National treasure Kristin Scott Thomas tells Victoria Moss about her new movie, keeping secrets and how she can finally ask for what she wants
Kristin Scott Thomas slips into the sitting room above the London studio she’s just been shooting in for Grazia. ‘I’m wearing a lot of make-up,’ she quips in that inimitable cut glass English accent, untainted by the 30-ish years she spent living in Paris. It’s the same mellifluous tenor she used when disparaging bridal frocks as big meringues in Four Weddings And A Funeral, for her viral menopause monologue in Fleabag and, currently, as Diana Taverner cutting Gary Oldman down to size in Slow Horses.
She is lively company. That voice undulates, she shrieks with laughter, wrapping herself in a shearling jacket as she leans back on the sofa, tawny-brown trainers balancing on the table in front of us.
Last night she was shooting Slow Horses; her feet are sore from wearing heels on the cobbles of Camden. This morning was more humdrum. ‘I spent the morning in the post office, renewing my driver’s licence. I had to fill out a form which, already, you say the word form and I go into absolute overdrive panic,’ she says, deliciously dramatising the encounter. She rummages in her handbag, ‘There’s a pair of tights,’ pulling them out and stuffing them back in. Focusing, she says, ‘So, I’ve had a very varied day today.’
PHOTOGRAPHS JAVIER BIOSCA
STYLING DONNA WALLACE
Published on 27th April 2026
IF I TELL YOU ANY MORE
I’LL HAVE TO KILL YOU
Dress, £11,470, Gucci
Kristin Scott Thomas
MAKE-UP: LISA ELDRIDGE AT STREETERS. HAIR: NEIL MOODIE AT BRYANT ARTISTS. NAILS: ROBBIE TOMKINS
AT THE ONLY AGENCY. SHOOT PRODUCERS: ANNA DEWHURST, GABRIELA VELASCO. PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANTS: RAFAEL ARTEAGA, LUI CARRASCO. MAKE-UP ASSISTANT: NILOFAR MUSSA.
FASHION ASSISTANTS: AMBER BACKHOUSE, SHERAZ ZINGRAFF
Editor-in-chief: HATTIE BRETT. creative director: carolyn roberts. Deputy editor: HANNA WOODSIDE
‘I’M
AMBITIOUS IN A
DIFFERENT WAY’
Coat, £6,050, Givenchy by Sarah Burton; earrings, £7,700, Tiffany & Co
Shirt, £3,395, skirt, £5,395, and shoes, £1,045, all Chanel; earrings, price on request, Yvonne Potter; tights, £40, Wolford
Top, £21,250, and shoes, £640, both Bottega Veneta; trousers, £895, Knatchbull; earrings, Tiffany & Co as before
Top, £21,250, and shoes, £640, both Bottega Veneta; trousers, £895, Knatchbull; earrings, Tiffany & Co as before
Coat, £6,050, Givenchy by Sarah Burton; earrings, £7,700, Tiffany & Co
‘IT’S DIFFICULT TO SAY WHAT WE WANT, BE ASSERTIVE AND HAVE THAT CONVICTION’
At 65, the first feature-length film Scott Thomas has written and directed, My Mother’s Wedding, is opening in the UK. She also stars in it alongside Sienna Miller, Scarlett Johansson, Emily Beecham and Freida Pinto. James Fleet, who played her brother Tom in Four Weddings, plays her fiancé. ‘He was also my husband in Three Sisters. We’re old friends.’
Filmed in the bucolic sun-drenched Hampshire countryside, the film charts the return of three daughters to their childhood home where their mother is marrying for the third time.
‘First things first, this is not about my mother,’ she laughs. It is, however, semi-autobiographical. The elder two sisters, Johansson and Miller, lost their naval captain father in a plane crash when they were young. Their mother (Scott Thomas) then married his best friend and had a third daughter (Beecham) before losing him too in a plane crash. It is this nexus tale that mimics Scott Thomas’s own history. She grew up in Dorset, the eldest of four. She was five when her own father was killed, 11 when her stepfather also died, both in naval plane crashes.
It is a thoroughly British film, lightness and humour washed through with a backdrop of tragedy and stoicism. It’s a clever study of that regression that happens when anyone goes home. ‘Total regress!’ hoots Scott Thomas. ‘You see all these people who are super-important, then, when they get home, they literally become six.’
The story centres on the myriad roles of women. ‘I wanted to talk about sisters and mothers. It’s really hard to be a mother, a lover, a sister, a daughter, all these things we have to do. Who’s better at having a career, who’s better at being a mother, who’s better at going out there and doing exactly what they want?’
It’s also about grief and how tragedy happens but doesn’t need to define you. Diana, her character in the film, has a typically Scott Thomas forthright monologue demanding that her children move on from being trapped by the romantic versions of their fathers they hold in their heads.
‘That was actually written by my husband,’ she says. The couple wrote the film together, although they weren’t married at that point. ‘It went really well,’ she laughs. She married John Micklethwait in 2024 (he is editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News) – almost 20 years after her divorce from François Olivennes, a French obstetrician and father to her three children.
On screen, Diana is ‘my fantasy mother – ballsy, creative, resilient. And not being put down but knowing what it is to suffer. Recognising suffering then being able to move on from it, that is the most extraordinary gift. I’ve just met Gisèle Pelicot, she is the epitome of that.’ It’s this idea, she says, that was key to the film.
She bats me off when I say the worst thing that can happen to a child is to lose a parent. ‘It was pretty catastrophic, but no one was out to hurt me. I’m very aware of the fact that I was loved and I was looked after... There’s definitely a bit missing, you have to fill that bit somehow with something.’ For her that was acting.
‘My career has been fed by what happened to me as a little girl. In the ’60s, you did not share anything, it was all private. There was no therapy, no pastoral care. But I was often hired to play characters who have a secret: Fiona [Four Weddings], Katharine Clifton [The English Patient]. I think that comes from me having to have somewhere to put my secret. My secret was I was very unhappy but couldn’t ever tell anybody. I found great release and relief in being able to play characters who had a moment to reveal their secret.’ She pauses. ‘I cured that playing Electra,’ she says, referencing her stage performance in Sophocles’ ancient drama. ‘Murder your mother, it’s all fine!’ she howls with laughter.
It helps that she is also now ‘in a very happy place’. She lives in west London with Micklethwait and their Norfolk terrier Jack Russell cross. ‘He’s a mutt, there’s lots of other things in there too,’ she says, describing how he barks loudly in the morning, winding up the neighbours around the shared garden square they live on. Her three grown-up children and grandchildren are scattered around Europe.
Dress, £11,470, Gucci; shoes, £675, Jimmy Choo; earrings, Tiffany & Co as before
‘They do, at some point, stop being your kid,’ she says of parenting adults. ‘You still have this enormous love and that feeling that they’re the only thing that matters, like an organ that’s still part of you, but they are separate. There is a moment when that happens and it’s actually really nice. You walk along slightly in their wake. You have confidence that they’re going to be OK.’
Her newest grandchild was born in December. ‘I can’t wait to get back to France. My son had a son, it’s so thrilling.’ She misses Paris. ‘Yes, yes I do!’ she shouts, ‘but I’m married to a wonderful person and we couldn’t live [there]. I do miss it, but the exchange has been pretty good.’
She has a list of what she wants to do next, in spite of declaring retiring her ‘absolute goal’. ‘I’ve got another film I want to make and I don’t want to act in it next time. I want to do a couple more plays [she’s in The Cherry Orchard this autumn] and I’d love to do one really good [film] acting part, a meaty one. What happens when you get to my age is you get hired for the clever cameo. Something with a moral dilemma, that would be fun. Just being chirpy in something isn’t really my bag.’
There is, of course, nothing chirpy about Slow Horses’ Diana Taverner. Is she fun to play? She pauses. ‘Scary. I hadn’t realised how scary I was until I watched the first season,’ she says. ‘When she looks over the banister down to the floor. My god is she scary…’ They are in the midst of shooting series seven. ‘But if I tell you any more than that I’ll have to kill you.’
Left: Coat, dress and shoes, all price on request, bag, £550, all Simone Rocha; bracelet, £4,850, Fope
Right: Dress, £14,500, jacket, £7,500, shirt, £720, loafers, £820, and scarf, £480, all Miu Miu; trousers, Knatchbull as before
She still feels ambitious, ‘but in a different way. I think I’ve really grown up over the past 10 years. It was a curious experience making this film, because I discovered how conditioned I was as an actress, and that I kept asking permission. I think it’s difficult for a lot of us to be able to say what we want, be assertive and have that conviction. There’s something about women of my generation who weren’t taught how to be confident and to realise you are allowed this and you are allowed that and it’s not too much to ask.’
Scott Thomas says she ‘wouldn’t like to be 25 now but would quite like to be 55’. ‘I don’t think the internet’s very good for us and I don’t think mobile phones are very good for us. It doesn’t stop me from having one and being sort of locked into it occasionally, which I hate,’ she reflects. Still, she likes Instagram (‘my daughter said my algorithm was really worrying’) – she gets a lot of performance art and sewing hacks. ‘I only post pictures of myself, I feel it’s a bit of generosity towards people who are my faithful fans, just being kind, I suppose. I’m not known for my kindness,’ she deadpans.
As we finish up, she unfolds a copy of The Times, ready for her drive to Battersea. ‘It’s going to take a week,’ she says, mock pained. She has a dinner party to get to. ‘I need to be scintillating.’ Absolutely no doubt she’ll nail that.
JUST BEING CHIRPY
IN SOMETHING ISN’T
REALLY MY BAG
Kristin Scott Thomas