Kristin Scott Thomas Quotes

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.

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 think the sheer number of pop stars has kind of drowned out, somewhat, our interest. We're just submerged.

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'm very good at forgetting people.

I think I'm inspired mostly by other artists that aren't actors, like writers or singers or artists, for being so brave.

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

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.

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

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

Films are just consumables.

My children are lovely. They're perfect.

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

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

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

I just don't see very many films. Because I make them.

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.

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.

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

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.

My body is a baby machine.

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.

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

I never raise my voice!

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

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

I tend to do things that I'm very frightened of. That's what I do.

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.

Everyone loves to hate a spin doctor.

I'm a late developer.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

I used to be so intensely preoccupied by unhappiness ... now there are times where you might get down, but you can move on much faster now.

I like the idea that I'm making things that people might think and argue about.

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

Successful films are very dangerous things.

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

My life is European.

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

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

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

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

I still absolutely love 'The Sound of Music' and anything with Julie Andrews in 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.

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

Movies make you immortal and ageless.

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

I mean, my father was killed when I was six. And I only have tiny, tiny flashes of memory.

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 find it difficult to explain, but I'm quite ashamed of being an actress.

I find it very difficult to be two different characters at the same time - actress and mother.

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

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.

I don't want to have to be pretty. I don't want to have to be adorable.

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.