The Charlie Rose Show
Transcript by David McGill
Introduction - first film Under the Cherry Moon, epitome of British Restraint, career change with The English Patient, good reviews, probable Oscar, etc etc.
Charlie Rose: Welcome.
Kristin Scott Thomas: Thank you.
CR: Let's just jump into the movie to start with, you read the book when?
KST: I read the book in Romania.
CR: You were making a film in Romania?
KST: I was making a film in Romania, a film with a very interesting director called Lucian Pintile, he made The Oak, that was a really great film. Anyway, I was making that film there, and desperate for all things exotic and warm and, I don't know ・ opposite to Romanian. I read the book, and I got to the end, and was so devastated at having no more pages to turn that I just went back to the beginning, and I did this three times.
CR: You read it three times?
KST: I read it three times.
CR: And Katherine said what to you?
KST: Katherine said ...Katherine wasn't really why I loved it so much. Why I loved it so much was because of the imagery, and it was really Hanna and Kip.
CR: That affair.
KST: Yeah. Because Katherine in the book I find that she is sort of ghostly, and not really there.
CR: [something illegible to me].
KST: But no, she has a really strong passion and a really, what's the word, she's really vibrant in the book, but she's not really there, or perhaps I didn't see her.
CR: Then why Katherine.
KST: Because then I read the screenplay, and what Anthony has done in his adaptation was to make a brother or sister to the book rather than an adaptation of it, because he has altered things. And he brought out from the dark, he brought out from a sort of dream world Katherine Clifton, and suddenly she was there, you know, on the page. And that's why I thought I must do the film. Because I just wanted to be a part of it, I didn't know how I could possibly be involved in the film. I wasn't right for Hanna, what could I do? And then there was Katherine.
CR: Tell me about Katherine. How did you see her, and how did you change as you began to prepare for the role.
KST: That's such a difficult question for me to answer, because I saw Katherine... I don't know how I changed, at all, I don't know how I got to where I was. All I seemed to be doing, as far as I was concerned, was saying the words, and saying the words in the right environment, with the right clothes, with the right person answering me, and the right person pushing me onto the stage. It was as simple as that. There was quite a long process of actually getting to the first day of shooting, I read a bit about the desert, not much, a bit about women in the desert and women of that period, and I just felt I wanted to play someone who just 'opens up', who is just open and assured and confident and funny and 'up'.
CR: And wanted everything.
KST: And wanted everything. That's the only thing I have in common with her [laughs].
CR: You want everything?
KST: Mmm. Well you try. I thing most people do, don't they? They just don't admit it.
CR: But you've got most of it, don't you. You live in Paris, you have two kids. You have a role that has catapaulted you to where you'd like to be.
KST: Yeah. I've not finished, I've got lots more things to do.
CR: Why has this film captured such... other than the performances, and other than the direction... Jane Maslin and all the film critics unanimously, unanimously when they looked at films for 1996 selected it as number one.
KST: I just that that's it's a good story - the book was the same, well the book did it for me anyway - there's something so intimate about the writing, and through the writing that became the screenplay and that became what we say to each other i.e. the action that happens on the screen and I think that's its so... it touches everybody, there isn't one person. When you go to the film, everybody has different moments in the film when they just think [opens eyes wide]. Moments of enlightenment, and that's when "he's talking to me, he's talking to me, about me and my life". And there is something sort of intimate but that just applies to everybody. It's extraordinary, the subject, and then of course it's so beautiful, and I think we really need that kind of beauty to be reminded about...
CR: A small intimate story, set against a larger background. [Introduces dance scene clip from The English Patient].
CR: He's attracted to her because, why?
KST: I think its because she's the only one who actually dares tease him like that, and see through him and see the child that is standing there. This child that is stomping through the desert collecting things to stick in his book. And I think that he just can't... I think he is probably a terrible playboy when he gets to Cairo, I mean this I get from the book that he hung around in bars and things like this, and so this woman who is so unattainable because she is married to somebody else, because she is sort of glamorous and comes from England where everything is, sort of, organised.
CR: And in the end the act of betrayal is, unacceptable?
KST: I thing it is more than unacceptable...
CR: Unimaginable?
KST: Yeah, she just cannot, she is physically incapable of coping with it. I think she just feels completely... She is the sort of person who would always be able to find her centre, find her balance, and then this thing that happens to her and she gets drawn, irresistably drawn to this man, sets her off balance and she just can't bear it. And the love for her husband is something that is so strong and has been there for ever, she has always known this man.
CR: I assume to make these things work there has got to be some kind of 'chemistry'. I mean you and Ralph had something, Anthony said that he saw you like two thoroughbreads, as you peeled away layers there were always more, unrestrained and all of that, and it was like these two people, in the end...
KST: I think that the thing that made it work for Ralph and me, and I think all the other people in the cast as well, was that we were both passionately in love with the story, and these characters, and that I so wanted to be Katherine Clifton, and that he so wanted to be Almasy that we were completely locked into this little...
CR: 'To be' meaning what? You mean that you wanted to make sure that you fully fulfilled the potential that is there?
KST: Exactly. And that it could be seen to be, that the end result, that what we were going to give the director and the editor to put together was going to make the characters that we would want to see.
CR: Is this the film experience that you have always dreamed that film making would be about?
KST: Yes, sometimes it's like this. It's been like this a couple of times.
CR: Where else?
KST: Um, well this Romanian film that I made.
CR: Where you spoke some Romanian?
KST: I spoke all Romanian. Learnt like a parrot. Not really particularly good [said shyly, Kristin being modest here]. And I think also in Angels and Insects there were some times like that which were, you just felt that the piece was just flying. It's to do with the director, and to do with your partners, and how much you all want to do the same thing, and how much you are prepared to tell the story as honestly as you can.
CR: Here is another scene from The English Patient, take a look [scene in interior of car during sandstorm - yes, yes, absolutely].
CR: That scene, what was funny about that?
KST: Well, that was a scene that we did for the audition, I remember sitting there on this bench thing in this office, and starting off the scene saying " this isn¨t very good is it", and Ralph looks at me and says "it is, you're doing fine!". And I was so angry! Because I was doing the scene, you know, I was acting, "this isn't very good is it" and he thought that I was being insecure about what I was doing, so I felt that he must have thought that it wasn't very good - very complicated!
CR: He was reassuring you.
KST: He was reassuring me or something terrible.
CR: She represents freedom, she really does represent somebody who...
KST: I think she represents freedom simply because she is so sure of her own needs and her own, where she is and who she is, that she can just about do anything she likes because she has this balance and she will always come back to centre. So she can really do what she likes and say what she likes.
CR: And she assumes she can always come back and there will always be a place for her, because she is so... something
KST: Because she is so... something. I haven't quite found the word yet [smirks].
[CR introduces the bathtub/sewing scene].
CR: About you, when you were growing up in England, you knew that you wanted to be an actress when?
KST: Well, it sounds awful, but I can't... I've always wanted to be an actress, I can't think of a time when I didn't want to be an actress.
CR: Why?
KST: I dunno, I suppose its just showing off.
CR: Was there somebody on the screen that you said "that's who I want to be, that's what I want to do"?
KST: I don't, I don't know [pause] I don't know, I really don't know [sighs]. I was brought up on sort of tv and terrible sitcoms about children running away from home or getting horses, I don't know, and all these sort of things seemed so wonderful and, you know, I was always, as a child I used to write stories about other people a lot of the time so I don't know, maybe...
CR: You had an imagination.
KST: [laughing] I had a bit of an imagination, yeah.
CR: And then at 17 or 18 you moved to Paris.
KST: Yeah. People say to me often "what a brave thing to do", I thing actually it was rather a cowardly thing to do.
CR: This was because you had been rejected in some way?
KST: Well, I had wanted to be an actress and never really dared tell anyone about it, never really dared admit that I wanted to be an acress. And then I managed to get myself into a drama school where I was doing a teaching course - I was miserable. I didn't want to be a teacher at all, but I had managed to persuade them that I did so they gave me this place and I was miserable there. And it was so difficult for me to be among all these peope who were actually trying to become actors, and I just thought "no, I can't be here any more" so I went off to Paris to sulk and then I just stayed.
CR: And what was the break, you got married?
KST: Well, I got married 10 years ago this year, but I think my first big break was, well it was, was when Prince found me for um...
CR: How did he find you?
KST: Well that was because he was making a film in the south of France and he was casting to find young girls to play the 'young girls' and I turned up and...
CR: You had the look.
KST: Yeah, I had the look that he wanted and he said "well, have you considered, would you like to read for the lead" and I said "well, yeah" [laughter]. So I did and that was that, suddenly I was being whisked off to the south of France in limousines and having manicures and things. I had never even stayed in a hotel before that, so it was all very very new and...
CR: And you were what, 20?
KST: I was 22 or something, 23 or something like that. [well, it is a women's perogative to lie about her age!! ].
CR: Have you stayed friends with him?
KST: Yeah.
CR: Really?
KST: Yeah.
CR: So you have gone through all the permutations in his life.
KST: Well I haven't a clue, I don't know what to call him.
CR: Yeah, what's his name today.
KST: I just sort of grunt, I just kind of grunt when I say, on the phone...
CR: But you became friends and stayed friends.
KST: Yeah.
CR: There is about you an extraoardinary, but not just, ambition, almost like Katherine, to do everything. Yet at the same time there is something else there, the ambition is not all .
KST: I think it depends what you call ambition. There is an ambition to be an important actress and there is this ambition to be someone who stays at home and looks after the children. I mean there are these two things and it is all a question of keeping them in balance. It's juggling, I'm a juggler, I'm not really an actor.
CR: Angels and Insects, what did that do?
KST: I loved making that picture, I think it was one of the best experiences I have had working on a film, working with a director, very closely with a director, working very closely with the other actors, and we were really a group making that film and that really gave me a taste of what it is like to work as a group and that's what we found when we made English Patient as well. Everybody worked in the same direction at the same time, it's a really great film. I loved that character dearly, she is one of my favourites, my favourite characters. I love Antonia Byatt's world, it's sort of dark and detailed, and the strange things that she writes about like the wrists, and all these things that I found again in Michael Ondaatje's writing, this interest with odd parts of the body, and strange imagery that I really loved.
[CR introduces the scene where Mattie lets down her hair in Angels and Insects].
CR: What about the actor?
KST: Mark Rylance, he is a theatre actor, and I think the director is the right word, the director of the Globe Theatre, in London.
CR: And he might not make another film?
KST: I don't know, I mean he might take a long time to make another one, I think. He found it a very frustrating experience.
CR: Because he wasn't in control?
KST: No, I think it was because he didn't find that there was enough time, he is very very detailed. But he is an extraordinary actor.
CR: You have no idea what you would do if you weren't an actor, no idea.
KST: No, I'm afraid not [smiles]. It's terribly sad, isn't it. I think the more I work on film the more I love it and the more I think that if I had to stop being an actress for x reasons I would like to do something in film. I would love to be an editor, I think that's where it all happens actually.
[CR introduces clip from Four Weddings and a Funeral, saying that most people cannot comprehend why Hugh Grant character did not choose Kristin's character in the film. The scene is the one where Fiona introduces herself to Rowan Atkinson's trainee priest Has anyone else ever said the word 'condom' with such panache as she does in this scene? I doubt it]
CR: You haven't seen that in a long time.
KST: No.
CR: What fim did you miss that you very much felt was just perfect for you?
KST: That's such a funny question. My answer is that the ones you miss you forget very quickly [laughs].
CR: There are no obvious ones?
KST: None that spring to mind, I'm sure there will be.
CR: Katherine would have been there.
KST: Oh Katherine. It would have been impossible. I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't been able to do Katherine. I really don't, I thing I might have really gone and done something really, done a sitcom or something. It would have been completely different, I would have taken a complete U-turn if I had lost that part.
CR: How hard for you was it because of you experience with you father and stepfather to be there...?
KST: Um, it was very hard.
CR: Your father and stapfather were both pilots who...
KST: Yeah, but I knew that that was one of the reasons that the book appealed to me, part of its attraction, I mean obviously it was 'pressing all the right buttons' and I really didn't think about how that was going to affect me when we were shooting because I thought "come on, you are a professional, you are grown up now", you know all that sort of thing. And really, actually having to be in the plane that crashed, I found that terribly difficult But I think the worst thing that I had to shoot was, I think, surprisingly enough waa dying - I thought dying in the movies would be really easy, I mean it happens such a lot, you know, lots of people die in the movies. And that was really terrible to do, not so much dying, it was sustaining the hope that he was going to come back and fetch me, and that I found really hard. That was a real 'go home and blub'.
CR: [could not properly hear the question]
KST: To play somebody like Katherine, with so much, um, who is so self revealing. I mean, the other characters I have played, like Fiona in Four Weddings and Matty in Angels and Insects have all been characters who have been hiding behind things and sort of keeping everything under wraps until, at a given moment, they will suddenly reveal all and the secrets that they have been hiding for so many years will be released. But Katherine is not like that at all, she comes out with everything showing, all guns firing, she is there. And to be able to play that self-confidence and kind of openness somehow I had to get to that myself.
CR: What's next?
KST: I don't know. I'm keeping things sort of open, I'm driving everybody mad I know.
CR: Agents, friends...
KST: Mmm...
CR: People who are waiting on you to make decisions...
KST: I just want to go very gently now.
CR: Is it important for you now to choose extremely well?
KST: It's very important for me to choose extremely well. Because now I've made this film, and its getting to be... people are loving it and, it's so good, I can't tell you how many times I've made a picture - this Romanian film for example, which is a tiny little film, and it's so sad when people don't go and see it, you know, because I believed in it, and now I really belived in The English patient, and it's like, we all did, and here is the film that we thought we were making which is working and its just been brilliant, and I want to do it again [chuckles].
CR: Find another one.
KST: Yeah, find another one that I believe in and that will work.
CR: What do you fear?
KST: [long pause] I fear, um, I don't know, mediocrity I suppose, but even admitting that is...
CR: Because the bar is higher.
KST: Because the bar is higher.
CR: More is expected.
KST: More is expected, and more is expected by other people and more is demanded.
CR: They demand more of you.
KST: Yes.
CR: Thank you.
KST: Not at all.
