Kristin Scott Thomas isn't the pinched prig her film roles suggest
Katherine Monk
Kristin Scott Thomas has played more than one or two uptight, unpleasant and rigidly frigid English women over the course of her 13-year film acting career.
From the pinched-knicker face of Fiona, Hugh Grant's would-be spouse in Four Weddings and a Funeral, to the equally corsetted new wife in Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon, Scott Thomas knows a lot of people still confuse her screen persona with who she really is -- and that's just fine by her.
"I think a lot of people are frightened by me. I can see them tremble when I come near -- no, I'm not joking. They feel I have this incredible power -- which, truth be told, is absolutely feigned. But don't print that. Tell people I'm an incredible bitch," says Scott Thomas, reclining on the divan of an upscale Toronto hotel where she's doing press for her latest film, Life as a House.
One gets the feeling she's only partly joking.
As someone who learned to take care of herself early during her years at Cheltenham's Ladies College in Cornwall, a boarding school existence prompted by the tragic death of her father and later, her step-father -- both were British armed forces pilots who perished in the line of duty -- Scott Thomas is skilled at keeping others at a safe distance.
At 16, shortly after her mother quashed any hope of young Kristin becoming an actor, the eldest of five siblings enrolled in a convent and considered becoming a nun. At 18, realizing she wasn't cut out for the cloth, she simply packed on the pounds and kept her personal perimeter clear with a generous girth.
"The truth is that I find it difficult to have a good attitude, that's why I've been so lucky to find people with similar sensibilities as mine ... either that, or they've all been tremendously understanding."
Scott Thomas isn't just talking about ditching her middle-class and decidedly unglamorous life in Britain for a better life in Paris, where she found a soulmate in her obstetrician husband, a job as an au pair and finally, a future in acting. This tall woman with delicately chiselled features and a killer taste in clothes is talking about how lucky she feels to have found a solid working relationship with some of the biggest directors -- and biggest stars -- in filmdom, from Robert Redford, Harrison Ford, Hugh Grant, Sidney Pollack, Brian De Palma, Roman Polanski, Tom Cruise, Ian McKellen and Ralph Fiennes to Canada's own Robert Lepage.
Scott Thomas has one of the most coveted resumes in show business and with this week's release of Life as a House audiences will get a chance to see her star shine opposite Kevin Kline and Vancouver's own Darth Vader, Hayden Christensen.
Once again, Scott Thomas plays a bit of a sourpuss as Kline's ex-wife -- which is precisely why she had no desire to take the part, even if it did mean working with Kline and director-producer Irwin Winkler (producer of such films as They Shoot Horses Don't They?, Rocky, Raging Bull and director of At First Sight and The Net).
"I asked Irwin why he even wanted me in the first place. Was it because I was British? I kept telling him that I really didn't want to do these types of roles any more. And he said: 'That's exactly why I want you -- because this time, you have to play the part as an American,' " Scott Thomas says, giddily.
With the extra twist of playing an uptight, affluent, and cool American ex-wife opposite the Oscar-winning Kline, Scott Thomas set to work preparing for the part -- by studying her very own flesh and blood, her younger sister and model Serena Scott Thomas.
"I was deeply, deeply inspired by my sister. .... She lives in L.A. in a nice suburb with a ginormous SUV. She's got this enormous mop of blond hair and the affluent husband. She was 90 per cent of my character research," she says, with an unmistakable trace of mischief.
"Yes, she's always been my irritating little sister Serena."
Scott Thomas says she's still close to her family but for the most part, she spends her time with her own clan in Paris when she's not shooting a movie or treading the boards of legit theatre.
It was through her stage work that she hooked up with Lepage, the Quebec City director-performer-writer responsible for such films as Possible Worlds, Nô, Le Confessionnal and Le Polygraphe in addition to plays such as Needles and Opium, The Dragon's Trilogy and Seven Streams of the River Ota.
Lepage is a far bigger star in Britain than he is in Canada -- so when the part of Alfred Hitchcock's straight-laced, but hard-nosed assistant in Le Confessionnal came up, Scott Thomas was all over it. The Canadian connection continued with her role in The English Patient -- a film based on Toronto writer Michael Ondaatje's best-seller.
"When I was growing up in Britain, Canada was seen as this fresh, untainted country. I love your literary tradition. In addition, obviously, to Ondaatje, I've read lots of Robertson Davies, Mordecai Richler and Margaret Atwood," she says.
"I find it reminds me a lot of Irish literature: There's always this idea of man fighting -- something or other. And please, I hope this doesn't sound condescending, but there's something really old-fashioned about it all. The inherent set of values are far more intact than in England. I get the feeling Canadian dramatists aren't as hungry for commercial success or the latest special effect -- which is good."
Scott Thomas isn't as kind to her old merry old home: "England is a hellhole," she says.
"It has become an enormous suburb of America -- which is too bad, but in entertainment, it's harder and harder to create something outside the Hollywood mould. That's why I feel so fortunate with my career because all the Hollywood movies I've made have been with good people -- for the most part, at any rate."
Scott Thomas says she has had one or two bad encounters, but she's far too polite to talk about them, saying only "I have very little tolerance for people who behave badly."
Perhaps, it had something to do with her breakout -- and bare-all -- debut in Prince's Under a Cherry Moon, in which Scott Thomas bared her chest in the opening scene with the line: "Want to see my birthday suit?"
She refuses to elaborate. Instead, she talks about her current projects, a Paris stage play by Jean Racine called Berenice and Gosford Park, a new movie by the legendary Robert Altman.
"Even though people are afraid of me, you know, I can get rather intimidated myself in certain company. This play by Racine, for instance, the text is so beautiful that it's really scary. My French is good. I'm fluent, but it's still my second language -- and you really, really don't want to mess it up."
In her ideal world, Scott Thomas would rotate film with theatre to keep her skills sharp in both worlds.
"I still find stage is a ginormous challenge, but that's why you have to surround yourself with the right people. With this play, I was with so many great people that I knew they wouldn't steer me wrong, but at times things can suddenly become unbearable and you think: How can I cope?" she says.
"That's when you have to realize this was the life you chose. You really do want to do this -- then, you just get up and do it."
