Great Scott!

Shep Morgan

Captivating leading lady Kristin Scott Thomas opens up to Gotham about her latest silver screen project, Life As A House, her string of steamy leading men, and her devotion to her second job--being a mom.

Her very proper English accent seems intimidating until Kristin Scott Thomas erupts into a hearty laugh. It's immediately obvious that behind that apparently cool and collected British exterior Thomas is a woman with a zest for life and a wicked, if super dry, sense of humor.

Thomas, who's currently co-starring with Kevin Kline in Life As A House, is a fascinating collection of contradictions--a mother of three who has heated up the screen with a succession of hunky co-stars; an elegant creature who finds shopping for household hardware more exciting than haute couture; and a movie star who doesn't live the Hollywood life.

Thomas left drama school in London to work as an au pair in Paris and, encouraged by the woman she worked for, went on to become one of a handful of English-speaking actresses to find success on the French stage. The Academy Awards nomination for her steamy liaison with Ralph Fiennes in The English Patient jump-started her film career, but she prefers life in a Parisian flat to the glamour of Tinseltown. She's as committed to being a mom to her year-old son, George, her son, Joseph, nine, and daughter, Hannah, twelve, as she is to acting. Her marriage to noted French fertility specialist Dr. François Olivennes has thrived. Perhaps one of the secrets is that the pair come from totally different worlds.

Thomas, who last earned rave reviews for her passionate performance opposite Sean Penn in Up At The Villa, is playing a very American mom in Life As A House, directed by Irwin Winkler. She plays the ex-wife of Kevin Kline, trying to hold her second marriage together and take care of her kids--one a seriously disturbed rebellious teen played by Hayden Christensen--while helping her ex-husband cope with a fatal illness by assisting him with the construction of the house of his dreams.

Midnight is fast approaching and Paris is quickly falling asleep as Thomas winds down from a performance of Racine's Berenice. She's in the mood to talk about everything from her sexy leading men and why her husband isn't jealous of them to what lies beneath her perfectly applied makeup. And, of course, the terrible events of September 11 that have changed our lives forever.

GOTHAM: If you've been called cool and reserved once, you've been called that a hundred times. Is that really you?
KST: I think it has to do with the cheekbones. People can't imagine anyone with such a bony face actually having a soft center. I'm like one of those chocolates with rocks all over but there's something sweet inside. I know some people think I'm unapproachable. They think I'm going to be like that Weakest Link lady, Anne Robinson. But I sign lots of autographs. The only time I might balk is if I'm at the grocery with my kids because then I'm a working mom. Fans take second place to my children.

GOTHAM: You've added Kevin Kline to an impressive list of heartthrobs spanning Ralph Fiennes to Sean Penn. How do you rate them in terms of that on screen sizzle that Hollywood likes to call chemistry?
KST: I'd actually been longing to work with Kevin, and he was everything I'd hoped for. He takes his job tremendously seriously, but he has a lot of fun with it. We really connected, just as I did with Ralph, Sean, and Hugh Grant. It's hard to describe, but it's like sparks fly when it's happening. With some actors it's like trying to get blood out of a stone.

GOTHAM: Some critics were tough on a couple of your screen partners. They wrote that chemistry was lacking between you and Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer and with Harrison Ford in Random Hearts.
KST: I say that's just jealousy. I don't know if they're jealous of Harrison and Robert or jealous of me being able to snog them. They're both very powerful, seductive, and handsome men. In both cases they were really great. All the leading men I've worked with recently have been such good fun. It's like you look back and laugh and say, "Look at what we've just done together." But I must say I've made some of my friends incredibly envious by kissing some handsome guy on screen.

GOTHAM: Does your husband also get jealous when he sees you on the screen in a hot love scene?
KST: He doesn't ask me about them. I have a husband who isn't in the business. Wise move, hey? He's an obstetrician who specializes in infertility. I wouldn't ask him to describe what it felt like to give an internal examination, so he wouldn't ask me questions about a love scene.

GOTHAM: He must be a very secure guy.
KST: He's very supportive. When I have a little self-doubt, he'll push me along. There aren't many men who can cope with a wife calling from distant location and complaining about how horrible it is while he's at home with the kids. He does work that is incredibly useful, and he's very successful at it so he's totally fulfilled. He brings people an incredible amount of joy and undreamt of happiness by helping them conceive. I have a huge respect for his work. And I think he does for mine. He understands that acting is something that keeps me happy. His world is very, very different from mine, so we meet on our own territory. It's not his or mine. Our territory is our own, and it's very special.

GOTHAM: Did he deliver your kids?
KST: Goodness no. He stood there in the delivery room shaking like a jellyfish when I had our first one. It was ridiculous. He suddenly became a dad. I think any man who's been at their child's birth knows what that feels like.

GOTHAM: In Life As A House you help your ex-husband, played by Kevin Kline, build the house of his dreams. You looked pretty convincing with a hammer. Was that all acting?
KST: I've actually done a lot of that. My husband and I renovated one of the first homes we had in Paris. I'm good at knocking down walls and connecting electric wires and things like that. I'm very handy with a drill. I also confess to an obsession with hardware. I love the mystery of it--without a certain nut or bolt something just won't function properly. I love the smell of metal and oil. I like to explore hardware stores in various cities. If I had to choose between a boutique and a hardware store, I'd go to the hardware store.

GOTHAM: For this film you're sort of a quintessential American mom who's trying to hold it together with kids and a second marriage, not to mention construction duties. It isn't exactly your most glamorous role to date. Do you worry about how you're going to look on camera?
KST: Yes. I'm starting to get very vain in my old age. I never used to care. I just wish that in my everyday life someone was wandering around checking my lighting and making sure people were seeing me from the right angle.

GOTHAM: Yet you're known as beautiful. Doesn't that put some pressure on you to be glamorous?
KST: I think the best advice my mother gave me was, "Remember that mothers always think their children are beautiful." One of my sisters is much better looking than me. Serena makes everyone in the family a little jealous. And my mother is more beautiful than any of us.

GOTHAM: But at least on the film set you have people who are going out of their way to make you look perfect.
KST: First of all, when I have my makeup done, I'm very impatient. I wriggle around a lot and make cups of tea. If it takes over an hour-and-a-half, I'm very cross for the rest of the day. Then I get an incredible satisfaction at the end of a day of filming in taking my makeup off. It's something that I really like to do. I get a big blob of stuff that you use to remove it and slather it all over my face and make it a real mess. I really enjoy that. It's a real relief to see your own face afterward. It's like finding an old friend.

GOTHAM: What did you identify with most in this American mom you play?
KST: I think the thing that drew me to her was that universal question of "How do I do this?" I think every woman who has children understands that feeling of, you know, "Where's the instruction book? What do I do now? And how do I know that what I'm doing is the right thing?" It's so frightening. And those are the questions that Robin is asking herself. I certainly identified with those. I mean, you could be from anywhere in the world and relate to that, I think.

GOTHAM: You have two pre-adolescent children and a baby of your own, but your character is struggling to deal with an out-of-control teenager. Did that make you wonder what you'll be facing a few years?
KST: I thought of this film as a dry run. I don't know what I'll do with a teenager. I haven't a clue. I'm the same as her, basically--clueless.

GOTHAM: Do you think it's more difficult for children growing up today than it was for you?
KST: It seems to be a hell of a lot more difficult now for children than it was when I was a teen--so many more choices to be made and so many more influences. It's scary to be a parent. That's the reason that I loved making this film, because it's the story of a frightened parent asking herself, "Am I doing the right thing?" I think it's refreshing to find that kind of reality in a movie.

GOTHAM: How do you rate yourself as a mom?
KST: It's easy to define the high points in your career, but it's a lot tougher to assess your value as a mother. I'm sure one day my kids will turn around and tell some therapist that I've been a rotten parent.

GOTHAM: How do your kids react to having a mommy who's a movie star?
KST: When they see me on a poster or a magazine cover they point and giggle. They think it's hysterically funny. They say  things like, "Why have you got your hair like that and what are you wearing?" For one part I had got my hair very curly and their favorite name for me was Poodle. Every time they'd see a poodle in the street they'd say, "Oh look, there's Mommy."

GOTHAM: Where were you on September 11, and how did that terrible day affect you?
KST: I was rehearsing the Racine play so I really didn't watch it on television. Then the images were beamed everywhere, and it was impossible to escape them. I did a hell of a lot of thinking. What do you say to your children? How do you make a plan to protect yourself? How you get up the next day? We've all been incredibly shaken up. I think New York has given us a fantastic example of bravery and courage. But the world has changed. It's never going to be the same again. You just think, "How far can human beings go in this barbaric kind of self destructive behavior?"

GOTHAM: Will entertainment help us cope?
KST: Yes, I think it can help us hang on. There are so many stories to be told that may give us strength because there's so much living to be done. I'd rather see fiction than this morbid fascination with the real images that become unreal after a while. Keep listening to Bach or P.J. Harvey. Keep going to Racine. Maybe it will help us value our existence a little more. It's not because I'm a well-known actress that I have any particularly clever or insightful things to say about it. I'm just in shock like everybody else.

GOTHAM: What keeps you going, what drives your career?
KST: That's a very good question. Certainly it's about more than awards or nominations. I have a curiosity, I think. I want to find out how it feels to be other people. When I say a film like this one is a dry run, it's true. I'm interested in finding out what it must feel like to be in this position. And what it must feel like to be in that position. That's why I'm an actor--I want to try out different forms of behavior and different lives. And I'm very lucky to get to do it. Most people don't have that chance. I just love telling stories, and I love telling different stories. At the moment, I'm in a play in Paris, where I tell a seventeenth-century tale in rhyming couplets in French. And that is as far away from Life As A House as you can get. I'm having a ball because I love my job.

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