“I think people do work too much. I’ve never been able to understand the whole ‘make hay while the sun shines’ thing. Either I want to work or I don’t want to work.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“It doesn’t make you feel very good being mean and fierce; it is much nicer playing people who are kind and sweet.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Life is too short to live on low-fat everything.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I still absolutely love ‘The Sound of Music’ and anything with Julie Andrews in it.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I think in most jobs, you get better as you get older. You gain experience, you gain knowledge.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Often, the roles I’m offered in England are melancholic women who are filled with regret for the past, regret for their fading beauty.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Baths are my favorite thing. I can have two, three a day.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“There’s something incredibly sexy about sand and sweat and dunes photographed like women’s backs.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Everyone loves to hate a spin doctor.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“At school, I always wanted to belong to a gang, and no one would have me. So I’d have make my own gang, but with everybody else’s leftovers.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I never go straight to the point if I can go the most difficult way. Why be simple when you can be complicated?”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“People accuse me of being Methody, but I’m not at all. The one thing I don’t want people to see is me. I don’t want them to be able to recognize my faults and failures and qualities, and I won’t use those things to spark off emotions or to illustrate.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I find it difficult to explain, but I’m quite ashamed of being an actress.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Having a leading man who is actually prettier than you are is quite upsetting.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Buy, buy, buy, buy! They want to grab you and trap you and turn you into little Elizabeth Hurleys.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I was happy, I wasn’t beaten, and I lacked nothing. But it wasn’t what people expect – it was very much sort of pinching and scraping. I don’t know how my mother did it.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Seeing The English Patient is wonderfully draining, but imagine acting in it for six months.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“People are always saying, English, English, English rose, and I just feel so completely different.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I’m not at all fed up with British films, but I am fed up with playing upper-class people.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“If you’re feeling insecure and you need to feel special, the best place to go is somewhere foreign where people treat you as special because you’re different.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I find it very difficult to be two different characters at the same time – actress and mother.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Movies make you immortal and ageless.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“In fact, in many ways my mother was quite hippy-dippy, serving macrobiotic food and reading ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.’”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“It takes a long time to appreciate one’s parents.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“You have to think about whether that Mercedes-Benz you have is actually worth how much it costs to you.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I’ve realised that I am who I am and that is it. Like it or lump it. I’m not around to please anyone any more, and it’s a huge relief.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“After a long time with someone, you realise you’ve been thinking for two.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I was very lost as a teenager. Which is a horrible way to feel.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I am sure that, had I grown up with both parents, had I grown up in a safe environment, had I grown up with a feeling of safety rather than danger, I would not be the way I am.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I was terrible at school.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I tend to do things that I’m very frightened of. That’s what I do.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I’m not used to being asked what I want to talk about. That’s why I’m an actress. Get told what to do, stand on the mark, say your words, wear this, look this way, look that way.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I know I can be bolshy and really unpleasant, and it always happens if I lose confidence in the people I’m working with. If I’ve got no confidence in what I’m doing and they don’t provide me with some assurance that we’re doing the right thing then I bully people. I’m a horrible bully.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“The parts I’ve been most successful in are the ones I’ve desperately, desperately wanted.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I love shooting French films because I don’t have to stick with being sophisticated or stuck-up.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Successful films are very dangerous things.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“If you make a film about a pig farmer in Wales and you are a huge hit as the pig farmer’s wife, the next thing is you’ll be asked to do a film about a sheep farmer in Scotland.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Men don’t fall in love with me – only young ones.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I really like acting in French. It’s actually quite different for me, from acting in English. It’s fun acting in a foreign language. You’re liberated or freed from preconceptions.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I wouldn’t want you to see me all the time on the screen, because I get bored of it myself!”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I’m very lazy!”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Boarding school is a wicked thing.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I do not want to pour out my heart to the world. I am cautious of what I say and to whom.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“We older women in Europe are lucky not to be shoved away in a drawer.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I try to make films that I find exciting. It makes me want to get out of bed at five in the morning, have my make-up done and play for the rest of the day.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“French culture takes ageing very seriously. There’s much less ageism than in Anglo-Saxon countries.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I do consider myself as being French, I suppose.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I know people think that I always play these characters who are in control and can chop someone’s head off with a look.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I never raise my voice!”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I can’t move back to England. My home is in France now. I’d love to but I can’t. My family’s all there now.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I have a feeling I will work for a long, long time. I like it a lot… and I don’t know. I just have a feeling that I’m going to be one of those people who go on for ever.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Most films seem to be about a man and a women falling in love at some point and once you pass forty-five, it’s almost disgusting to fall in love.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I can’t get into all that physical stuff of having to have flawless skin… Sometimes you see people and it looks like someone’s got an eraser and made their face a little blurry – their traits seem to go out of focus.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“With the theatre, your whole day is geared towards the evening’s show, and that’s the job. People usually go to work about 9 and come home around 5, or maybe 7.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“When you make a film, you sign a contract with somebody, and it’s not only legally binding but morally binding. You agree to give this man a certain number of weeks of your life, and you just go for it as much as possible. Because, whatever happens, the film is going to come out, so you might as well try very hard to make it a good one.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I just get so fed up with seeing the same things written about me. If I see the words ‘ice queen’ attached to me, I feel like banging my head against the wall. There’s this perception that I can only be in a film if I have a glass of champagne in my hand and a stately home in the background.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I am so bored with seeing stories about a mature man of 65 falling in love with a beautiful girl of 32.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“It’s very hard having a career in different continents and two different languages.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“My life is European.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“As a younger actor you want to be approved of, you want to gain respect, be admired. All of those things. To say: ‘This is me playing this character. And aren’t I fantastic!’ I don’t feel that so much now.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I mean, my father was killed when I was six. And I only have tiny, tiny flashes of memory.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I have never met a woman who works who doesn’t feel guilty. I mean we all deny it like crazy but deep down there is always that voice saying you should be at home.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I’d love to do some comedy. Particularly French comedy, which I know sounds like a contradiction in terms.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I’m not one of those famous people flying round the world emoting over every catastrophe. I’m too feeble.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“As an adult, it’s a huge shock to be orphaned; as a child it’s just hideous, ghastly.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“My body is a baby machine.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Sometimes, I think I could have been a major movie star with the vast mansion and staff. I look at my Volvo and think it could be a limousine. I think of the roles I turned down. But then I wouldn’t have had any children.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“If you are a successful actor, which is what I am, then you tend to get labelled very quickly and easily.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I’m a bit of a Doubting Thomas – always worrying about things.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I’m very wary of trust, you see.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Making films can be absolutely fantastic, but it can also be incredibly dull. You spend the whole day sitting by yourself in your trailer and then you get called to deliver one sentence – then you’re told to come back and do it again at 5:30 the following morning.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“We all come in different shapes and sizes, and that’s fine by me.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I like the idea that I’m making things that people might think and argue about.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I do a film because I like the story and I want to give life to a character – I don’t necessarily have to agree with the director.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I mean, if you’re being directed very precisely by somebody who has admiration and who’s really smart, it’s great. If you’re being told what to do by a nincompoop – and luckily that hasn’t happened very often – it can be very frustrating.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“The problem with being a film actress or a movie star is that people see you so huge that somehow you’re visually massive or somehow you’re in some removed space, which is a television or wherever. It somehow takes your humanity.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I think the sheer number of pop stars has kind of drowned out, somewhat, our interest. We’re just submerged.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I just don’t see very many films. Because I make them.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Having a career is a bit like navigating an Atlantic crossing – you have to make sure everything is keeping and is balanced.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I think I’m inspired mostly by other artists that aren’t actors, like writers or singers or artists, for being so brave.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I don’t want to have to be pretty. I don’t want to have to be adorable.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“If anyone says, ‘Let’s have a girls’ night out,’ I will run in the opposite direction.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Now, playing a love interest can be really thrilling, if you’re working opposite thrilling people.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“French is a foreign language, but I’ve been speaking it since I was 18 so it’s second nature to me.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Exoticism can give you an edge: it makes people assume you’re cleverer than you are and gives you the upper hand.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“’The English Patient’ was a huge turning point in my career and my life; it became this huge thing. But the whole Oscar build-up got completely out of control; I spent more time talking about that film than I spent making it!”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I’m very good at forgetting people.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I’m a late developer.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“I used to be so intensely preoccupied by unhappiness… now there are times where you might get down, but you can move on much faster now.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“People will now go to films with subtitles, you know. They’re not afraid of them. It’s one of the upsides of text-messaging and e-mail. Maybe the only good thing to come of it.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“When I speak English, I’ve been told, I have this patrician way of speaking that’s very irritating. It’s the whole class thing.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“My children are lovely. They’re perfect.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“Films are just consumables.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“You don’t choose a film because it’s made by a woman, you choose it because it’s good.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“The Cannes film festival is about big-budget films but also remarkable films made in different political regimes by film-makers with little resources.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
“As actors, we’re always asked to portray and react to these extreme circumstances, otherwise it’s not interesting. They are agonizing things to think about.”
― Kristin Scott Thomas
Leave a Reply