| BIOGRAPHY
Early in her career, it looked as though actress Kristin Scott
Thomas was going to be relegated to playing the kind of elegantly
bloodless British women she portrayed in Four Weddings and a Funeral
(1994), but with her role as the aristocratic but passionate Katharine
Clifton in The English Patient, Scott Thomas broke the mold, proving
herself capable of projecting a good deal of sensuality and heat
as her character embarked on a tragic affair with a Hungarian
adventurer (Ralph Fiennes).
The daughter of a Royal Navy pilot who died in an air crash when
she was five, Scott Thomas was born the eldest of five children,
in Cornwall, on May 24, 1960. When she was 11, tragedy struck
again when her stepfather, also a military pilot, met a demise
identical to her father's. Scott Thomas was left to help her mother
look after the family and -- in contrast to what her film roles
would suggest -- her situation was far from aristocratic. Although
she had an interest in acting, her mother loathed the idea and
sent her daughter to the Cheltenham Ladies College. Scott Thomas
dropped out at age 16, spent some time in a convent, and eventually
enrolled at London's Central School of Speech and Drama to take
a teacher training course. Unable to resist the call of the stage,
however, Scott Thomas quietly began studying drama. Unfortunately,
the school's drama department advised her to pursue other professions.
Scott Thomas was 18 at the time and in addition to being hurt
by the drama department's rejection, she was also fed up with
school. Seeking to gain perspective on her life, she went to visit
some friends in Paris. What originally began as a two-week vacation
ended in a permanent change of residence, after Scott Thomas took
an au-pair job and then fell in love with a Frenchman (she eventually
married obstetrician François Oliviennes, with whom she
has a son and a daughter).
Though her new French friends teased her for being a funny little
English girl, Scott Thomas found herself at home in Paris and
decided to try acting again. At the encouragement of her friends,
she enrolled in L'Ecole Nationale des Arts et Techniques de Theatres,
honing her skills and finding the French school to be more supportive
than its English counterpart. She gained experience playing small
roles on stage and soon went on to do some television work. After
an inauspicious debut playing a headstrong heiress in Prince's
Under the Cherry Moon (1986), she worked in a number of French
films. In 1988, she was given her first lead in an English film,
playing a cool-blooded aristocrat in A Handful of Dust.
It wasn't until the 1990s that Scott Thomas began to attain recognition
outside of Europe. Two years after starring as Hugh Grant's wife
in Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon (1992), she came to the attention
of an international audience in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Her
second outing with Grant, the film was a sleeper hit, becoming
the highest-grossing British film in the country's history. Following
the film's success, Scott Thomas applied her talents to smaller
films, appearing as Alfred Hitchcock's thorny assistant in the
French-Canadian Le Confessionnal (1994) and a plain-jane entomologist
who finds herself embroiled in family dysfunction in Angels and
Insects (1995). In 1996, the year of The English Patient, Scott
Thomas fully stepped into the glare of the international spotlight,
winning a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her role in the widely
acclaimed film. That same year, she did less-heralded but no less
respectable work in Richard III, in which she played the enigmatic
Lady Anne, and Mission Impossible, her first truly big-budget
film. With Hollywood now taking full notice, Scott Thomas was
cast in a coveted lead role in Robert Redford's 1998 adaptation
of Nicholas Evans' The Horse Whisperer. The film proved something
of a disappointment, although the actress was praised for her
strong performance. The following year, she found herself involved
in another high-profile project, starring opposite Harrison Ford
in Random Hearts. Playing a woman who discovers that her husband,
who died in a plane crash, was having an affair with Ford's wife,
who also died in the crash, Scott Thomas again got to demonstrate
her ability at embracing roles that went far beyond the confines
of the tea-sipping British aristocracy. |
FILMOGRAPHY
• Gosford Park (2001)
• Life as a House (2001)
• Up at the Villa (2000)
• Random Hearts (1999)
• The Horse Whisperer (1998)
• Sweet Revenge (1998)
• Body & Soul (1996)
• The English Patient (1996)
• Mission: Impossible (1996)
• The Pompatus of Love (1996)
• An Unforgettable Summer (1996)
• Angels & Insects (1995)
• Richard III (1995)
• Bitter Moon (1994)
• Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
• The Bachelor (1992)
• Framed (1990)
• Spymaker - The Secret Life of Ian Fleming (1990)
• The Endless Game (1989)
• A Handful of Dust (1988)
• The Tenth Man (1988)
• Under the Cherry Moon (1986) |
