BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — If anyone did not expect to have a midlife crisis, it was Emma Thompson. Being quite sure about things has been a central organizing principle of her life. It has informed most every character she has played.

The kindly aristocrat in “Howards End.” The lovelorn housekeeper in “The Remains of the Day.” The bonneted sister of “Sense and Sensibility.” The batty Hogwarts professor, the warty Nanny McPhee, the fusspot creator of Mary Poppins, and the caustic television host in her new film, “Late Night,” due June 7. Even when they are tearfully coming apart, the characters share with Thompson an ironclad sense of self and of how things ought to be.

Time did not soften this Thompsonian resolve, or so it seemed. This year, after learning that John Lasseter, who lost his top job at Pixar and Disney for unwanted touching, was named head of the studio producing a film she was working on, Thompson publicly quit and flamed the studio, and Lasseter, in a scathing open letter. A few months before that, she showed up in white sneakers to her knighthood ceremony, which was led by Prince William. When the English press affected shock, Thompson shot back that the shoes were designed by Stella McCartney, thank you very much, and actually quite posh.

It came as a great surprise to Thompson, then, to suddenly find herself on uncertain ground occasioned by her 60th birthday in April. It was not that she balked at her age. Suggestions of “60 is the new 40!” make her eyes roll. “The denial of aging is unhealthy,” she sniffed in a recent chat. “It’s always been bollocks.” But she was flooded by discomfiting questions of her own about roles she had enthusiastically embraced throughout her life: as daughter, wife, mother, performer. She was still all of those things, but now she’s on the verge of being an empty nester.