Kristin Scott Thomas: "I still think half the time I'm a useless actress"

Everything your mind is projecting onto

(Cornwall, 1960) is just like that.

Elegance is a quality that is not only not lost over the years but is accentuated in some cases like this one.

This is demonstrated by a seated figure, completely in black, on the other side of the screen, naturally assuming the inevitable passing of the years.

Nor has loquacity diminished, much less the level of interpretation.

Who for a few years -possibly less than they should- was a star in Hollywood thanks to

or

, today he is starring, together with Gary Oldman, in the series

, an adaptation of the Mick Herron spy novel that has just brand new Apple TV.

Anyone would say that today, past 60, that British teenager, who was denied her dream of being an actress by her family and a teacher, would end up being an uncommon star who, when asked about that situation, answers halfway between irony and elegance.

«I don't think anything of that teacher, it is probable that she is dead.

I just took what she told me, I transformed it and I am an actress who is still working.

.

Although it seems very difficult, it can be done.

She, at least, did it although her work cost her.

She had to start by going to France and doing television before touching the glory of Hollywood.

“Deep down I am very happy that I had adversities in my life when I was a young woman.

It was not easy to become successful, even at first it was difficult to find a job as it happens to many actors.

Of course, there was a time when I was younger that I hesitated to do new jobs, I thought that was the end of my career, that I was useless, but in the end I did it.

and all those negative thoughts.

But I already know how to deal with them and that makes you better."

Despite these initial difficulties, shortly after arriving, he was successful and left of his own free will.

«

So the decision was easy », she remembers like someone who abandons an afternoon with friends for an unnecessary commitment instead of a place in the mecca of cinema.

It wouldn't be the last time either.

In 2014 she decided that the cinema was no longer for her, that she needed a break, to go back to the theater and run away from the cameras.

And she, of course, she did it again.

«

».

There she discovered that she had not rested as she needed.

“When you've stepped onto the theater stage, it takes time to recharge because in the end it's the most exhausting thing there in this job.

So I finished and took almost a sabbatical just thinking about what I wanted to do next."

What she wanted to do was go back to the movies and be Gary Oldman's wife in

, the Winston Churchill biopic that would give the actor his first Oscar.

“Coming from doing theater, even if it is the most exhausting experience, my batteries were recharged, I had accumulated creative energy just by being on stage with an audience every night, rehearsing and working with other people.

because there are many of us most of the time.

A mix

.

She looks towards these new generations with the experience that the years have already given her.

"I think the world they live in, in some ways, is much easier professionally, the rules are much clearer.

When I started my main source of food was movies and some television in the UK, now they have so much content, even if some of it is very poor quality, that is very valuable.

But the actress warns at the same time of the dangers that this has.

«It can also be quite dangerous for young actors because it is very different to prepare such long things, eight or 12 chapters, it is a different rhythm of acting and understanding your character and there is also another rhythm of consuming it.

.

There was a much stronger sense of concentration, which is a big problem now.

We are in a better scenario to work, but creatively you have to adapt and it is quite difficult.

She, at least, has done it and has found herself immersed in a story of detectives from MI5, the British intelligence service, quite incompetent who end up being dismissed from the group of

.

"They are losers, but they are my losers," Gary Oldman's character says at one point in the series as if that were a reality shot in a world obsessed with success.

“That problem, obsessing over success, exists and I talk about it a lot with my son.

He's in his early thirties and he always asks me, 'Why do we have to be successful?

Why do we have to be number one?

Why we?'

I think

» explains Kristin Scott Thomas.

But the British actress puts it more clearly with a practical example: the difference between her arrival on the set and that of her younger colleagues.

«For me it is responsibility and it is very strange to be an older person because when I go to shoot I always feel that I am a complete beginner.

and is just starting out.

You get used to it, but it's rare to end up feeling like you're a senior figure when you feel like all of them.

However, one of the feelings that accompanies Kristin Scott Thomas in many of her latest shoots is that she intimidates a large part of her filming partners for two reasons.

First for the fact of being a woman with a certain character.

And second for the career that she has already carried behind her back.

“These things still happen to us.

When I watch the series I think that it's no wonder that people are afraid of me because of the way I look at them.

It's terrifying, but I also think that women with great careers are more intimidating because

We're kind of super women actually."

And, after all that, she is still sitting in her chair with the same smile from the beginning.

With the same elegance of who she knows she has by nature.

Ask them again who they said she wasn't cut out for success.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more

• Series