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
Everyone loves to hate a spin doctor.
Often, the roles I'm offered in England are melancholic women who are filled with regret for the past, regret for their fading beauty.
We older women in Europe are lucky not to be shoved away in a drawer.
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 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.
Successful films are very dangerous things.
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.
I was terrible at school.
After a long time with someone, you realise you've been thinking for two.
It takes a long time to appreciate one's parents.
I find it very difficult to be two different characters at the same time - actress and mother.
People are always saying, English, English, English rose, and I just feel so completely different.
Buy, buy, buy, buy! They want to grab you and trap you and turn you into little Elizabeth Hurleys.
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.
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.
I still absolutely love 'The Sound of Music' and anything with Julie Andrews in it.
I know people think that I always play these characters who are in control and can chop someone's head off with a look.
French culture takes ageing very seriously. There's much less ageism than in Anglo-Saxon countries.
I do not want to pour out my heart to the world. I am cautious of what I say and to whom.
I'm very lazy!
Men don't fall in love with me - only young ones.
I love shooting French films because I don't have to stick with being sophisticated or stuck-up.
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.
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.
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.
In fact, in many ways my mother was quite hippy-dippy, serving macrobiotic food and reading 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.'
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.
Seeing The English Patient is wonderfully draining, but imagine acting in it for six months.
Having a leading man who is actually prettier than you are is quite upsetting.
There's something incredibly sexy about sand and sweat and dunes photographed like women's backs.
I never raise my voice!
I do consider myself as being French, I suppose.
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.
Boarding school is a wicked thing.
I wouldn't want you to see me all the time on the screen, because I get bored of it myself!
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.
The parts I've been most successful in are the ones I've desperately, desperately wanted.
I tend to do things that I'm very frightened of. That's what I do.
I was very lost as a teenager. Which is a horrible way to feel.
You have to think about whether that Mercedes-Benz you have is actually worth how much it costs to you.
Movies make you immortal and ageless.
I'm not at all fed up with British films, but I am fed up with playing upper-class people.
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 find it difficult to explain, but I'm quite ashamed of being an actress.
I never go straight to the point if I can go the most difficult way. Why be simple when you can be complicated?
