Propos de Kristin Scott-Thomas
Interview by Camille Nevers
(Translated by Malcolm Coupland)
I straight away found the screenplay for An Unforgettable Summer -- adapted from Petru Dumitriu's novel Salad -- very beautiful. But at that time I had engagements in the theatre which prevented me from doing the film. In spite of this, Marin Karmitz [producer] advised me to meet Lucian Pintilie [director]... Right off, he [L.P.] told me with great authority that I had to give up this play, and that I must do his film. This really spurred me on, the more so because he put it to me with that so charming manner of his, that winning look he always has, his incredible humour. Then I saw Le Chêne [The Oak]. I came out stunned, shattered, unable to speak a word. I went back to see Karmitz. I told him that Pintilie was right, and that I was annoyed that he was right, but that I wanted to make the film. I didn't do the play...
With each director, the first encounter is different. I was at once impressed by Pintilie, but I'd be charmed by the likes of Polanski [Bitter Moon], and Mocky [Agent trouble] made me laugh. It can also happen that I do some tests with a director and I instinctively tell myself that I can't work with him. The work needs the two of you, and of course it's best to begin with a shared view of the character. After that it's for me to develop her and for the director to bring his vision to bear. I'm asked sometimes whether the director gave me a free hand. But I have no wish to be given a free hand... I would take that as an abandonment. I don't feel myself capable of creating a character on my own, within this business that I don't control and never could control, which is making a film. All I can do is to provide the director and editor with the elements for them to put together. When shooting a film, the more the creative process happens through collaboration, the better. But an actor can never really know where the director wants to get to. You have to have trust, and when, as has sometimes happened, I haven't had that trust, it was dreadful. You completely flounder, I become extremely unpleasant. What's more, even when I do trust the director I think I'm very difficult. I'm a scrapper [bagarreuse]... With Pintilie this could occasionally go "wrong". "Wrong" in quotes, because actually he, as much me, loved that. It was stormy; that really pleases me. A few times the storm erupted; but fortunately so, because it seems to me that if I'd been meek and mild I wouldn't have been able to play the character as I played her. At certain moments my anger shows in the film. There's a strength, a tension in the character that I wouldn't have had if Pintilie hadn't manipulated me in that way, very consciously on his part. And I want to be manipulated. I'm still at the stage where I adore that... In a few years time maybe I'll have had enough of it, but... Really, it's very complicated, this side of sadism and masochism, or if you like, the demands and rigours of this kind of work. It's always very tricky to manage to talk about it. Pintilie is very impatient, he wants you straight away to get to what he's looking for -- without always saying what it is he's looking for. But these not exactly pleasurable moments are balanced by others, of intense delight. There were some lovely times when everything seemed to flow.
The further I am into a film, the more the character gets to be mine. Not me, but mine. So I want to protect her, as well as to play her. In defending myself I'm defending her. This "other" is like a sister, so to speak, or a very good friend. During the fairly lengthy period of the shooting of a film, I have to bring about the different elements that go to make a character without ever really knowing which moment will be selected at the editing stage. So you have to be able to produce as many things as possible. People have often noticed -- sometimes with disapproval, what's more -- that I never do the same thing twice. I play it differently on each take. Then I ask the director which he thinks he's likely to use, and depending on this, in the next shot of the same scene, I'll do different things to create a balance, so that the character develops. This requires a fairly good memory. It's practically an editing job on the character.
I still have difficulty sparing myself when acting. I have a tendency sometimes to take things too much to heart, to complicate my life. Here I remember the reply that Laurence Olivier gave to Dustin Hoffman who asked him how he worked: "I act". There you are: I act. Pretend. And to pretend something can be as powerful as to really live it. Really, for me, in this business of acting there's the same notion as in children's play. Children who are at that age where they play at "mums and dads" all the time. And it's exactly that: they really act it. That's the way that you have to tackle it, it seems to me. You pretend to be someone else, and that doesn't at all prevent the truth from breaking through. I find it very dangerous for actors to be asked (and it's happened to me) to live their character from the inside. For me, that's not it.
I'm not a chameleon. I don't contain an infinite number of people, I don't have characters concealed inside me demanding to be let out. I don't transform myself when I play a role. I lend parts of my personality, of my experience, of what I can see around me -- that, yes. Very often I'm asked to play the same type, the same kinds of characters; those very cold women, very haughty, very detached -- as in Four Weddings and a Funeral. And each time, I try to shake that ready-made image, to get into the role in my own way. It doesn't interest me to redo what I've already done -- it bores me.
I've been criticised for doing a bit of everything, everywhere. Perhaps things would be easier if I'd concentrated more on a single country, such as France, which is the one where I really would like to work. But for a few years now the demand here has pretty much dried up. Maybe this is because I'm a difficult person to "place", that people have difficulty seeing who I could represent. At the same time that I might want greater recognition, I don't want to give up that freedom that allows me to make a series for British television, then a film in Roumania, then an American film... But I'm not "bankable" -- a film isn't carried by my name. I'd like to be bankable and free (laughs...) No doubt that's impossible. I want the impossible. I'm not calculating, I don't try to make things happen, I wait for things to come along. I believe the big pitfall for an actor is to get into a thing where you become too self- conscious. I watch myself very closely, but away from what happens on screen. I don't watch my image but what I am. I think that's the best way to stay open and accessible. To have gone to Roumania to make a film and to come back affected by the country, the people, the encounters, seems to me just as vital as the portrayal of the character in the film.
