Kristin Scott Thomas lives in a large apartment on a boulevard in the chic Fifth arrondisement of Paris. Yet, as I enter her doorway, she is far from the grande dame we might expect from her portrayal as lady of the manor in Gosford Park. She is the modern woman, trying to pull together all the strings of her complicated existence. Her hair is tousled and she is dressed simply in black slacks and a stark white jersey top, over which she has draped a ribbed black cardigan.

 

Her husband, Francois Olivennes, one of France's leading obstetricians, is at work, so she enjoys a brief respite while the kids are at school too. Though she jumps up suddenly when her maid reminds her of a forthcoming Jewish holiday. Her husband is Jewish?

 

"He's not really practising, but I like to keep abreast of all the high days and holidays," she says, adding that her children (Hannah, 14, Joseph, 11, and toddler George) do not attend synagogue. "It's more traditional than religious."

 

Even if grander than most, this is really just another family home, and it's a home the Dorset-born actress, who has lived in France since the age of 18. "This is our stomping ground, we just love it here, we couldn't live anywhere else."

 

It comes as a surprise, then, that this quintessential European actress is rarely offered work in England and it took the American, Robert Altman, to make it happen. Scott Thomas jumped at the chance to cross the channel to make Gosford Park and she subsequently emerged as one of the most amusing characters in the film. Ironically, as an actress who usually works in Hollywood, alongside the likes of Robert Redford and Harrison Ford, her casting helped with the film's financing amidst an ensemble of Britian's finest.

 

"It puts you in an odd position, because you know you're one of the ones raising the money to make the fim,: she says, "yet you're sitting there in make-up in awe of the people who are left and right of you."

 

Her Oscar nomination for The English Patient really made of difference, she says, and it gave her the kudos to persue a Holywood career. "Suddenly, doors were flying open, everybody wants you. It's difficult because you get to this place where you're being offered these plum roles in Hollywood and you think, 'Ok, so what do I do after this?' I wanted to get back to doing the things I was doing before. The Altman film was heaven. Doing Life as a House (her latest movie with Kevin Kline) was great too, because I was working with such wonderful people."

 

An actress with an acerbic wit and a sophisticated image, Scott Thomas has been known to grant interviews on a chaise lounge. Can this be someone who takes herself seriously? In England, they believe she does, and her ice queen label is now stuck so fast that she feels unable to curb the negative tide of opinion in the press. Her Lady Sylvia in Gosford Park she describes as a camp send-up of her "hoity-toity" image. But she was not going to put her head on the block for the film's release, so made herself unavailable to the press. She granted this interview on the proviso that it would not appear in England, where, in the past, she and her husband had been insulted.

 

Last February, she completed an eight-month stint in Racine's Berenice on the Parisian stage, mastering rhyming couplets in French and she recently appeared alongside Daniel Auteuil in a French film, Petites Coupures.

 

Right now she's angling for an American movie that's going to be shot in Paris and she is also busy setting up her own productions company with Paris-based American producer Eleanor Coleman. She is annoyed at how Life as a House was dumped into French cinemas and now the film is struggling for more than a London release in the UK. It doesn't spoil the movie to reveal that Kevin Kline has cancer in the story, because is it hardly a film about death, insists Scott Thomas.

 

"It' a wonderful film about life, which involves dying. We all do it. It's such a gloriously sunny film it seems extraordinary that they could have marketed it any differently."

 

Her first film, oddly enough, was 1986's Under the Cherry Moon, a much ridiculed vehicle for the artist then known as Prince. "I had a wonderful time doing that," she says, smiling in recollection. "It was a bit of a silly role and I knew it was fluff, but I also knew it was my first chance."

 

In 1988 she won the Evening Standard's Best Newomer award for her portrayal in A Handful of Dust as the upperclass wife of James Wilby (also in Gosford Park) and she was outstanding as Hugh Grant's vengeful wife in Bitter Moon, directed by Paris-based Roman Polanski. But her international break came when she upstaged Andie McDowell as Grant's sardonic friend Fiona in Four Weddings and a Funeral. She also spat in Ian McKellen's face as Lady Anne in Richard III, and admits to enjoying these character parts.

 

Discerning on the one hand and determined on the other, Scott Thomas's biggest coup was to land the lead in The English Patient. Initially, she had written to director Anthony Minghella, explaining her burning desire to play the lead. "I did the role that everyone said was," she hesitates and takes a breath, "just far too dark and dingy. When I read  the book, I knew it would be a fabulous film. It was obvious to me that I had to play Katherine."

 

In typical self-deprecating mode, Scott Thomas shuns the idea of her own beauty in movie star terms, even if she was voted one of the most beautiful women in the world in several polls at the time of her English Patient fame. Certainly, she has never chosen roles for their star quality, and was never about to give up her Parisian life for movie stardom.

 

Rather, Scott Thomas is into longevity, and is fortunate that her sophisticated image makes her fairly ageless for roles. She is on the cusp of turning 42 and is optimistic about her future. "I may be tempting the devil here but I have a feeling I'm going to go on for quite a while."

 

So what of her famous leading men, Redford in The Horse Whisperer and Ford in Random Hearts? Aren't they a little long in the tooth? "Well, that's the difference between an ordinary man and a film star," she notes. "Film stars, especially the main ones, have a magic aura about them. They remain who they are. Robert Redford at 35 and Robert Redford at 60 is still Robert Redford."

 

While Scott Thomas remains in awe of her Hollywood leading men, she takes her own fame with a pinch of salt. She admits it helps that her husband is a huge star in his own field. Certainly, Olivennes is less intimidated by the showbusiness world than other husbands might be; he even seems to enjoy it. "I think he finds it amusing. He takes it for what it's worth - the bullshit," she says.

 

"We try and keep our professional lives separate. If I'm stuck over a decision I'll ask him, but usually I know what I want to do."

 

Scott Thomas says they have "an army of people" in their employ and admits it's a luxury, but one she values. "I've always tried to have people working for me who are English speaking, so the children stay bilingual. Francois speaks to them in French and I speak to them in English." As a native Frenchman, Oilvennes' English has "much improved since he met me," she gloats moch-haughtily, like the lady of the manor, which, indeed, she is - the couple own a 19th century country house outside of Paris where they spend most weekends.

 

There are stables, horses, the whole works, and clearly it is where Scott Thomas can let her hair down. It's hard to imagine that her movie star pal would not be envious of the life she leads.