Cool to the Touch
Marcelle Katz
The famously aloof British-born actress Kristin Scott Thomas reveals a surprising streak of ego-driven ambition to MARCELLE KATZ
Kristin Scott Thomas sits with an arsenal of embroidered cushions on her lap. Although she shudders when she is described as frosty, her body language does little to dispel the obvious tightness.
"I hate it," she says talking directly to the luxury hotel cushion, "when people call me icy. I get upset. I am naturally more chaotic and disorganised as a person."
Her character, a Republican congresswoman, in Sydney Pollack's romantic thriller Random Hearts, suffers from the same emotional reserve. When she discovers her husband's betrayal, her way of dealing with the trauma is to ignore it.
Scott Thomas, 39, agrees that her perceived cool reserve may stem from her British upbringing. "That is something in the English. It's part of our culture," she says. "My husband tells me that even after so many years in Paris, I have stayed very British. That is, inhibited and unspontaneous.
"We don't show anything. You have to take everything with courage. One of the most depressing things EVER is the notion of turning the other cheek. I mean, WHY? I find that difficult to deal with myself. It's probably one of the reasons I moved to France."
There are a lot of high beautiful bones in Scott Thomas's face. She is a study in sleekness in a tan suede shirt, dark glossy hair and light green eyes. She speaks with theatrical measure and there is implicit drama in even her lesser observations. There are rich pauses and a manner of speech that sounds as if she is crunching ice cubes in her cheeks.
Scott Thomas is a palpable force, as she proved even when she had limited dialogue or screen time in some of her earlier work (such as Philip Haas's quirky Angels and Insects). She became visible in Hollywood terms only after her slow-burn performance in Anthony Minghella's The English Patient.
There has not been a lack of offers since, but she has remained aloof and often contemptuous of the parts proffered by studios.
"I don't have any desire to play a waitress in order to serve another actor his soup," she says crisply. "I don't want to be in a film just for the sake of being in a film."
A draught of haughtiness appears to enter the room. "No," she retorts in a tone that resonates with displeasure. "I've been really lucky and I know that. I have a lot of friends who make films because they have to pay the rent. I've never really had to do that. If you have the choice, you should always go for the passion, not the pay cheque."
Scott Thomas is also aware of a delicious vanity. "I enjoy showing off," she says. "I don't know where it comes from. And I ADORE being on a film set. I love the performing part of it. I love it, I love it!" So much so that she is vexed if anyone else steals any of the glory. She does not want to be reflected (as she is on the Random Hearts poster, her face is only discernible in Harrison Ford's sunglasses).
She recently declared that when she is not the star, she has no wish to even be on stage. "I don't want someone else's limelight dusting off me," she sniffed. "I feel that's rather distasteful." Scott Thomas expresses this clearly when I loosely refer to her other current film, based on the Somerset Maugham novella Up at the Villa co-starring Sean Penn. She corrects me with a jokey but undeniable burst of irritation. "The Sean Penn film? Give me a break! It's MY movie. And Sean Penn also happens to be in it."
Control is everything. In this respect, Scott Thomas had a minor skirmish with Pollack on the set of Random Hearts. She came in boiling with ideas on how she was going interpret her character.
"I was inclined to go for more anger in this woman," she says. "I felt that the sense of betrayal would be a real motor. I think when people get upset, they get defensive and then they lash out. And I felt this would be appropriate."
Pollack, however, wanted her to play it softer and express the sentient bruising. "I was rather concerned about our differences," she says carefully. "But I ended up giving over completely and letting him decide. I was like putty really. He is divine but he is also a control freak."
Although ambitious, a critical factor in Scott Thomas's film choices is the length and location of the shoot. Her family, it seems, take precedence. She has known loss: the death of her father in an aviation accident and, six years later, a stepfather who suffered the same fate.
Her reaction at the time was muted. But with her own two young children, Joseph and Hannah, she is given to weeping and fits of nerves.
Merely the thought of separating from them for a seven-week shoot a few years ago reduced her to heart palpitations and an emergency stay in hospital.
When the Random Hearts role was offered to her she gently explained that she would be absent from home for months and they could decide whether she should take it or not.
When they heard the name of her co-star they shrieked: "Harrison Ford? Do it immediately!" Scott Thomas was pleased with the encounter. "Sometimes," she says of her leading men, who have included Robert Redford, Tom Cruise and Ralph Fiennes, "one is so disappointed. But Harrison was professional and witty."
She insists her own life is far from glamorous or of any interest. "Actors," she says, "are expected to have rather naughty lives. I don't have a problem with press invasion because I don't really go out much. I live such a quiet life."
Scott Thomas once said she was conditioned to think that actresses were lonely creatures with dirty bra-straps and only a cat for company. She now rescinds on the view.
"It was just a profession that seemed so inaccessible at the time. My family was in the military. There was just no connection. And my mother wasn't in the least bit eccentric."
And her opinion on infidelity, which is the central theme of Random Hearts? She gives a hard bright smile: "I think fidelity is a good thing. But infidelity makes a great film."
Random Hearts is on circuit nationwide.
