'I've had some corkers in my time'
Sara Buys
Gifted at delivering even the unlikeliest of lines with radiant emotion -- or flirty insouciance -- Kristin Scott Thomas has a rare, genuine screen presence. And she's not bad at playing herself, either, says Sara Buys.
At the BAFTAs, earlier this year, Saul Zaentz, the visionary independent-film producer, was honoured with a British Academy Fellowship. The actress chosen to present his award was Kristin Scott Thomas, who starred in one of his most successful pictures, The English Patient. As Scott Thomas handed him the award, kissed his cheek and took her place at the back of the stage, he turned to an audience that included Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Renée Zellweger, Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts, and said: 'There goes the finest actress of her generation.'
Zaentz's accolade confirmed that the 43-year-old's beauty and talent have won her a fully paid-up membership of the British acting aristocracy in Hollywood. But she found her way into audiences' hearts through a more unconventional path -- by being good at playing the girl who never gets the guy.
From her heart-wrenching, hand-wringing, chain-smoking performance as Fiona in Four Weddings and a Funeral (one of the most moving unrequited-love scenes in modern cinema; you could almost hear the men in the audience shouting, 'No. Hugh -- what are you doing?'); and her passionate self-inflicted suffering as Katharine Clifton in The English Patient ; to her recent London stage debut as the emotionally imprisoned, blanched beauty, Masha, in Chekhov's Three Sisters, when it comes to unrequited love, no-one can do broken-hearted quite like Kristin Scott Thomas.
Reams of copy have been devoted to her glacial beauty -- skyscraper cheekbones, huge haunted eyes, teenage-girl slender frame and luminous skin -- and she constantly faces charges of froideur. But on this close July day, she is demonstrating none of that reputed coldness. In between mouthfuls of frisée lardons at La Closerie des Lilas, a favourite restaurant of hers in the sixth arrondissement of Paris (close to where she lives with her obstetrician husband, François Olivennes, and their three children), Scott Thomas explains that her success was far from overnight. 'Things happened pretty slowly for me,' she says, 'and I'm glad it worked out that way, because I feel that I've earned it. I've done my time sharing trailers and getting rejected for parts, and I'm proud of that.'
The role of Katharine Clifton, for which she received an Oscar nomination, didn't come easily. 'Initially they didn't want me for The English Patient. Katharine Clifton was a gorgeous, sunny, desirable character, and until then I only really played undesired women. But I knew it was mine the minute I read the script. I fought for it, and I'm glad I did because I was right. There was so much of me in Katharine, and I knew I could do it better than anyone else.'
This comment is typical of Scott Thomas' nature -- part self-effacement, part complete confidence in her capabilities. Her conversation is full of funny, self-mocking stories, such as the worst lines she's ever had to deliver: 'I've had some corkers in my time, but the was... OK, let me get this right..."You've painted my life as the perfect picture and now you've gilded the frame." Ugh! One hundred per cent cheese. But I did it, and I did it well.'
But her self-deprecation -- 'People imagine I'm very grand, but I'm an ordinary working mother, clearing up mess and surrounded by Ikea furniture' -- however endearing, belies a cultured, glamorous woman, who isn't averse to a bit of Hollywood glitz. 'I love Cannes because I can wear dark glasses with a Dior dress, and I love the fact that everyone gets really excited about what I'm wearing.'
Her relationship with Armani is well publicised -- she has acted as an ambassador for his two labels for the past few seasons, and has spent many an evening dining with him on the rooftop of his home in Milan. 'I also love Valentino's parties,' she says. 'Every season, he throws these wonderful bashes at his house just outside Paris. The surroundings are surreal and beautiful, and all the women are exquisite, and I get an excuse to flounce about in my favourite Valentino dress. I've also just discovered Lanvin.'
You'd be hard pushed to get Scott Thomas to admit it, but she is also an international sex symbol. To list her leading men -- Sean Penn, Harrison Ford, Hugh Grant, Robert Redford (on whom she'd had a lifelong crush), Ralph Fiennes ('he was a great snog'), Tom Cruise and, most recently, Daniel Auteuil, in the forthcoming art-house film, Petites Coupures -- is to see that she has co-starred alongside most of Hollywood's biggest heart-throbs.
It is one of Scott Thomas own revelations that perhaps reveals most about her sensuality and sexual confidence. After the Harpers cover shoot, Kristin, photographer Rankin and the fashion team move on to Hôtel Costes for dinner. A few tables away sits Emmanuelle Seigner, the beautiful French actress with whom Scott Thomas shared an impassioned embrace (and that's putting it delicately) in Roman Polanski's 1992 film Bitter Moon. When one of us points out the coincidence, Scott Thomas recalls how, on the film set, she was intimidated by Seigner's sexual confidence. She knew she had to do this scene with her and that Polanski wanted fire. Deciding the only way she was going to match the other woman was to psyche herself up and go one step further, she stepped on set and licked Seigner's body from head to toe. As Scott Thomas tells this story, her expression changes from one of horror at her actions to amusement and finally, to a smile of pride. She had won the upper hand.
The actress remains resolutely modest about her beauty: 'I look much better on screen than I do in real life,' she protests. 'There's no contest. Take Random Hearts (a film she made with Harrison Ford). I looked so beautiful in that film. I have never looked that gorgeous, before or after, but I put it down to good lighting and make-up -- it's as simple as that.' Rankin disagrees. 'I was quite nervous before I met Kristin. Because she's a strong, confident, talented actress, my preconceptions of her were as a sort of Madonna figure. But found her warm and charming, and I love the fact that she doesn't give a fuck. She is a beautiful woman who will continue to be so into her old age. She has the kind of aesthetic that lasts for ever.'
It is Scott Thomas' mouth that is key to her sensuality. It is wide, generous and utterly captivating, and you can't take your eyes off it, whether she's reciting rhyming couplets from Racine's Bérénice, or greedily polishing off her fruit salad. It is the warmest, most expressive thing about her face, and perhaps goes some way to explaining how she elicited such extraordinary, passionate praise from the legendary Saul Zaentz with just one kiss. Now, that's stage presence.
