Queen Kristin
Gaillac-Morgue
(translated by Malcolm Coupland)
In Up At the Villa Kristin Scott Thomas is selfish, vain and full of faults. Far from her roles as sensual desirable romantic women.
Le Nouveau Cinéma: You have achieved international stardom. What have been the milestones along the way?
Kristin Scott Thomas: To start with, there's the basic training that I received at the Rue Blanche drama school in Paris. Their excellent teachers taught me to be demanding and to be curious about different authors from Shakespeare to Duras, which brought me into contact with the most beautiful language for learning French. Without that foundation I would undoubtedly have been quickly satisfied with a particular American type of cinema... I learnt to take a lesson away from every experience. My debut was in "Under the Cherry Moon" by Prince, a kind of cartoon strip on film. The script was right out of the bottom drawer, but still there were a thousand little things to learn about.
LNC: Amongst your filmography can be found pearls such as that sexy appearance in Jean-Pierre Mocky's Agent trouble.
KST: With little flashing lights on my breasts! In those days everybody wanted to work with Mocky. It was funny because I still had a slight innocent air about me and Mocky played on that. I was not the kind of Englishwoman that you find in Mike Leigh's films!
LNC: Your choices are surprising. Following the success of Four Weddings and a Funeral by Mike Newell you made An Unforgettable Summer with Lucian Pintilie.
KST: Sadly, Pintilie's film, which was presented at Cannes in 1994, hasn't had the career that it deserved. The film portrays the assassination of a group of Bulgarian villagers on the Romanian border. One evening, when I was seeing on CNN what was going on only a hundred kilometres from there, I realised for the first time that my occupation involves certain responsibilities. To chose a film is a responsible act.
LNC: What have you learnt from the various directors you¨ve worked with?
KST: Some, like Minghella, are very controlling, others let you do as you like. Polanski was my dream! For the first few days on the set of "Bitter Moon" he didn't say a single word to me; I was in despair... Then he told me that he had nothing to say because I was doing exactly what he wanted! Redford and Pollock look for immediate results. They want the audience to like the character and to empathise right away. I rather prefer to keep a certain ambiguity in the air.
LNC: Robert Redford directed you in The Horse Whisperer. What's he like?
KST: Redford has a creative side to him, but otherwise his career is a product of the Hollywood machine. The sums invested in an American film are terrifying; you feel a tiny part of a huge enterprise.
LNC: In Up At the Villa your character is very ambiguous, even unsympathetic at the beginning.
KST: I love that. Philip Haas had already directed me in Angels and Insects where I played a woman who to start with appears austere, a sourpuss; then the character evolves. That kind of duality gives a character greater complexity and unpredictability.
LNC: Up At the Villa is adapted from a novel by Somerset Maugham. He has a particular way of making us like his characters in spite of their mistakes and their faults.
KST: Yes, as in Of Human Bondage, where you can't help liking the principal character even though she commits atrocious acts. Up At the Villa attracted me for the same reasons. My character is a woman full of faults, selfish, vain, but it's precisely this gushing humanity that we love; this being "too too human".
LNC: She has a one night stand with a young stranger of no account.
KST: Crazy woman! Before resigning herself to marrying Sir Edgar (James Fox), an elderly rich man whom she doesn't love, she treats herself to one last seduction with an impoverished young man in order to take revenge on herself for the desire she feels for a third chap, Rowley Flint (Sean Penn)! It¨s an act of self-destruction. This sort of "charitable" act of giving herself to this young man secures for her a virtuous role, but in fact she¨s being extremely selfish. But her doubts, her to-ings and fro-ings from one to the other before making her choice are infused with passion, as in life...
LNC: Sean Penn gives you a violent slap. Did you dread this scene?
KST: Not really. It's odd. Sean Penn is an extremely intuitive actor, he invests himself enormously in his role, yet at the same time he has incredible technique. He pretends to slap me and it's believable; but on the other hand, to make it credible, I had to really slap him!
LNC: How do you prepare for a role? Do you go to meet it, or do you let it come to you?
KST: You mean: does the actor own the role or does the role own the actor? A huge question... Sometimes I have the sense of knowing a character intimately; sometimes everything remains to be discovered.
LNC: You portray romantic, sensual, desirable women. Would you be tempted by something against type?
KST: I'd love to play a murderess, a bitch, an alcoholic... At the same time I have a strong mistrust of showing off. There's nothing more boring than being aware of an actor's performance. As soon as you can see the work, the emotion is lost. I'm offered the parts that correspond to the image that people have of me, and it would be tempting to go against type just to break those prejudices. The wise thing would be to ease into it, with a small role and a lot of humility... But can one ask of an actress to be humble and self-effacing?
