The Oscar nomination she received for The English Patient led to glossy Hollywood projects in which she was called upon to get it on with men old enough to be her father - Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer, Harrison Ford in Random Hearts. And that was the end of Stage Two - just as well really because, for all she knew, Kirk Douglas might have been next.
Stage Three finds her doing exactly as she jolly well pleases. She's nodding along in agreement. "Yes, that's it," she says. "After Random Hearts, I made a choice. That film and The Horse Whisperer took so long to make. I was just never at home. And I felt very out of place on those sets; everyone was so much older than me. Of course, I wanted to be top of people's lists. But I thought: What is the point of this? I wanted to have another child anyway, so I told everyone I was taking a year off."
Her agents warned her that if she stopped working, she would be forgotten by Hollywood when she returned. "And I said, 'Oh, that's rubbish.' And, of course, it all dried up horribly." She lets out a grim laugh. "Within five minutes, you're nothing. Gone. It's so brutal." Then she hisses wickedly: "I love it!"
She can say that now because her career is going so swimmingly and shows every signs of carrying on in that manner. She stared Hollywood in the face, decided it didn't matter that much, and plumped for something else instead: quality, integrity, fun. I'd say the Third Stage of Kristin Scott Thomas began, triumphantly, with Gosford Park, in which she trooped around a country house being bitchy to everyone and kicking dogs. "I'd been wondering when Robert Altman was going to call," she sighs. "When the script arrived, I looked at the character's name? Lady Sylvia McCardle - and thought: 'Oh no. Why can't I be the governess or something?' But it was such a wonderful part." Since she ticked Altman off her list, she's been waiting for Woody Allen to get in touch. "I wish he'd wake up and smell the coffee. But he's quite contrary, isn't he?"
I don't think she needs Woody. Who does, these days? Her recent career choices have made Scott Thomas the new Charlotte Rampling. She's finally getting to do the stage work that she says she craved from the start (she was in The Seagull at London's Royal Court theatre earlier this year). And she can currently be seen in the hit French thriller Tell No One, about a man who is contacted by his supposedly dead wife. "I can't believe how well it's doing!" she hoots, throwing herself back on the banquette. "I get stopped on trains by people who say: 'Oooh, you're in Tell No One.' My response tends to be: 'Hang on. It's a French film. With subtitles. And we're in Peterborough.'"
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