Kristin Scott Thomas

Biography: life and films

Kristin Scott Thomas is a French film actress. She was born in Redruth, Cornwall, England on 24 May 1960. The daughter of a Royal Navy pilot (who died in an accident when she was four years old), Kristin Scott Thomas completed her education in France having attended Cheltenham Ladies' College. Able to speak French and English with equal ease, she began appearing in supporting roles in French and English films in the late 1980s, including Jean-Pierre Mocky's Agent trouble (1987), Charles Sturridge's A Handful of Dust (1988) and Pierre Jolivet's Force majeure (1989). Her appearance in two of the biggest films of the 1990s - Mike Newell's Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible (1996) - raised her profile and led her to be cast in the film that made her an international star, Anthony Minghella's The English Patient (1996), for which she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination. She then played the female lead in Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer (1998) and subsequently became highly sought after by directors of both French and English language films. Although she can often be found in England and American films, Kristin Scott Thomas has an obvious preference for French cinema and spends most of her time in France, her adopted country. In three successive years, she was nominated for the Best Actress César, for her performances in the films: Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (2008), Partir (2009) and Elle s'appelait Sarah (2010).

Filmography