Kristin's English Patience Pays Off
Martyn Palmer
For a quarter of a century Kristin Scott Thomas nursed a secret passion for Robert Redford, but when she finally got to act alongside him, that famous English coolness deserted her. Martyn Palmer finds out why.
Kristin Scott Thomas is the epitome of English reserve. She's made
a career of playing ice-cool beauties - elegant, unflappable women with
every part of their personaliy under control. But under that beautiful
calm exterior there beats the wild, passionate heart of a teenager in
love. The object of her affections is none other than Robert Redford. She
fell for him as a shy teenager - looking up to her idol on the big screen
in The Great Gatsby and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Now, a quarter of a century later, Kristin's English patience has finally
paid off. The Hollywood legend asker for her to be his co-star in the new
movie The Horse Whisperer. "I remember looking at the screen
as a teenager and thinking, 'one day Robert Redford and I will
elope'," Kristin laughs. "And there you are, years later, in
his arms for real. What can I say abaout him? He was great, extraordinary
really."
Redford, 61, must have been faintly surprised at their first meeting. All
Kristin's self-confidence flew out the window at the mere sight of her
hero. "If you're any woman, when you first meet Mr Redford you grin
a lot and go goofy," she says. "I turned into this dithering
female for a few minutes and I almost blurted out that, as a little girl,
I had fallen in love with him when I saw Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid. But I retained my composure and common sense in
time." Redford was obviously equally impressed by Kristin. It was
her he wanted from the ranks of Hollywood's stars for the coveted role of
Annie MacLean. At 38, Kristin is highly sought after thanks to
performances in movies including Four Weddings and a Funeral and
The English Patient, which won her an Oscar nomination for Best
Actress. Now she is all set to win further honours with Redford's new
film. The Horse Whisperer, based on the best-selling book by
British author Nicholas Evans, is one of the movies of the year. It is
due here on August 28, and in America - where it has already opened -
it's being touted as a serious Oscar contender.
Annie MacLean is the successful British editor of a New York glossy
magazine, whose seemingly perfect world is ripped apart when her
14-year-old daughter, Grace, is left emotionally and physically scarred
in a terrible riding accident. The tragedy also claims the life of
Grace's best friend and leaves her beloved horse, Pilgrim, horrifically
maimed. In an attempt to rehabilitate her daughter - and heal the horse -
Annie takes them to the wild, open spaces of Montana to track down a
horse "whisperer", played by Robert Redford, who also directs
the film. The whisperer has healing powers with horses. But as he works
with Pilgrim he also heals the shattered lives of Annie and her daughter
... and love blossoms between the sophisticated editor and the gentle
horseman. " I think a lot of women can identify with Annie,"
says Kristin. "There's a tension between the mother and daughter.
Annie's a working mother desperately trying to keep everything rolling
along. I feel that Annie had a checklist of things to be accomplished in
her life and she is knocking them off in such a determined manner that
she forgets to find out what is really going on. And the truth is she has
lost her relationship with her daughter, and her relationship with her
husband is not good."
While Kristin understands the juggling acts of a working woman's life,
that is where the resemblance to Annie ends. In real life, Kristin is
blissfully happy. She is married to French obstetrician Francois
Olivennes, whom she met when she was a struggling young actress in Paris
and he was a medical student. They have two children, Hannah, 10, and
seven-year-old Joseph. "I'm a working mother trying very hard to
keep everybody sane," Kristin says with a smile. "I'm much the
same as everybody else, really."
She is determined to give her children the idyllic childhood that she
very nearly had for herself. Sadly, fate cheated both Kristin and her
younger sister Serena, also an actress. In many ways, they enjoyed a
classic English youth of long, hot summers in rural Dorset. But it was
also a time of great pain. "I thought I had a happy childhood at the
time," she says. "I certainly wasn't miserable or anything, but
when I look back on it now it was fairly heavy going. The past can be
very painful." The family had moved from Yorkshire to Dorset when
Kristin was five. Her father, Simon, was a pilot with the Fleet Air Arm
and had been posted there. The following spring he was killed when his
naval jet crashed with engine failure. He was just 30 years old.
"Mummy was pregnant at the time and I can remember when she told us.
In one breath it was 'Daddy has had an accident and won't be coming home
and I'm going to have a baby'. So it sort of took the sting out of it.
And then we went down to school and everybody had to be nice to us and we
didn't really understand why."
"Kids are so resillient. It's only later that you realise what a
terrible shock it was. I can still remember him. It's like having a
little film playing in your head. I can remember his smell, it's really
weird. The thing that breaks my heart is the smell of engine oil."
But fate had more cruel blows in store for the sisters when Kristin's
mother, Deborah, re-married - another Fleet Air Arm pilot, also called
Simon. "My stepfather died in ecactly the same circumstances as my
father," Kristin says. "His plane had engine failure and the
navigator managed to eject, but my stepfather didn't. In a way it was
worse than when my father died because at that age I took it in more. It
was a terrible time for all of us, especially for my mother."
After leaving school, and an unhappy couple of years living in London
taking a teaching course, Kristin decided to go to Paris for a short
break. She loved it, found a job as an au pair and stayed on. Her
employer, who worked in the Paris Opera, encouraged her dreams of
becoming an actress and she won a place at drama school. It was while she
was there that she met Francois. "I was in love with Paris and I
fell in love with Francois, so there was no question of going back to
England," she says. "It was love at first sight with Francois.
I believe in that. I mean, it happened to me at 20." Kristin,
Francois and the children now live permanently in Paris - though they did
all join her in Montana during filming of The Horse Whisperer. She
refuses to move to Hollywood, even if it might mean sacrificing some
career opportunities. " I love going back to England and seeing my
friends and family, I love to do girlie stuff and hang out, but my life
is in Paris, not Los Angeles," she says. "I think it's a bit
difficult being slightly out of the loop, not knowing who is the hot
director and who I should meet. But it has its advantages because if
somebody wants to work with me they really want to work with me - and
it's not just because they found me amusing at a dinner party last
week."
How English she sounds, how down-to-earth and how unlike the average
gushing Hollywood star. But that's just the way she is. And maybe that's
the quaility which Robert Redord saw in her when he demanded that she
should play his screen lover in The Horse Whisperer. "He's an
actor's director and being an actor himself gives him an edge on the
others because he known the importance of all the things that are
un-said, stuff that isn't written in the script," she says.
"And he is very good at coaxing stuff out of you that you wouldn't
normally deliver. I was terrified of the horses at first - I rode as a
kid and I hated it - but Robert was always there to help me. He calmed me
down. I can tell you that when you are golloping down a mountainside with
the sun coming down behind you, you just think, 'This is fantastic, this
is one of the perks of the job'," The other perk, of course, was
that she could finally get to kiss the man who captured her heart all
those years ago.
