Kristin Scott Thomas

Biography

Dame Kristin Ann Scott Thomas (born 24 May 1960) is a British actress. A five-time BAFTA Award and Olivier Award nominee, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and the Olivier Award for Best Actress in 2008 for the Royal Court revival of The Seagull. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in The English Patient (1996).

Scott Thomas made her film debut in Under the Cherry Moon (1986), and won the Evening Standard Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer for A Handful of Dust (1988). Her work includes Bitter Moon (1992), Mission: Impossible (1996), The Horse Whisperer (1998), Gosford Park (2001), The Valet (2006), and Tell No One (2007). She won the European Film Award for Best Actress for Philippe Claudel's I've Loved You So Long (2008). Her other films include Leaving (2009), Love Crime (2010), Sarah's Key (2010), Nowhere Boy (2010), The Woman in the Fifth (2011), Only God Forgives (2013), Darkest Hour (2017), and Tomb Raider (2018). On television, she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for her guest appearance in the second season of the comedy series Fleabag (2019), and has starred in the Apple TV+ spy series Slow Horses since 2022.

She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2003 Birthday Honours and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to drama. She was named a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by the French government in 2005.

Scott Thomas was born in Redruth, Cornwall. Her mother, Deborah (née Hurlbatt), was brought up in Hong Kong and Africa, and studied drama before marrying Kristin's father, Lieutenant Commander Simon Scott Thomas, a pilot in the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm 893 Squadron, who died in a flying accident on a de Havilland Sea Vixen when Kristin was aged five. She has three siblings, including Serena Scott Thomas. She is the niece of Admiral Sir Richard Thomas (a former Black Rod), the granddaughter of William Scott Thomas (who commanded HMS Impulsive during World War II) and the great-great-niece of the polar explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott.

The childhood home of Scott Thomas was in Trent, near Sherborne, Dorset, England. Her mother remarried another Royal Navy pilot, Lieutenant Commander Simon Idiens (of Simon's Sircus aerobatic team flying Sea Vixens), who also died in a flying accident whilst flying a Phantom FG1 from RNAS Yeovilton off the North coast of Cornwall in January 1972. Scott Thomas was educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College and St Antony's Leweston in Sherborne, Dorset.

On leaving school in 1978, she moved to Hampstead, London, and worked in a department store. She began training to become a drama teacher at the Central School of Speech and Drama, enrolling on a BEd in Speech and Drama. During her time at the school, she requested to switch degree courses to acting but was refused. After a year at Central, speaking French fluently, she decided to move to Paris to work as an au pair,[2] and studied acting at the École Nationale supérieure des arts et techniques du théâtre (ENSATT). When she was 25, she was cast as Mary Sharon in the film Under the Cherry Moon (1986).