With that sense of sensuality smouldering just beneath the glacial surface, those sculpted cheekbones and piercing grey eyes, Kristin Scott Thomas has the poise and beauty to make every leading man she encounters pay close attention - from the impeccably English Ralph Fiennes to Robert Redford, Harrison Ford and Sean Penn. But usually, all Kristin wants to do at the end of a shoot is get home to her husband and children, Hannah, 12, Joseph, nine, and now George, born last August.

 

"I need to be at home, living a normal existence and not this super-protected and fabulous actressy thing", she says. "I have to calm down a bit because I'm not very good at being famous".

 

Ironically, for this quentessentailly English actress, home is Paris, and claming down usually means that after every splurge of activity, she goes to ground as Madame Olivennnes, wife of French IVF specialist Francois, with whom she fell in love with at first sight aged 21. Their domestic bliss is centred on a spacious apartment on the stylish Left Bank. And it is an essential part of Kristin's defence mechanism against the stresses of fame.

 

Although Kristin is thoroughly immersed in French Life, there are certain aspects of Englishness she misses. She admits a terrible weakness for British television, which she devours avidly on trips home, harbouring a particular passion for Carry On films, and she can surprise with a more than passable imitation of Barbara Windsor.

 

Apart from that, "It's the simple, basic things like shopping, or crossing the road and having to look the wrong way, or getting on a bus, But actually, having lived in France for 22 years, going back to England feels like going back to a foreign country," she says.

 

As she talks, she remonstrates with our waiter about the correct method of making tea, sending back the first attempt of warm water and a couple of tea bags on the side. "Try boiling water and leaves," she suggests in ladylike tones. Clearly she did not attend Cheltenham Ladies College for nothing.

 

In common with fellow ex-pats, such as Jane Birkin, she is often regarded as rather exotic by the French. Wafer-thin and boyishly framed, her appearance prompted one French newspaper to suggest bulimia was to blame, but her sister Serena, also an actress, denied it strenuously on her behalf.

 

Kristin exudes an air of Gallic chic, and somewhere along the line, she switched from Brit brunette to cropped blonde, a change which she said helped her "to come out of herself, be attractive. And be someone else."

 

And she has become integrated in a way she never thought would be possible when, as an 18-year-old, she fled London for Paris.

 

"I was teaching drama at a North London comprehensive after a course at the Central School of Drama. I was very unhappy and then when I went back to train as an actress, they didn't think I would make it. That was pretty devastating at that age. Well, the best place to go if you want to feel special is somewhere foreign, because people treat you as special just because you're different," she says.

 

The novice Parisienne survived by working as an au pair and a shop assistant, and then landed a place at a French drama school. By this time she had already met her husband. As well as romance, her career as an actress blossomed on the other side of the Channel.

 

Since she and Francois started their family, the actress has become adept at juggling doing the washing-up and making dinner for the children with making films.

 

Sometimes the children are allowed to come with her on location, and now that she can command $2 million a picture - still a frugal amount by some Hollywood standards - the family can afford whatever help they need at home.

 

"I think any couple who both have careers and children find it difficult," Kristin says, "but it is all a question of organisation and a great deal of teamwork has to go into it. I mean, I manage the children when they are on school break and if I'm away on location they can come with me. We always manage to juggle it somehow."

 

On balance, she relishes her life split between family and films and all its attending ironies. "I can go off into the desert or to a villa in Tuscany and be all glamorous and adored for three months or so, and then come home and start cooking the fish fingers," she says.

 

Though Kristin has made many films, including a fair few in France, the role we probably know her best for is as romantic heroine Katherine Clifton in The English Patient. Her children took a dimmer view of the role which won her an Oscar nomination. Whenever they saw her in clinches with Ralph Fiennes they protested loudly. "They would jump up and down and go, 'Oh yuck, there's mummy kissing another man," she laughs.

 

Starring opposite Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer only served to enhance Kristin's stature, and she is now about to start filming with an A-list British cast in Robert Altman's latest movie, Gosford Park.

 

If she has one small regret, it's her lack of comedic skill. "I cannot do funny. Some people, like Emma Thompson, have the kind of grace I do not possess. I'm stuck with tragic and dramatic films and there's not much I can do about it until somebody'd brave enough to let me try. But they would have to be very brave," she says, with classic English self-deprecation.