Kristin Scott Thomas: ‘I care about my looks but I’m not going to spend my life worrying … there are better things to do’

The actress talks life in London, Christmas and why - if she could - she'd go back to looking how she did in her 40s
Channel hopping: Kristin in a photo shoot for ES magazine (Picture: Jon Compson)
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Kristin Scott Thomas has revealed that after more than three decades in Paris she is considering moving back to England to live in London.

The actress is renting a house in Little Venice while she plays the title role of Electra at the Old Vic and says she is having “the best possible time”.

Scott Thomas, 54, loves walking on Hampstead Heath, going to The Delaunay and eating at Skye Gyngell’s new restaurant Spring.

But the actress, who left England for the French capital when she was 19, said Paris beats London in at least one respect — the food shopping is better.

Anguish: Kristin Scott Thomas as Electra
©Alastair Muir

Scott Thomas, star of hit movies including The English Patient, Four Weddings And A Funeral and Nowhere Boy, can from this week be seen in cinemas as Maggie Smith’s daughter in the new film My Old Lady.

Next year she will return to London theatre, following in Helen Mirren’s footsteps by playing the Queen in The Audience.

In an interview with ES Magazine, Scott Thomas said: “I don’t enjoy clubs and darkness, but I love dancing and I love to sing. I’m loving London right now. I’m having the best possible time. I live in the most beautiful part — I love Little Venice — and I love going up to the Heath on Sunday mornings.”

Asked whether she would move to the capital permanently she said: “I don’t know. I’m here for … as long as it takes to make a decision.”

Scott Thomas told how she tries to see friends at the end of her acclaimed performances as Electra — but first she has to spend 20 minutes in the shower scrubbing off make-up and dirt.

Red carpet: Kristin with her The Invisble Woman co-stars Ralph Fiennes and Felicity Jones at the film's premiere (Picture: Jonathan Brady/PA)

She said: “Very often I have friends in, but I find, particularly towards the end of the week, that I just can’t cope — especially as I have to cook.”

After the run she plans to go on a retreat in Switzerland or Austria to “get cleaned out”.

She said she was the “worst housekeeper in the world” and added: “My apartment in Paris is gorgeous but I have someone who keeps on top of it. Here it’s more chaotic ...

“I don’t particularly get into Christmas but I do make the best mincemeat and I’m very good at pastry. And at roasting.

“But generally my cooking is a bit hit and miss. I find it’s much easier to throw a good meal together in France than it is in England, simply because — and I hate to say this because it sounds a bit Grinchy — it’s much easier to get very good produce at a reasonable price in Paris than it is in London.”

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Scott Thomas, who was divorced from François Olivennes in 2005, is apparently single but said she enjoys her own company. She has three children aged between 26 and 14.

She said: “You can be lonely wherever but I love being on my own. I like pottering and time-wasting.

“Picking up a book, reading three sentences and putting it down — going and watering a plant.”

She said she cares about her looks but refuses to worry about them. She added: “Of course I care. But I’m not going to spend my life worrying, because there are better things to do, and I could spend hours and thousands of pounds having injections, but I’m not sure it gives the required effect.

“If I could find a surgeon who would make me look exactly like I did — not even 10 years younger, but at 46, 47, 48 ... that’s when I looked the best — I would go for it.”

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