Desert Hearts
Terry Richards
Since Four Weddings and a Funeral, Kristin Scott Thomas has been yearning for a film like The English Patient, the hot favourite for this year's Best Picture Oscar.
Nominated for no less than twelve Academy Awards, The English Patient is possibly the most important movie of 1997. It's an epic film of adventure and betrayal about four strangers whose lives become inextricably intertwined. It stars Ralph Fiennes as the English patient and Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, and Kristin Scott Thomas as Katharine Clifton, in probably the biggest role of her career.
The aristocratic air that Kristin Scott Thomas brings to films as diverse as Mission: Impossible and Four Weddings and a Funeral has often gone hand in hand with roles that, until now, have never allowed her characters to be happy. With writer and director Anthony Minghella's adaptation of Booker Prize-winning Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, all that has changed. And she couldn't be happier, for she practically lives and breathes the novel.
"I've read it masses of times," she enthuses. "Three times in a row because I loved it so much. I couldn't stop. And do you know the really funny thing? In the book, Madox [Julian Wadham] lives in this village called Marston Magna--and Marston Magna is about three miles from where I grew up as a child. It's where I went to Brownies for God's sake. It's sort of my next door village. There are lots of things through the book that say, 'This is about me!' Through the book, through the screenplay, there were things that I knew and felt connected to."
Her character is very different from the roles that have gone before.
"Katharine is a woman that every woman wants to be. She has class, education, beauty, humour, ease, confidence--all these things and you think, 'Why can't I be like that?'"
The grace with which Scott Thomas holds herself on the screen appears to give the lie to this. Yet she is insistent that she is quite removed from the supremely confident Katharine. "To be her for two months is the next best thing, but it's not the same at all," she argues. "When I'm being like that, it's because Anthony [Minghella] is pushing me into the shot, and I've been given these incredibly clever things to say. It's all pretend." She laughs cheekily, happy that she has played such a strong character. "It is great, though."
A significant part of the film is set in Cairo and the Sahara desert. Location filming took two months to complete and, although it doesn't sound like many people's idea of a good time, Scott Thomas acts as if she was playing in an adult-sized sandpit.
"I loved working in the desert. That was great fun," she smiles. "I think it was quire difficult for Anthony [Minghella] and Saul [Zaentz, producer] logistically. We filmed at the mouth of a cave where Ralph [Fiennes, who is the English patient with a mysterious past] takes Katharine, and we had to take all the equipment up and down every day. It was so cold and it got dark really early and, oh, that was quite hard. But the desert was great."
She seems to have a great time whatever she works on.
"Mission: Impossible was fun" [she played the doomed Sarah Davies]. "It was like being at school, but it was a completely different approach. I was very keen--and still am--to work with [Mission: Impossible's director] Brian de Palma. I love his films. I think he's a brilliant actor's director."
"I had so much fun on it. Yet it's so different from working on something that's so . . . introspective. Basically, we're doing the same thing. We're still pretending to be somebody else in another place and another time and another everything."
Scott Thomas is quite aware that The English Patient is far removed from the almost comic book world of Mission: Impossible.
"It's a completely different sort of pretending when you're doing something like The English Patient. It's soul-searching and there's a great deal of communication between the actors and the director. With Mission: Impossible, you waited for Brian and he told you what to do."
Scott Thomas's first taste of Hollywood came from working the the artist formerly known as Prince on the 1986 Under the Cherry Moon, which prepared her well for her film career.
"I did an audition for one of the small parts in the film," she explains, "and he just gave me the lead. It was a fairy tale. I didn't know what I wanted to do at the time. I hadn't a clue. I'm still not totally sure! It was very useful because I realized I didn't want to make films like that. I didn't want to go into that 'universe of show biz.'"
There were doubts that The English Patient would ever be made with Scott Thomas--especially when finance was withdrawn because Anthony Minghella and Saul were insistent that she played Katharine. Because it was a US-backed picture, a "bankable" actress was wanted, and the dispute over Scott Thomas's inclusion became pivotal.
After Miramax picked up the rights to the film, Scott Thomas's worries weren't over.
"It made it really scary to play the part because then I had to get it right," she confesses. "It was a huge responsibility and made me very nervous about it all. They'd risked so much to get me. No one was really sure whether it was going to happen or not. It wasn't until I was on the set with my hair dyed, my make-up on and my clothes on and the camera on me that I actually believed I was doing it. For a long time I kept thinking, 'I'm sure tomorrow I'm going to get that phone call and they're saying it's all off.'"
For Scott Thomas, The English Patient is nothing short of a dream come true.
"It was a feat for me to get the part, to actually have the experience of making it and go out there and be Katharine Clifton for two months," she insists.
"Instead of someone who's bitter and twisted and locked away in a corner and has this huge wall up in front of her--which is like a lot of the characters I've played up until now--it was really freeing to be able to play someone who is happy and at ease, open and confident."
