HER FINEST HOUR Kristin Scott Thomas revelled in playing Clementine Churchill in her latest movie. And at 57, she tells Jane Cornwell, there are more good parts being written for older women.

t’s a warm autumn day in on the beaches…” speech, Kristin turns never been a problem for this actor. Te Invisible Woman. She has been Spall. “It was totally mad, completely London and in a grand in a nuanced performance as his wife, Over the course of 30 years she has treading the boards ever since. brilliant. A real ensemble piece, the kind hotel overlooking a main animating a role that might easily have carved a dual career in English and A few years ago she caused a fuss of thing I love doing.” She fashes a smile. thoroughfare in Knightsbridge, been steamrollered by Oldman’s constant French cinema, with iconic roles in when, in an interview in UK newspaper “It wasn’t just me being wheeled in to be one of the capital’s poshest on-screen presence and charisma. Anthony Minghella’s Te English Patient Te Guardian, she declared she was done grand and make withering remarks.” postcodes, Kristin Scott “When Joe frst asked me to do this, and Richard Curtis’ Four Weddings and with flms. She was tired, she said, of Tese days, Kristin is enjoying getting Tomas is fddling with a window latch, I said no,” she ofers, her gaze steady. a Funeral, while Francophiles hailed all the waiting around (“I did a lot of older. Emboldened, perhaps, by the letting in some air. “Ah, now it’s too “Tey weren’t giving Clemmy – me – her wonderfully contained portrayal of tapestry”), of scripts being rewritten damehood she received from the Queen inoisy,” she says as a barrage of sounds enough to do. I told him he could get a newly released prisoner in Philippe at the last minute (except, perhaps, in 2015 and the Ofcer of the Legion tumble into the room, her vowels so any old person to do this, so he rewrote Claudel’s 2008 triumph I’ve Loved You when they fesh out characters such as of Honour bestowed that same year by crisp and British it’s easy to forget that, the part to make it what it is now. I still So Long, and as a wife who ditches her Clementine Churchill), of using her the then French president, François as a long-time resident of Paris, she think there’s more to be told about her; husband for another man in Catherine actorly cachet to prop up otherwise Hollande, not to mention a clutch of spends much of her life speaking she was an amazing woman.” Corsini’s emotive Leaving. fimsy productions. best actress gongs and nominations for perfectly accented French. Kristin wears a grey wig over her With more than 70 flms to her credit, She spoke of her wish to direct an roles on screen and stage, she is busy “Never mind.” She seats herself on a chestnut crop to portray the elegant Mrs it’s inevitable that some will be better adaptation of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s doing what she wants. Tis sometimes sofa, smoothing her bottle-green jumper Churchill, a woman with a penchant for than others. She has previously decried Te Sea Change, a 1959 literary novel means not doing much at all – a self- and crossing one black-trousered leg over self-made millinery who became a prime the brief post-Four Weddings Hollywood that asks fundamental questions about confessed “potterer and big waste-of- the other. Her nails are painted red; her minister’s wife at 53 – four years younger stint that saw her cast as love interest to love and its vagaries. timer”, she enjoys looking at art, gardens heels are high and canary yellow. “Let’s than the actor, a mother-of-three and ageing heart-throbs Robert Redford in “People do love [creating] a drama. and architecture. Oh, and reading. see how we go, shall we?” she suggests recent grandmother, is now. “Te idea Te Horse Whisperer and Harrison Ford But yeah, back then I didn’t want to be For a long while she felt displaced, over trafc that’s whizzing along, not of being a mature woman isn’t cool any in Random Hearts (“Of course I wanted doing flms. I’d been doing some plays sort of existentially homeless, what too obtrusively, several stories below. more,” says Kristin with a sigh. to be top of people’s lists,” she said, “but here in London,” she says, referring to with being English by birth (she grew First impressions and the Oscar- “Because of the way we look at women I thought, ‘What is the point of this?’ ”). Betrayal and Old Times by Harold up in Dorset, one of three girls born winning actress, 57, is as upbeat and these days, it’s expected that we will dye In 2001 she returned to the stage Pinter, and the title role in Sophocles’ to a homemaker and Royal Navy pilot

no-nonsense as Clementine Churchill, our hair and try to look younger than in a French production of Racine’s Electra. “I didn’t do a flm for four /Headpress who died in an accident when Kristin the character she plays opposite Gary we are. Back then, you’d command Bérénice, between movies including years. Ten [British director] Sally was fve) but having lived in France Oldman in Darkest Hour, a biopic of respect. You’d be thought of as a lady.” the John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy Potter sent me the script of Te Party since the age of 19 and made a family

Winston Churchill directed by Joe Commanding respect, you sense, has and Ralph Fiennes’ directorial debut and I couldn’t resist.” The Guardian there (she divorced her husband, Wright of Atonement and Anna Karenina Te Party, released this year, is a satire obstetrician François Olivennes, in fame (and co-starring Ben Mendelsohn about politics and love in which Kristin 2008). And while she’s spoken, too, as the King of England). While “THEY WEREN’T GIVING CLEMMY – ME – ENOUGH plays a newly appointed government of the invisibility that tends to come Oldman’s portrayal of Winston TO DO. I TOLD HIM HE COULD GET ANY OLD PERSON minister celebrating her promotion with with middle age, she’s feeling more Churchill is a tour de force, from his TO DO THIS, SO HE REWROTE THE PART TO MAKE IT a dinner. It was shot over 13 days with grounded after her 29-year-old cigar-pufng, prosthetics-enhanced a star-studded cast including Patricia daughter Hannah, a journalist, demeanour to that “We will fght them WHAT IT IS NOW … SHE WAS AN AMAZING WOMAN.” Clarkson, Cillian Murphy and Timothy Gay/ Philip by Photography gave birth to a baby girl in June.

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