Born Again Kristin

Shireen Jilla

After reading the tabloids' biting descriptions of Kristin Scott-Thomas as an icey, arrogant replica of the sexy-but-brittle character she played in Four Weddings And A Funeral, one imagines that meeting her would be about as much fun as an overdraft meeting with your bank manager. Wedged in corner seat in Parisian brasserie, however, Scott-Thomas turns out to be totally different from her media image, a self-deprecating and witty extrovert, part luvvie and part deeply domesticated housewife (she lives in Paris with a French husband and two young children).

Flitting back and forth between English and French films, Scott-Thomas has struggled to overcome typecasting as a frosty aristocrat in films like A Handful of Dust, Bitter Moon and, indeed, Four Weddings. Recently, though, directors have shown a little more imagination, casting her as an ugly entomologist in Angels and Insects, the tragic, drug addicted Lady Anne in Richard III and a seductress in the upcoming The English Patient. She also just wrapped in Brian de Palma's action-fest Mission Impossible, alongside Tom Cruise and Emmanuelle Beart. But first, British cinemagoers can see her as Alfred Hitcock's glam, platinum blonde assistant in Robert Lepage's Canadian mystery The Confessional.

In the past you've been typecast as a sophisticate. Don't you long to play a bombshell, perhaps a Juliette Binoche or Sharon Stone role?
Yes, but they're bad examples. They just get all the same types of roles. It's sad because if you're beautiful, you're assumed to be stupid.

You get to be a platinum blonde for a change in The Confessional.
That was a wig. It was a really good one, wasn't it?

And now you're really blonde.
Yes, I dyed it for The English Patient. I like it being short and blonde: it changes people's reactions to you.

Do blondes have more fun?
No. Men whistle at you in the street and boys fantasise about you -- not my kind of blondes, only those with a 40-inch chest.

You're playing a alam Glace Kelly figure in Anthony Minghella's forthcoming The English Patient, which must be a great relief after all those stiff upper-lip types.
She is brave, outspoken, gorgeous and funny -- I want to be her when I grow up. It's awful when you come back from filming to be just a mum. Your hair looks like shit and you've got to put your own chothes on. It's horrible. I felt really fragile after this film and wouldn't go out.

Were you insulted to be cast as an ugly entomologist in Angels and Insects?
I thought it was perfect casting. I can look pig ugly standing on my head -- I'm plain, bony and brittle.

Aren't you fed up with being in genteel British dramas?
I'm not at all fed up with British films, but I am fed up with playing upper-class people. Having said that, I'd like to play a complete Sloane Ranger. There's something so gloriously awful about a striped shirt, pearls and jolly jeans. I'd have navy blue mascara and pale pink lip gloss and ride a bicycle.

People imagine you to be a very controlled person. What's the most outrageous thing you've ever done?
That's an impossible question. I do get a bit over-excited. We did fool aroud on Richard III and do silly things. I played terrible tricks on The English Patient.

The upcoming Mission: Impossible, in which you play an English spy, is your first Hollywood blockbuster. Was it a shock to your system?
Yes -- everyone was being paid properly. Our eyes were out on stalks at all the money being spent. When you say you've got to call your kids, someone just hands you a phone. There was a gang of us hanging out in Prague. We were all like kids: "Look, here comes Tom's limousine!" I enjoyed making it more than any other film. I had a ball.

What did you make of Missin director Brian de Palma?
He was this great big grumpy man. All he does is growl.

Living in Paris, what do you miss most about London?
We've got a Marks & Spencer, so you can get everything here. But I really miss being part of a gang of people and going down to the pub.

When you met your husband in a drema class in Paris, was it love at first sight?
I didn't know I was going to marry him. He was incredibly grown up, even though he's only one year older than me. He took me to the movies to see Le Mepris by Godard. It was a cool movie to pick. If it had been Raiders of the Lost Ark, it might not have gone any further.

Where did he propose?
I rang him up from Los Angeles. We'd been together six years. And I just said, "Why don't we married?"

Your inauspicious film debut was in Under the Cherry Moon, directed by the artist formerly known as Prince.
He was strange, but at the time I thought everyone was odd.

Are you surprised how far Hugh Grant has been propelled by Four Weddings?
I remember he was having a crisis of self-doubt in his trailer. Saying he was "doing it all wrong". I said to him, "This is going to make you a star." And then I thought, Shut up, that's exactly what producers say.

Where were you when the Divine scandal broke?
I was doing the ironing in my apartment in Paris. The phone started ringing from America with people saying, "Have you heard what your friend has done?" I just thought it was the most banal thing.

Hught Grant, now Colin Firth and Ralph Fiennes in The English Patient. You've worked with England's sexiest actors.
I've had some of the most glamorous men in England, darling. All three are so unassuming -- though Hugh probably quite likes the attention now.

Do you think being labelled "intelligent" has hindered you career? Where do the media get these assumptions from? I'm not a brain box. [Her sister, model and actress] Serena's the really clever one. But it's better to be accused of being intelligent, I suppose.

Did you ever think of modelling like your sister?
I can't think of anything worse. I'm a terrible subject to photograph; I can't make all those different faces. It bores me.

Lot of men found you the sexiest thing about Four Weddings.
It must be because I smoked so many cigarettes.

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