Kristin Scott Thomas

“There's something incredibly sexy about sand and sweat and dunes photographed like women's backs.”

“I have a feeling I will work for a long, long time. I like it a lot... and I don't know. I just have a feeling that I'm going to be one of those people who go on for ever.”

“I don't want to have to be pretty. I don't want to have to be adorable.”

“As a younger actor you want to be approved of, you want to gain respect, be admired. All of those things. To say: 'This is me playing this character. And aren't I fantastic!' I don't feel that so much now.”

“At school, I always wanted to belong to a gang, and no one would have me. So I'd have make my own gang, but with everybody else's leftovers.”

“I tend to do things that I'm very frightened of. That's what I do.”

“Making films can be absolutely fantastic, but it can also be incredibly dull. You spend the whole day sitting by yourself in your trailer and then you get called to deliver one sentence - then you're told to come back and do it again at 5:30 the following morning.”

“I do consider myself as being French, I suppose.”

“Movies make you immortal and ageless.”

“I try to make films that I find exciting. It makes me want to get out of bed at five in the morning, have my make-up done and play for the rest of the day.”

“When I speak English, I've been told, I have this patrician way of speaking that's very irritating. It's the whole class thing.”

“The Cannes film festival is about big-budget films but also remarkable films made in different political regimes by film-makers with little resources.”

“My children are lovely. They're perfect.”

“I'd love to do some comedy. Particularly French comedy, which I know sounds like a contradiction in terms.”

“'The English Patient' was a huge turning point in my career and my life; it became this huge thing. But the whole Oscar build-up got completely out of control; I spent more time talking about that film than I spent making it!”

“I think people do work too much. I've never been able to understand the whole 'make hay while the sun shines' thing. Either I want to work or I don't want to work.”

“When you make a film, you sign a contract with somebody, and it's not only legally binding but morally binding. You agree to give this man a certain number of weeks of your life, and you just go for it as much as possible. Because, whatever happens, the film is going to come out, so you might as well try very hard to make it a good one.”

“I can't move back to England. My home is in France now. I'd love to but I can't. My family's all there now.”

“I mean, if you're being directed very precisely by somebody who has admiration and who's really smart, it's great. If you're being told what to do by a nincompoop - and luckily that hasn't happened very often - it can be very frustrating.”

“I really like acting in French. It's actually quite different for me, from acting in English. It's fun acting in a foreign language. You're liberated or freed from preconceptions.”