thompson also took control during a kissing scene with former Bond star, Brosnan. "I just messed up in various ways as many times as I possibly could," she jokes. "He said, 'Have I been kissing you all day?' And I said, 'Yeaaahhh'."

The four-time Oscar nominee probably won't be adding a third Academy Award to her trophy cabinet with the light-hearted movie, but you get the feeling she loved every minute of filming, from waddling around in a scuba-diving suit to getting hit over the head during a volleyball match.

"I am basically a clown," she admits. "If I could wear a red nose all day, every day, I would."

Pratfalls and painful wetsuits aside, Thompson glows throughout the film, and in the flesh, looks younger than her 55 years in a chic black and navy blouse and black wide-legged trousers.

It's little wonder she was signed up as one of the stars of Marks & Spencer's latest ad campaign, modelling alongside Annie Lennox and Rita Ora.