'I am a real mix of two cultures'

Kristin Scott Thomas with crowd in Dinard. 'I wanted to put the record straight to say that you can recover from a tragic childhood and come out the other side' Photo: Courtesy of Dinard Festival of British and Irish Film

She has always exuded a certain English self-assurance, poise and control coupled with French chic and savoir-faire. But Kristin Scott Thomas has admitted that until relatively recently she was a bag of nerves and jumbled emotions under the flawless surface she presented to the world.

You would never guess from the serene appearance she presents these days, especially walking the red carpet as the opening night guest last night at the Dinard Festival of British and Irish Cinema where her first film as a director My Mother’s Wedding was given its French premiere.

The narrative concentrates on three sisters returning to their childhood home for the third wedding of their twice widowed mother (played by Scott Thomas herself). The daughters are from very different backgrounds: Georgina (Emily Beecham), a palliative nurse; Victoria (Sienna Miller), a film star; and Katherine (Scarlett Johansson), a Captain in the Royal Navy.

Kristin Scott Thomas: 'Just because you have a few wrinkles does not mean that you do not have anything meaningful to contribute' Photo: Courtesy of Dinard Festival of British and Irish Film

Scott Thomas revealed: “I wanted to do something personal – a childhood that was spoiled by various catastrophes is personal. It is a story that has followed me through my whole career. In every profile that has appeared in the media there is always a paragraph that talks about my ‘tragic childhood.’

One of four children, Scott Thomas had a privileged family background in Dorset and attended Cheltenham Ladies’ College, where she was a boarder from the age of eight. She suffered early tragedy when her father and then her stepfather – both Navy pilots – were killed in similar accidents when their planes crashed into the Channel.

Talking about conveying that experience through fiction, Scott Thomas said: “I wanted to put the record straight to say that you can recover from a tragic childhood and come out the other side. You can vanquish the demons from childhood – the eldest daughter in the film, played by Scarlett Johansson, has to cope with learning that first her real father and then her stepfather who replaces him have both died in sad circumstances, which is very close to what I had experienced. So that is the personal aspect but otherwise I invented the stories around these three sisters who live in a kind of romantic disarray - their personal lives are completely chaotic and the three of them are bit annoyed that their mother has found happiness and seems radiant.

“I am a real mix of two cultures. My cinema career in a way was forged here in France but my feelings of love for my country of origin are so strong that I wanted my first film as a director to be in my mother-tongue. And I didn’t want to play in it originally but eventually because of budgetary considerations I was obliged to.”

The 65-year-old could still easily pass for either an impeccably groomed Parisienne or an upper-class English lady who lunches. The French experience in common with such other Channel-hopping ex-pats as Charlotte Rampling and the late Jane Birkin, has led her to acquire an allure she might never have acquired solely in her country of birth.

Kristin Scott Thomas on red carpet in Dinard. On her debut: 'My cinema career in a way was forged here in France but my feelings of love for my country of origin are so strong that I wanted my first film as a director to be in my mother-tongue' Photo: Courtesy of Dinard Festival of British and Irish Film

She once told me in a previous interview that she holds no great admiration for Hollywood. “I am just so angry about it and bored with it. In France women of my age are still regarded as having something to say and filmmakers finds us emotionally intriguing.

“Just because you have a few wrinkles does not mean that you do not have anything meaningful to contribute. As you get older it all becomes richer and the implications of everything you do become so much more complicated – and therefore interesting. Your life as a woman does not end because you are 35 or 65.”

She seems now to have reached a harmonious plateau after recently marrying her partner of five years, John Micklethwait, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg, in a small ceremony with only their immediate family and closest friends in attendance. She co-wrote the film with him and he was also one of the producers. She confided to one journalist about her wedding: “Just thinking about it makes my heart swell. Every time I look at the pictures I think, ‘Ah…’ It was just so affectionate and lovely. Completely brilliant.”

Previously she has spoken openly about having suffered with depression, and attended psychoanalysis, but now she seems in great shape, especially basking in the critical approval for her performance as spy boss Diana Taverner in the AppleTV+ show Slow Horses now back for a second series.

She even surprised herself by her stern demeanour opposite Gary Oldman and told one interviewer: “It was the coldness. I’d had no idea before why I came across like that. It worries me to think it might seep out into real life.”

From left: Emily Beecham, Sienna Miller, Kristin Scott Thomas and Scarlett Johansson in My Mother's Wedding. Photo: Courtesy of Dinard Festival of British and Irish Film

The eminent French actor Daniel Auteuil, who once worked with her, described her as an “audacious and daring” actress. She doesn’t see it that way. “I do not see what I do as risks, rather as necessities. There is, of course, always the risk of being made to look totally ridiculous and that is there all the time.”

Although Scott Thomas was innvolved in a few in-house productions as a child, playing Tootles, one of the Lost Boys, in Peter Pan, there wasn't much acting to speak of. At 18 she was living above a fish and chip shop in London and attending the Central School of Speech and Drama, on a teacher-training course.

She wanted to cross over to the acting course, but was told that she wasn't talented enough; if she wanted to play Lady Macbeth, they said, she'd have to join an amateur dramatics group. "Lumpily fluent" in French, she ditched the course and headed for the City of Light, where she became an au pair to a couple who worked in the Paris Opera.

She was encouraged to apply to drama school, and won a place at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théâtre, where she met "a really great teacher-mentor, a very eccentric actor, who sang a lot, and liked wacky things”.

After graduation in 1986, her first big break was at 26 in the film Under The Cherry Moon, in which she was cast as a French heiress opposite Prince. The film was a disaster. Two years later she made a more sober impression as the cut-glass wife in A Handful of Dust. “And that sort of stuck and it was very difficult for me to shake off that image for a long time. It put me off doing a lot of work in England because I just got bored with playing Lady this or that.”

Ask her to rattle through her memorable celluloid experiences and she cites Four Weddings And a Funeral as “fun,” Mission: Impossible as “a good time, and mad and silly”. When she reaches The English Patient she clouds over to explain it was one of those roles that were “so emotional that they did not end up being much fun”.

Now, though, in her middle to late years she has loosened up considerably even though the challenges are just as demanding including her directorial debut.

The Dinard Festival of British and Irish Cinema runs until 5 October.