Kristin Scott Thomas is a brilliant actress.
I hope she is finally getting her due.
Although I hated 'The English Patient', which I consider one of the worst movies ever made, I did see that her future acting would probably suck me in. She did. Her new film 'Easy Virtue' begins it's role out this week. And that Colin Firth is in it makes it a double pleasure for me.
NY Daily News 5/17/2009
Kristin Scott Thomas is the quintessential English beauty: chisel-cheeked, pale-skinned with a brittle wit and cut-glass vowels. It's ironic, then, that she has lived in France for the last 30 years, and considers herself as much French as British. She zigzags between Hollywood movies ("Gosford Park," "Mission: Impossible" and her Oscar-nominated role in "The English Patient") and French-language films like last year's "I've Loved You So Long."
Scott Thomas is back acting in English in her latest comedy, an update of the Noel Coward classic "Easy Virtue," opening Friday. She plays a British matriarch determined to drive away a brash American (Jessica Biel) who has married her only son.
You filmed "Easy Virtue" on location in three real English stately homes.
There was one that had the most fantastic - what do you call it? - glasshouse. It's the most extraordinary place, in really bad shape, with very little central heating. It was just like the book: in disrepair, freezing cold. It was perfect for playing the character of the house in the film.
Did you all have to stay on site for Method acting?
Oh no, we stayed in a perfectly ordinary hotel. But at least then we got hot water and warm beds.
Jessica Biel, Colin Firth and Ben Barnes all sing on the soundtrack of "Easy Virtue." But no sign of you - why not? Are you tone deaf?
I don't know why. I think I wasn't available. I've been incredibly busy doing one film after another and haven't had any downtime. Actually, I'm going to be doing [Stephen Sondheim's] "A Little Night Music" in Paris in the spring in English. In Paris, it's treated as an opera - they've never done anything like this before, as they don't go in for musical theater at all.
You've lived in France since moving there as an au pair after finishing school 30 years ago. How did that happen?
I didn't really know what to do at all. I had secretarial experience, I typed a few letters, that kind of thing. Then I needed somewhere to stay, and fell into working as an au pair. I loved it. In fact, the other day I bumped into the girl I looked after and she now has three kids.
When you act in French, after all this time, do you still have an exotic accent?
Yes, some of my vowels are a bit funny. But in France, people are so used to having foreign actresses - Italian, German - that they don't mind at all. If you have a foreign accent, they don't only give you the part as the baddie, as is so much the case in Anglo-Saxon films.
Your movie debut was as a topless French socialite in Prince's notorious bomb "Under the Cherry Moon" in 1986. How was that?
People just hated the film. It was a real baptism of fire as far as I'm concerned. I got the reviews you dread. From then on, I thought, "I'm never going to read reviews of the theater I do and only read reviews about films I don't really mind about."
Have you kept in touch with Prince? I read that the song "Better With Time," on his last album, was an ode to you.
If it's true, it's fantastic. He came to see "The Seagull" [when Scott Thomas was acting on Broadway last year] and was completely wowed by it. A lot of people knew what we were doing and he just turned up. He is incredibly intelligent and talented - if he's written a song for me, it's just the most wonderful present. He's just brilliant, brilliant, brilliant at what he does. What's really great about getting older is that down the road you meet people you haven't seen for a long time and they're still doing something you really admire.
Speaking of age, you turn 49 next week. You're famously candid about aging, especially for an actress.
They did tell me to shut up a long time ago: "You mustn't say you're 35, say you're 30." I thought, "This is ridiculous! Why should I?" In English and American cinema, people my age are immediately categorized into either campy, kind of clowny middle-aged women making them appear much older than they really do look or you're playing someone's grandmother. In Europe, we have this fantastic tradition of really enjoying women over 40, of that not being a taboo at all - people like Catherine Deneuve. Look at [Pedro] Almodóvar, the way he films women with such care and affection. The filmmakers here just love women who've been around a bit longer, they make those wrinkles look beautiful. In English or American films, they just want you to be old and shut up.
Every time you're interviewed, it seems that you're described with some word like haughty, frosty or aristocratic. But you don't seem that way to me.
"Ice queen" is the one they always seem to pick. I think it's the parts you play. Once people have worked with me they know I'm not frosty at all. The parts I play? Someone's gotta do them.
But your breakout role was far from icy. In "Four Weddings and a Funeral," you played the lovelorn Fiona, who ended up marrying Prince Charles. Have you ever discussed that with him?
I met him the day before yesterday for the first time! And no, there was none of that. It was a rather sad occasion that we met. And [the film] was such a long time ago, I think he's forgotten completely.
BY MARK ELLWOOD: NY Daily News 5/17'2009
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