Kristin Scott Thomas

Kristin Scott Thomas
Scott Thomas at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	Kristin A. Scott Thomas 24 May 1960 (1960-05-24) (age 49) Redruth, Cornwall, England
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1984 – present
Spouse(s)	François Olivennes (1987–2005)

Kristin A. Scott Thomas,¹ OBE (born 24 May 1960) is a British actress. She gained international recognition in the 1990s for her roles in Bitter Moon; Four Weddings and a Funeral and The English Patient.

She has recently gravitated toward French cinema in works such as the thriller Tell No One and Philippe Claudel's two-time Golden Globe-nominated I've Loved You So Long, said to be the greatest performance of her career. She has lived in France since she was nineteen, has raised her three children in Paris, and considers herself French. She has been a member of the Legion d'honneur since 2005.

Early life

Scott Thomas was born in Redruth, Cornwall. Her mother, Deborah (née Hurlbatt), was raised in Hong Kong and Africa, and studied drama before marrying Scott Thomas' father.² Her father, Lieutenant Commander Simon Scott Thomas, was a pilot for the British Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm who died in a flying accident in 1964.³⁴⁵ She is the older sister of actress Serena Scott Thomas, the niece of Admiral Sir Richard Thomas (who was a Black Rod in the House of Lords), and a more distant grand niece of Capt. Robert F. Scott, the ill-fated explorer who lost the race to the South Pole.

Scott Thomas' childhood home was Dorset, England. Her mother remarried, to another Royal Navy pilot, who also died in a flying accident six years after the death of her father. Scott Thomas was educated at the private schools, Cheltenham Ladies' College and St. Antony's Leweston School for Girls, in Dorset, and on graduation, she moved to Hampstead, London, and worked in a department store. She then began training to be a drama teacher at the Central School of Speech and Drama. On being told she would never be a good enough actress, she left at the age of 19 to work as an au pair in Paris.⁶ Speaking French fluently, she studied acting at the École nationale supérieure des arts et techniques du théâtre (ENSATT) in Paris, and at age 25 on graduation, was cast opposite pop star Prince as Mary Sharon, a French heiress, in the 1986 film Under The Cherry Moon. On his 2009 3-CD set LOTUSFLOW3R, the album MPLSoUND has a song titled "Better With Time", which Prince has said is an ode to Kristin.

Career

Thomas is perhaps best-known for her central role as an unfaithful wife in The English Patient, one of the biggest screen hits of 1996. During the 1990s, she also appeared opposite Hugh Grant in Bitter Moon and the global box office success Four Weddings and a Funeral. She has also appeared on TV (in the 2003 Book Clubbin' episode of Absolutely Fabulous, she played a character called Plum Berkeley) and in the theatre.

She was awarded an OBE in the 2003 Queen's Birthday Honours list, and was also awarded the Légion d'honneur by the French government in 2005.

Scott Thomas is a frequent subject on the British motoring programme Top Gear. She was used as a standard of reference for "good taste," such as during the "Cool Wall" segment of the programme. Presenter Jeremy Clarkson would rate a car's coolness based mostly on what he thinks Scott Thomas' level of distaste for it would be. She made her long-awaited appearance as the "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car" on the episode broadcast on 25 February 2007. On this episode, amid excessive kowtowing from Clarkson and joking from Richard Hammond and James May because Clarkson has shown much affection for her in the past, she proceeded to rubbish most of the decisions Clarkson had made over the past years of the Cool Wall. She also ridiculed the car that he had just ordered, a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder. She completed her lap in a time of 1min 54secs, placing her just above Phillip Glenister, although still near the bottom of the leaderboard.

In early 2007, she played Arkadina in a London production of Chekhov's The Seagull, for which she won a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress on 9 March 2008.⁷ She reprised the role in New York in September 2008.⁸

In 2006, she played the lead role of Hélène, in French, in Ne le dis à personne (Tell No One), by French director Guillaume Canet. In 2008, Scott Thomas received a large amount of accolades for her performance in another French film called Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (I've Loved You So Long), including BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress.

In 2008 Scott Thomas took on the little exposed role of Anne Boleyn's mother Elizabeth in The Other Boleyn Girl movie.

In 2009, she played the role of a fashion magazine creator and editor in the film Confessions of a Shopaholic.

Personal life

Scott Thomas is divorced from French gynaecologist François Olivennes, by whom she has three children: Hannah (born in 1988), Joseph (1991), and George (2000). They had been together 18 years. She supposedly had a brief romance with Prince while making 1986's, Under The Cherry Moon.^{citation needed}

The separation was reportedly precipitated by her romantic involvement with English actor Tobias Menzies, whom she met while appearing in Chekhov's play Three Sisters in London's West End.⁹ Menzies was also her costar in a London production of Pirandello's As You Desire Me in 2006.¹⁰

Her relationship with Menzies now over, she lives in Paris with her two younger children, and counts Charlotte Rampling, Gérard Depardieu, Jane Birkin,⁶ and her English Patient costars Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes⁹ among her closest friends.

Filmography

Theatre

• La Lune déclinante sur 4 ou 5 personnes qui dansent (1983, Festival de Semur en Auxois)
• Terre étrangère (1984, Théâtre des Amandiers de Nanterre)
• Naïves Hirondelles (1984, Festival d'Avignon)
• Yes, peut-être (1985, in a field in Burgundy)
• Bérénice (2001, Festival de Perpignan and Festival d'Avignon + national tour)
• Three Sisters (2003, Playhouse Theatre, London) ... Masha
• As You Desire Me (2005–06, Playhouse Theatre, London) ... Elma
• The Seagull (2007, Royal Court Theatre, London) ... Arkadina

• Laurence Olivier Awards Best Actress — The Seagull

Quotes

• I never go straight to the point if I can go the most difficult way. Why be simple when you can be complicated? - (Graham Fuller, The Cover Interview: Kristin Scott Thomas, originally published in Interview Magazine, November 1996)

References

External links

• Kristin Scott Thomas at the Internet Movie Database
• Ryan Gilbey, "The three stages of Kristin", interview, The Guardian, 27 July 2007
• Mark Anstead, "Kristin Scott Thomas: The Ice Maiden thaws", interview, Daily Mail, 8 June 2007
• Louise France, "I'm 47. Unlike most actresses I don't lie about my age" Interview, The Guardian, 3 February 2008

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia