Kristin Scott Thomas Manages to Lose Her Cool
Peter Howell
Very proper actress actually looks confused in Up At The Villa.
Kristin Scott Thomas is tired of keeping her upper lip stiff.
She plays a dithering ditz in her new movie, Up At The Villa, which comes as something as a surprise. British by blood if not by instinct, the actress is painfully aware that moviegoers think of her as a glamourous toff, a woman born with a riding crop in her hand and a smile at once sensual and intimidating.
She forever seems to be paired with men who are beneath her, from purple rock prancer Prince in her 1986 movie debut, Under The Cherry Moon, to more recent odd couplings with Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer and Harrison Ford in Random Hearts.
Scott Thomas' most enduring role is playing Ralph Fiennes' seductress Catherine Clifton in The English Patient, in which she managed to look elegant even while dying inside a desert cave.
``I'm one of those people who people ring up and say, `Oh, I don't know what to do. What should I do about my life?' as if I have all the answers,'' Scott Thomas sighs from her home in Paris. Easy enough to see why her friends consider her to be their oracle for life decisions. Scott Thomas is just as cooly efficient off-screen as on, as anyone who witnessed her deft emceeing at last year's Cannes Film Festival awards ceremony can attest.
Speaking in note-perfect French, Scott Thomas ushered the winners and presenters on and off the stage with more grace than the occasion usually manages. This included her discreet handling of highly emotional French actress Sophie Marceau, who seemed under the influence of something as she neglected her presenting duties and babbled incoherently about how chiant (fecal) Cannes is when compared to the plight of the world's suffering children.
As the audience began to boo Marceau, Scott Thomas quickly gave her the hook, and then proceeded to the next prize without skipping a beat.
``I could tell that she was having trouble, so I just stepped in. Although it did make me feel a bit like a headmistress.''
Her desire to remove the yoke of competency, if only for a moment, explains why Scott Thomas jumped at the part of Mary Panton in Up At The Villa. Set in pre-World War II Italy, it's an adaptation of a W. Somerset Maugham novella directed by Philip Haas, whom Scott Thomas previously worked with on Angels And Insects.
Mary is a recently widowed English noblewoman living in Florence, who seems to spend more time matching her pastel-coloured wardrobes than she does thinking about her life. The world is on the verge of global conflict, yet Mary's main concern is whether she should marry wealthy older diplomat Sir Edgar Swift (James Fox) or yield to the rude seductions of American playboy Rowley Flint (Sean Penn).
``I love her indecision, and I absolutely love her,'' Scott Thomas says.
``I think she's one of the most interesting characters I`ve ever played. She's not like one of those movie symbols who go like an arrow through the movie and never waver. She's a woman who is all over the place.''
Would those straight-arrow ``movie symbols'' include anyone we know?
Scott Thomas allows that she fits her own description, but by playing an indecisive character she's not fighting her image as much as she's stretching it.
``I don't think of it as a rebellion,'' she says. ``I see it as an expansion. All actresses and actors like to think they can do anything. That's what I think is fantastic about this kind of work. You can try out stuff and you can see if it works. You make an ass of yourself and sometimes you don't.''
It takes some strength, though, to hold a lead role opposite such supporting actors as Sean Penn, Anne Bancroft and Derek Jacobi, all of whom are quite capable of stealing a picture, given half a chance.
Penn seems like a strange swain for Scott Thomas, a real rock-and-ruby pairing, and she and Haas had to lobby the producers to hire Penn for the part of Rowley.
``It was a real battle for us,'' Scott Thomas says.
``We really wanted him to do the picture, and we kept saying we needed a `Sean Penn type,' but everyone assumed he wouldn't want to do it. One day I said, `Has anyone ever asked him?' It turned out he'd seen Angels And Insects and absolutely loved it.
Bancroft was another bonus, playing the self-assured type that is normally Scott Thomas' domain. Bancroft impressed everyone with her eagerness, her dedication and her attention to detail.
``She's had 40 years of this work and she's still as sparkly and enthusiastic and nervous as the rest of us,'' Scott Thomas marvels.
``She's absolutely not rusty. She works as hard and maybe harder than the rest of us. I felt very lazy next to her, and she has this incredible elegance that one could aspire to.''
One might say that Scott Thomas doesn't have to aspire much for anything. She's managed to remain on the casting shortlists of both American and European directors, despite her career-limiting move of forsaking a life in Los Angeles for the quiet splendour of living in Paris with her obstetrician husband Francois Oliviennes and their two children, Joseph, 9, and Hannah, 12.
``Sometimes I think life would be a lot easier if I were in L.A.,'' she says.
``But I only really want to work with people who really want me to work with them, and if they want me, they come and get me. I'm very well represented in Los Angeles by agents.''
Scott Thomas is also popular in Cannes, where she'll be heading next week to take up her duties as a member of the Luc Besson-led festival jury, deciding which films will get the coveted Palme d'Or and other prizes.
Diplomatic as ever, she steers away from a question she's likely to be asked a lot in the days ahead: Does she think her jury will be held to account for the bizarre David Cronenberg-led panel of 1999, which went out of its way to choose obscure art films rather than bigger pictures by name directors?
``They were making a protest,'' Scott Thomas agrees. ``It was maybe a kind of reaction of sorts to the commercialization of Cannes. But they also really liked the films they chose.
``I'm just going in as part of a fresh group of new people. I don't think there's any leftovers from the Cronenberg jury.''
There is one thing looming for Scott Thomas that may rattle her fabulous reserve, and not just for dramatic effect as in her Up At The Villa role.
In 19 days, she'll turn 40, the age that terrifies every actress, even though Scott Thomas could easily pass for 30.
Once most female stars hit the big 4-0, directors and casting agents begin thinking of them as playing mother roles to younger actresses, if they think of them at all.
Will Scott Thomas be able to forget the number and just carry on, as forthright and as eagerly sought as usual?
``Well, I do keep being reminded of it,'' she says, a note of impatience cracking her innate British politeness.
``I'm going to try to just roll on through it.''
