Interview: Kristin Scott Thomas
French Immersion

Kristin Scott Thomas seethes, en français, for Il y a longtemps que je t’aime

Like an old Polaroid tucked inside a desk drawer, Kristin Scott Thomas had faded from view.

After taking Hollywood by storm in romantic fare such as The English Patient (1996) and The Horse Whisperer (1998), the British-born actor with the plummy, upper-crust accent and porcelain skin turned her back on American movies to focus on making European films and performing theatre, primarily in her adopted homeland of France.

She began acting, in French, in small films. Yet she had never really tested herself, that is until Il y a longtemps que je t’aime (I’ve Loved You So Long).

The French-language film (with subtitles in English Canada) is directed by Philippe Claudel and stars Thomas as Juliette, a woman who goes to live with her sister after having spent 15 years in prison. Initially, Juliette is remote, closed-off, seething inside, and Thomas plays her with unflinching honesty.

“Because the screenplay is beautifully written, we could see everything,” says Thomas about her character’s internal struggles, “so I felt confident about not showing that much, not being too demonstrative. I felt confident it would all show, and there are no great, big, chunky, descriptive passages of ‘How I feel.’ They just didn’t exist.”

Thomas is curled up on a chair in the upstairs bar of a Toronto hotel. She’s here at the Toronto International Film Festival to chat about Il y a longtemps que je t’aime, a film that shines a spotlight back on the 48-year-old actor and divorced mother of three children — Hannah (20), Joseph (17) and Georges (8).

In fact, in a year when there have been very few standout performances from female actors, Thomas’ turn has Oscar oddsmakers talking about a probable Best Actress nomination, which makes her more than a little wary.

“I find it very anxious-making. I’d rather not think about it,” says Thomas. “I don’t want to be pointed out, making movies is a collaboration, it’s absolute teamwork.

“The one positive thing about awards, and I don’t mean to be disparaging — I just received a Laurence Olivier award and it made my year, I was so thrilled, so everyone wants to win awards and it’s rubbish if they say they don’t — but the important thing about them is that they get people to see a film, and I think it would be good for people to see this film.”

Il y a longtemps que je t’aime is already a hit in France, and was recently released in the U.K. Although Thomas left Britain when she was 19 (she took a job as an au pair in Paris and never returned), she’s still held in high esteem by her fellow Brits.

“I’m very popular with a show called Top Gear, a motoring show,” she says with a laugh. “I’ve only seen it once or twice because I don’t live in England, but they do this thing with cars, whether a car is cool or not, and the way of measuring its coolness is if I would get into it to be taken on a date — could you take Kristin Scott Thomas for dinner in it. I thought my brothers and sisters were teasing me about it, until I found it was actually this really big thing. It’s a huge compliment.”