When Kristin Scott Thomas said she wanted to meet at Clifton Nurseries garden centre in Maida Vale, my fantasy was that she would ask me to help her pick out some begonias. Alas, I arrive to find an empty table at the twee little café and a blunt text message that she is running 20 minutes late. KST (as her pals call her) is always late, and always makes a big fuss about how unusual a state of affairs lateness is for her. It is one of the many ways in which Britain’s chicest theatrical dame is bone-marrow-level fabulous.
Here’s another: 10 minutes into the interview, I idly enquire where her ginormous cat’s-eye sunglasses are from. “Victoria Beckham,” she crows, throwing them on to her astonishing visage as the weekday rain drizzles outside. She raises her hands above her head and points down stagily at a pair of shades struggling to fit atop cheekbones that, at 57, can only be described as insane. “Movie star,” she drawls, dry as toast.
Read more: The Hollywood Portfolio: Margot And Nicole Cover February Vogue
Honestly, what’s not to like? I last met Scott Thomas a decade ago, back when everyone thought she was a frosty menace, newly divorced and negotiating her way from Hollywood stardom (The English Patient, Four Weddings and a Funeral) to becoming the low-key queen of French arthouse cinema and London’s West End. That was before 2013, when she quit film entirely for four years (“Bored”). This autumn she made a stylish return to cinema screens in Sally Potter’s The Party, playing a slinky political A-lister. But it is her work in Darkest Hour, as Clementine Churchill opposite Gary Oldman’s Winston, that will remind audiences what they’ve been missing.
Her scenes fizz with so much glamour and fun, they easily rank among the season’s jolliest awards bait. Perhaps her notorious stiff upper lip has wobbled? Approaching 60, Scott Thomas has dressed today as an extremely fancy teenager, in jeans, trainers (“Valentino… I was in the campaign”) and a grey T-shirt emblazoned with the legend “Paris Nothing Club” that she bought at Colette. Her tanned arms are bespangled with trinkets from Tiffany and Hermès, as well as an absurdly large watch from Parmigiani. She looks divine – but of course rolls her eyes at the compliment. “Christophe Robin, who’s my favourite hair colourist [in Paris], always says, ‘Don’t make it too tidy, you know she’s English,’” she says, smiling.
She is a proper laugh – and, curiously, much more relaxed than she used to be. “When did we last meet?” she ponders, eventually working out that she must have been 48. She leans back in her chair, smiling triumphantly and tossing her head to one side to show off the full force of her profile. “Peak KST,” she cries, theatrically. “Peak! I would say from about 46 to 52, that was when I looked my best. I was really fit and I didn’t need to wear specs all the time and I didn’t get so tired.” You were also single again? She twinkles. “I bought a flat and I could have whatever I liked in my bathroom.”
Read more: BAFTA Nominations 2018
Aside from her damehood, Oscar nod and five Olivier Award nominations (all since 2004; she won for The Seagull in 2008), Scott Thomas famously moved to Paris at 19, and used to be married to France’s preeminent gynaecologist. Their three children range in age from 17 to 29, but in recent years she’s spent a fair amount of time back in Blighty. Yet she will forever reside in the national consciousness as irredeemably soignée. To be honest, the enduring fantasy image of Scott Thomas is of her stepping off the Eurostar at St Pancras looking impossibly chic and rather pained as some sozzled, fake-tanned English-woman stumbles past. Scott Thomas, perkily: “Oh, that’s because of the Daily Mail, they put me on the cover.” Yes, because you said French women trump English women by being able to look “attractive without abusing their sexy side”. She bristles. “I did, but not in that context, I have to say.” Would you care to elaborate? “I can clear it up for the nation. I was asked in an interview in France about the difference between French and English, so I said that French women didn’t brush their hair and never ate anything and smoked like chimneys, and that English women like fake tan and get pissed on a Saturday night. Basically that… Am I wrong?” Where do you lie on the scale then? “Oh, I love a tan but I don’t go for the fake one,” she grimaces. “The smell.”
Read more: Golden Globes 2018: Winners
As I said – fun. But was she always this way? Hugh Grant, her Four Weddings co-star, once claimed her personality was so chilly she needed “warming up” on set every morning. But something has changed. She is still ruthlessly witty, but now also self-deprecating with occasional flourishes of camp. It makes her wonderful company – sample quote: “I’m a massive fan of Gogglebox” – but also wonderful on-screen. She has so much fun playing Clementine Churchill (charlestoning into drawing rooms, snuffling up to Oldman’s Winston and calling him “Pig”), it feels like something of a career high. One more decent scene would surely have bagged her some awards, and if there’s any justice it will bring her lots of job offers.
Of course it was the same old story; she took time out from cinema because, as her fifties progressed, the parts got worse. “I’d just had it,” she snaps, explaining it got to the point where she’d be on-set savagely muttering under her breath between takes: “This is the last fucking film, this is the last fucking time.” She sighs. “It’s the way I earn my living, you know. You put one foot in front of the other, you keep going, you just plod through. And I did plod through a lot of them and got into a sort of a lull.” To be fair, her career has always been gloriously chequered. A naval pilot’s daughter, she was born staunchly upper-middle-class in Cornwall, but there wasn’t much money around, especially after her father died in a flying accident when she was five. Her mother scrabbled together school fees, so she ended up the poorest girl at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, before trying her hand at teacher training and decamping to Paris. Her first film job was playing the posh totty opposite Prince in Under the Cherry Moon in 1986 (bonkers, and well worth a rewatch), but those irresistible cheekbones and natural hauteur soon secured her work with Roman Polanski and Charles Sturridge.
Then came Four Weddings, and she was off to Hollywood. Yet by the late 1990s she was specialising in playing “old men’s crumpet”, squinting into sunsets opposite Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer or Harrison Ford in Random Hearts. So she ditched that, and made a name for herself in France where she could play complicated leads for difficult auteurs, and she was showered with awards.
Read more: Inside The February 2018 Issue Of Vogue
Then came the lull. But, honestly, if Darkest Hour is anything to go by, the best could be yet to come. What changed, I ask? “Just maturity, I think,” she says. “It’s quite nice being 57. I mean, believe me, some of it isn’t. Having tendonitis isn’t nice. Or being the invisible woman.” The horror of hitting a certain age and becoming invisible in the eyes of the world – surely it can’t be true for KST? “So true,” she says, flatly. “I can turn it on and off, but if I’m not paying attention, if I haven’t decided to turn it on, then I just… disappear. Sometimes it quite depresses me. It is such a weird feeling and it’s quite traumatic when you first have to deal with it."
“Suddenly you become unimportant and you feel like you don’t count,” she continues. Does the fact you can still turn on the movie-star magic, throw on the slap and dress to the nines just make you resent the whole equation more? “No,” she says, appalled at the thought. “Thank God I can. I like being able to pump it up occasionally, though you do get a bit shy sometimes. For example, the style of dress – there’s something really weird about getting older. You can wear something one week and it’s great, and then a month later, you just can’t wear it any more.” Why not? “Too old,” she glowers. “I had this beautiful dress that Bella Freud gave me – she was designing for Biba and was very influenced by Ossie Clark, with all the buttons, and it was just great. And I tried it on the other day and looked ridiculous. I was really cross.”
What about men? She has always been tight-lipped about her love life, but post-divorce she dated younger men and must surely have been of eternal fascination to her sons’ schoolfriends. Is there a certain kind of man who actually starts to appreciate you more at this stage of life? “What, the 23-year-olds?” she says, with a minxy look. “I think the days of me being attractive to that age group are gone.” She looks so ridiculously beautiful saying this that I instantly protest. “It’s true,” she replies, quite sombrely. “That’s over.” So what are we looking at now? Twenty-eight? Thirty-two? “No. I want grown-ups.”
Actually, two more elements changed her world view recently: she became a grandmother and she joined Instagram. Out comes the phone. “Would you like to see? She’s three and a half months,” she coos, showing me a beautiful snap of her daughter Hannah’s baby. “Heaven,” she sighs. “I refuse to be bullied into thinking it’s not cool. It is super-cool. Absolutely thrilling.”
She pauses for a moment, surprised by this touchy-feely, off-brand outburst from Britain’s haughtiest actress. She visibly gathers herself. “Mind you,” she adds airily, “it’s easy to love something when it’s miles away and you don’t have to do anything.” Classic KST.
*Darkest Hour is on general release in British cinemas from December 29 *
Read more: Golden Globes 2018: Red Carpet Dresses
