Four years ago she was aboard a pink boat blocking traffic in Oxford Circus as part of a climate change protest by Extinction Rebellion.

But actress and self-proclaimed eco-activist Dame Emma Thompson’s latest vessel is distinctly more luxurious – a £200million superyacht in Venice.

The elegant craft is owned by billionaire Fox News co-founder Barry Diller and his wife, the Belgian fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg.

Dame Emma, 64, was spotted having an animated phone conversation on the deck of the yacht, wearing a £225 animal print coat from Alexa Chung.

The Oscar-winner was also seen enjoying a seafood dinner on the 305ft mega-yacht, called Eos after the Greek goddess of the dawn. It was once the largest superyacht, before Amazon founder Jeff Bezos purchased one for £500million.

Joining Dame Emma on board Eos were American celebrities including TV journalist Diane Sawyer and Candice Bergen, star of films including Miss Congeniality and Sweet Home Alabama.

Also living it up all week on the vessel have been the likes of Barry Diller and his wife of over 20 years Diane von Furstenberg, Mujen Spirits co-founder Bruce Bozzi and movie producer Jason Blum.

Dame Emma is in Italy to attend the Diana Von Furstenberg [DVF] awards, which ‘recognise and support extraordinary women who are dedicated to transforming the lives of other women’. 

The actress is nominated alongside human rights lawyer Amal Clooney. The 80th Venice International Film Festival is also taking place.

After her time on the superyacht, Dame Emma hopped aboard a smaller, but no less flashy, speedboat to ride along Venice’s canals for lunch and a meeting before the DVF awards ceremony.

It was certainly a change from the time she spent on the pink climate change boat in 2019. And it felt a long way from her activism days when she even read out a mock weather forecast telling the public that the world was heading for a ‘long-lasting and irreversible change’.

She was later branded a hypocrite after it was discovered she racked up thousands of air miles when flying from Los Angeles to London to join the Extinction Rebellion demonstrators’ march. 

At the time, she defended her jet-setting lifestyle and insisted that she travels by air much less frequently now.

However, the actress and screenwriter has homes in England, Scotland and now Venice.

She and her husband, actor Greg Wise, have become honorary citizens of Venice after they fled England to their house in the city’s historic centre to spend the Covid pandemic in the Italian sun.

Despite owning a £3million house in Hampstead, north London, Dame Emma famously called England ‘a rainy corner of sort-of Europe, a cake-filled misery-laden grey old island’.

The Venice citizenship has no legal status and the couple retain their British passports but the city’s deputy mayor, Simone Venturini, declared the Italian property would be their main residence.

Her return to the city comes as the oldest film festival in the world kicked off on Wednesday – but it has been robbed of its glamour this year as stars are prohibited from promoting their films amid the US actors’ strikes.

It is unclear whether Dame Emma will attend the event but stars who do, such as Adam Driver, are refusing to dress up and are lashing out at streaming companies such as Amazon and Netflix for not entering negotiations with SAG AFTRA union members.