Kristin Scott Thomas: Queen of cool
Lisa Grainger
She's the quintessential English heroine: aristocratic, formidable and hauntingly beautiful. Now, at 41 and with three children, Kristin Scott Thomas has become the muse of Giorgio Armani. Lisa Grainger meets England's ice queen
"I'm so, so, so, so, soooo sorry," says Kristin Scott Thomas, holding out a soft, white hand. "This whole modelling malarkey is so odd. Put me in front of a normal camera and I'm fine, but being surrounded by all these fashion people makes me insecure."
I have just been allowed back on the set for the new Armani ad campaign, having been temporarily banished by the actress's publicist for making Scott Thomas feel nervous. Having to watch one of the world's most beautiful women through a backstage crack isn't exactly thrilling, but her jitters are understandable.
At 41, the English-born actress is making her first professional foray into modelling. The haughty features - pale, translucent skin, deep-set blue eyes and high cheekbones - that so often get her typecast as a cool, aristocratic Englishwoman have been singled out by Giorgio Armani as the face of his spring/summer 2003 campaign. Which is why she is sitting in a Milan warehouse, surrounded by Armani's sister, Rosanna, a posse of hairdressers and fashion lackeys, and the fashion photographer Paolo Roversi.
Given Scott Thomas's self-image as "a mother of three who spends most of her day rushing about fetching and carrying, before collapsing in front of the telly with some baked beans", it's hardly surprising that modelling doesn't come entirely naturally. As an actress, she can hide behind a fictitious persona. Today's shoot, though, means all eyes are upon her - KST, the woman, the body and the face. The studio is silent, the music turned off. The only person to talk is the photographer, who gently urges her to raise her chin, lengthen that delicate neck, or "arch, Kristin, arch".
When the tension of the shoot subsides, the extent of her nerves is touching. "I'm not a beanpole who stands about for a living," she says. "So I'm not quite sure what is expected. And I'm not sure whether my bottom looks big in these trousers - does it? Oh good. And then I keep feeling so old."
While she might feel it, she doesn't look it. She has the tiny lines you would expect of a woman who combines motherhood with acting and running a production company, but she still exudes the almost surreal beauty of a natural-born romantic heroine. It's not just her tiny 5ft 6in frame, but those dreamy eyes that convey emotional energy with just one look - whether as the aloof wallflower Fiona in Four Weddings and a Funeral, the passionate Katharine Clifton in The English Patient or the aristocratic Lady Brenda Last in A Handful of Dust.
Even in plain grey Armani tweed trousers and high-collared jacket, she exudes sexuality. "Most days I don't feel sexy at all," she protests. "I wake up, look in the mirror and think, Oh shit! (For such an ethereal-looking creature, Scott Thomas has a knack of littering conversations with four-letter words.) When you see me on screen, it has taken teams of people to make me look like that. It isn't really me. Well, it is, but..."
Besides, she insists, on most days she wears combat trousers ("which my children loathe"), or jeans. "I hate overtly sexy clothes," she says, now curled up on the sofa, her elegant fingers and short, natural, polished nails draped over her knees. "I like the surprise element. I would rather have a dress slit down the back to my arse than a slit up my leg. Somehow slits are more sensual going downwards than running upwards."
Being one of Armani's muses was irresistible, she says, not only because she gets a fabulous fee (reportedly six figures) and as many outfits as she wants, but because it means she can spend less time shopping and more at home with her French gynaecologist husband, François Oliviennes, and her children Hannah, 14, Joseph, 11, and George, 2. "There is just not enough time for all the titivating that one is supposed to do," she says. "And as I get older, it gets harder. I can't go out till 1am every night or it shows. And then there is the family, and homework, and husband, and ..."
But while she may feel tired, her male counterpart in the Armani campaign, the gorgeous French actor Olivier Martinez, can't see it. "Older women, zey have zis energy zat comes from having felt great emotion," he says. "You can see from ze way she is zat she understands life, and I like zat."
Armani himself admits she has a "presence that is magnetic, because it is entirely natural and never forced. I also love her British calm and candour," he says. "Plus that wry sense of humour that Italians would love to imitate, but are unable to."
Other male co-stars, from Robert Redford to Hugh Grant, are equally forthcoming in their praise, although Grant once admitted that she "needed a bit of warming up in the morning on set to get her defrosted".
"I loved working with Hugh," she says, her face crinkling into a grin. "He is lovely, really lovely. And very, very, very funny. It's impossible to work with him, though, because your sides hurt and you end up with aching cheeks."
Despite working with Hollywood's hunkiest - Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer, Harrison Ford in Random Hearts, Ralph Fiennes in The English Patient - Scott Thomas has never been tempted, she claims, to stray from François, the Parisian with whom she fell in love at first sight aged 21.
"I might be crazy about someone professionally, but that's different to my heart," she says. "In a way, acting satisfies your curiosity because you can flirt, but it's your profession. It's not life."
So reports that she was as obsessed with Redford as he was with her are unfounded? "Oh, please!" she snorts derisively. And Harrison Ford? "My husband is on even safer territory there." But she does admit that she is starting to find it difficult to sit beside François while watching a film in which she is having sex. "It is weird, and I do feel sorry for him. But then he is an obstetrician and sees naked ladies all day, and I never give it a moment's thought."
Besides, since going through what she calls "a midlife wobble" and seeing a therapist twice a week, her priorities have changed. Her family now comes first and she will only work with directors who respect that - "who realise that to be a successful working woman, you don't have to give up everything, that you can have children and a life".
She has started a production company, KST Productions, which owns the film rights to AL Kennedy's book Original Bliss, about a battered housewife, and an Elizabeth Jane Howard novel about a philandering husband, both of which she would like to act in.
And when those are done? She would love to do more comedy ("Wouldn't it be fun to do another one with Hugh?"), to wear more beautiful clothes ("Armani, of course, and Chanel, which I love") and to play her dream role, Lady Penelope in Thunderbirds ("although I'm getting a bit long in the tooth for that"). She would also enjoy doing something more practical, "like helping kids in jail, or being a mechanic, or something".
So no more modelling then? Perhaps not. As the photographer Roversi says: "I don't think Kristin likes to be a model. She likes to act, to escape."
But, then, escaping doesn't get you free Armani dresses.
