"I get asked to play a lot of wicked witch-type characters now," she says of life after Four Weddings and a Funeral. "But scripts aren't dropping through the letterbox as everyone said they would be."

An Englishwoman in Paris
by Bob McCabe

Meeting Kristin Scott-Thomas in the flesh is a bit of a disappointment. Largely, because she is in the flesh. Empire was promised an actress, bound head to toe in plaster.

The Kristin Scott-Thomas who walks in, however, is remarkably animated. The paper boiler suit is not a catwalk tip but there to aid her in the difficult day-long task of body casting. Throughout the day, she is dipping various parts of her anatomy into gloop, holding still for five minutes, then peeling off the results. Scott-Thomas is currently filming The English Patient, Anthony Minghella's take on Michael Ondaatje's Booker-winner, and a role that requires her to fall out of a plane. Wisely, she opted for a dummy stand-in.

"I get asked to play a lot of wicked witch-type characters now," she says of life after Four Weddings and a Funeral. "But scripts aren't dropping through the letterbox as everyone said they would be."

Her postman may not be doubled up under the weight of offers, but Kristin Scott-Thomas is not doing badly. The past few months have been spent making Philip Haas's Angels & Insects, a drawing-room-and-garden period piece.

"It's a very English story," she admits. "It's so multi-faceted. It's a thriller, a detective story. The metaphor that goes into it, you can take or leave. The main theme for me is the detective one -- what's going on in this house? It's so different. It hasn't got a label stuck around its neck saying, 'I am a romantic period piece.'"

Scott Thomas plays Matty, the almost also-ran to Patsy Kensit's ethereal beauty, allowing her to play down the glam side she is so often associated with.

"The thing I loved about it was no make-up. In and out of there in a flash," she laughs, even if the role did have its downside. "I went to Cannes for three days and people kept saying, 'God, you're so ugly.' And I was going, 'Yes, thanks, I know', because in a way it's a compliment."

The film's fascination with bugs also rubbed off on the actress, who now admits freely to encouraging the insect world to run riot on her skin.

"I like the subject of ants and butterflies and the nitty-gritty of that world. I've kind of discovered through playing this part the passion you can have for these strange subjects."

She's on good form but having some trouble with her words today -- a mixture of a late night and a bi-lingual lifestyle, but what the hell. She lives in Paris with her scientist hubby, having fled there after drama school turned out to be far too dramatic. She attended London's Central School on the teacher training course. Teaching the great unwashed as part of north London's comprehensive system quickly convinced that teaching was not good for her. Unfortunately, her teachers thought she wasn't good for much else.

"I was absolutely gutted," she admits. "It was devastating. At 18, to be told this made me very very depressed."

To cope with this she decamped to the city of light with little more than a French 'A' level to her name.

"The advantage of going to Paris was that I was unique. I was this exotic little English girl -- if English girls can ever be exotic. If you're feeling insecure and you need to feel special, the best place to go is somewhere foreign where people treat you as special because you're different."

Working as an au pair -- following stints as a shop assistant, a waitress, and a secretary for a grand total of ten days -- she landed a place in a French drama school, and after some theatre work a squiggle came a-calling. True, that squiggle was then known as Prince, but his eccentric habits were still to the fore, sacking director Mary Lambert merely days into the filming of Under the Cherry Moon.

"Poor chap. I feel sorry for him in a way. I must so complicated to be him. He is actually a genius. I don't think he's mad, but he's very eccentric.

"I watched it the other day and it was so embarrassing," she blushes. "My brother put it on as torture. 'Look Kristin, look what I've got here', and this horrible thing came on. I was so appallingly bad in it. I couldn't actually watch it."

After Cherry Moon came A Handful of Dust, Bitter Moon, and Four Weddings and a Funeral, a film she says she likes but is by no means her best work (despite her BAFTA). Then, in a typically unplanned career mode, Thomas chose to make An Unforgettable Summer, learning Romanian to do so. She is unwilling to court Hollywood ("I wouldn't know what to say. 'Hello, have you got a job please? No? Thank you.'") but the majors have expressed interest, landing her next to Tom Cruise in next summer's licence-to-print-money, Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible.

"I play a spy, believe it or not," she laughs. "I'm Tom's partner. I had this scene in an elevator. So we get in the lift and I think, 'What am I doing? I'll stand and look straight ahead ...' Because there aren't 36 ways of playing I'm going up or down in a lift.

"Then Brian De Palma goes, 'Cut, cut, cut! Kristin, you looked like you were in some French movie thinking about your estates.' I had to do it again. I was so embarrassed because I was standing there going, 'Now what's my best angle?' ..."