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Dame Kristin Ann Scott Thomas,[1] DBE (born 24 May 1960) is a British actress. She won the Best Supporting Actress BAFTA Award for Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for The English Patient (1996). For her work in the theatre, she has been nominated for the Olivier Award for Best Actress five times, winning in 2008 for the Royal Court revival of The Seagull.
Scott Thomas made her film debut in the Prince-directed Under the Cherry Moon in 1986,[2] Further film roles include Bitter Moon (1992), Mission: Impossible (1996), The Horse Whisperer (1998), Gosford Park (2001) and Nowhere Boy (2010). She has also worked in French cinema, winning the European Film Award for Best Actress for Philippe Claudel's I've Loved You So Long (2008). Her other French films include The Valet (2006), Tell No One (2007), Leaving (2009) and Sarah's Key (2010).
Scott Thomas was born in Redruth, Cornwall. Her mother, Deborah (née Hurlbatt), was brought up in Hong Kong and Africa and studied drama before marrying Kristin's father,[3] Lieutenant Commander Simon Scott Thomas, a pilot in the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm who died in a flying accident when Kristin was aged five.[4][5] She is the elder sister of actress Serena Scott Thomas, the niece of Admiral Sir Richard Thomas (a former Black Rod, the parliamentary ceremonial officer in the House of Lords),[6] and the great-great-niece of the ill-fated explorer Captain Scott, who lost the race to the South Pole.[7]
Scott Thomas was brought up in the Roman Catholic tradition.[8][9] Her childhood home was in Trent, Dorset, England. Her mother remarried, to another Royal Navy pilot, who also died in a flying accident, six years after the death of her father. Scott Thomas was educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College and St. Antony's Leweston in Sherborne, Dorset, both independent schools. On leaving school she moved to Hampstead, London, and worked in a department store. She then began training to be a drama teacher at the Central School of Speech and Drama. On being told she would never be a good enough actress, she left at the age of 19 to work as an au pair in Paris.[10] Speaking French fluently, she studied acting at the École nationale supérieure des arts et techniques du théâtre (ENSATT) in Paris, and at age 25 on graduation, was cast opposite pop star Prince as Mary Sharon, a French heiress, in the 1986 film Under The Cherry Moon.
Her breakthrough role was in a 1988 adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust, where she won an "Evening Standard" British Film Award for most promising newcomer. This was followed by roles opposite Hugh Grant in Bitter Moon and Four Weddings and a Funeral where she won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress. 1996 saw the release of her most famous role as Katharine Clifton in The English Patient, which gained her Golden Globe and Oscar nominations as well as critical acclaim. This was followed by a brief period working in Hollywood on films such as The Horse Whisperer with Robert Redford and Random Hearts with Harrison Ford. However, growing disillusioned with Hollywood, she took a year off to give birth to her third child.
She returned to the stage in 2001 when she played the title role in a French theatre production of Racine's Berenice and on screen as Lady Sylvia McCordle in Robert Altman's critically acclaimed Gosford Park. This started a critically acclaimed second career on stage, in which she has received four nominations for a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress, including one win, for her performance of Arkadina in a London West End production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull.[11] She reprised the role in New York in September 2008.[12] In summer 2011 Scott Thomas returned to London's West End to star as Emma in Harold Pinter's Betrayal at the Comedy Theatre. The revival was directed by Ian Rickson. Her husband was played by Ben Miles and the love triangle was completed by Douglas Henshall. In January 2013, she starred in another Pinter play, Old Times, again directed by Ian Rickson. In 2014 she appeared at The Old Vic in the title role of Sophocles's Electra.
Scott Thomas also has acted in French films. In 2006, she played the role of Hélène, in French, in Ne le dis à personne (Tell No One), by French director Guillaume Canet. In 2008, Scott Thomas received many accolades for her performance in Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (I've Loved You So Long), including BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress. In 2009 she played the role of a wife who leaves her husband for another man in the film Leaving. In Sarah's Key (2010), Scott Thomas starred in Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, as an American journalist living in Paris who discovers that the flat her husband is renovating for them was once the home of a Jewish family who were evicted.
Other recent roles include the role of Cannes Film Festival.
She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2003 Birthday Honours and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to drama.[14][15] She was named a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by the French Government in 2005.[16][17]
Scott Thomas is divorced from
She was listed as one of the fifty best-dressed women over 50 by The Guardian in March 2013.[21]
The separation was reportedly precipitated by her romantic involvement with English actor Tobias Menzies, whom she met while appearing in Chekhov's play Three Sisters in London's West End around 2003.[19] Menzies was also her co-star in a London production of Pirandello's As You Desire Me in 2006.[20]
and sometimes considers herself more French than British. [18]
Nobel Prize in Literature, Samuel Beckett, United States, BBC Radio 3, Turin
Richard Curtis, Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino, Hugh Grant, Mike Newell (director)
Anthony Minghella, Ralph Fiennes, Italy, The Godfather, Rotten Tomatoes
Agatha Christie, Stephen Fry, Bob Balaban, Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes