Kristin Scott Thomas's Quotes

I was very lost as a teenager. Which is a horrible way to feel.

I wouldn't want you to see me all the time on the screen, because I get bored of it myself!

I'd love to do some comedy. Particularly French comedy, which I know sounds like a contradiction in terms.

I'm a bit of a Doubting Thomas - always worrying about things.

I'm a late developer.

I'm very lazy!

I'm very wary of trust, you see.

If anyone says, 'Let's have a girls' night out,' I will run in the opposite direction.

If you are a successful actor, which is what I am, then you tend to get labelled very quickly and easily.

In fact, in many ways my mother was quite hippy-dippy, serving macrobiotic food and reading 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.'

It doesn't make you feel very good being mean and fierce; it is much nicer playing people who are kind and sweet.

It's very hard having a career in different continents and two different languages.

Men don't fall in love with me - only young ones.

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.

My body is a baby machine.

My children are lovely. They're perfect.

My life is European.

Now, playing a love interest can be really thrilling, if you're working opposite thrilling people.

Often, the roles I'm offered in England are melancholic women who are filled with regret for the past, regret for their fading beauty.

People are always saying, English, English, English rose, and I just feel so completely different.

Successful films are very dangerous things.

The parts I've been most successful in are the ones I've desperately, desperately wanted.

There's something incredibly sexy about sand and sweat and dunes photographed like women's backs.

We all come in different shapes and sizes, and that's fine by me.

We older women in Europe are lucky not to be shoved away in a drawer.

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.

You don't choose a film because it's made by a woman, you choose it because it's good.

You have to think about whether that Mercedes-Benz you have is actually worth how much it costs to you.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Cannes film festival is about big-budget films but also remarkable films made in different political regimes by film-makers with little resources.

'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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm not one of those famous people flying round the world emoting over every catastrophe. I'm too feeble.

Movies make you immortal and ageless.

I do not want to pour out my heart to the world. I am cautious of what I say and to whom.

I love shooting French films because I don't have to stick with being sophisticated or stuck-up.

I'm not at all fed up with British films, but I am fed up with playing upper-class people.

I'm very good at forgetting people.

It takes a long time to appreciate one's parents.

Life is too short to live on low-fat everything.

Seeing The English Patient is wonderfully draining, but imagine acting in it for six months.

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.

After a long time with someone, you realise you've been thinking for two.

As an adult, it's a huge shock to be orphaned; as a child it's just hideous, ghastly.

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.

Baths are my favorite thing. I can have two, three a day.

Boarding school is a wicked thing.

Buy, buy, buy, buy! They want to grab you and trap you and turn you into little Elizabeth Hurleys.

Everyone loves to hate a spin doctor.

Exoticism can give you an edge: it makes people assume you're cleverer than you are and gives you the upper hand.

Films are just consumables.

French culture takes ageing very seriously. There's much less ageism than in Anglo-Saxon countries.

French is a foreign language, but I've been speaking it since I was 18 so it's second nature to me.

Having a career is a bit like navigating an Atlantic crossing - you have to make sure everything is keeping and is balanced.

Having a leading man who is actually prettier than you are is quite upsetting.