{"id":302836,"date":"2025-11-23T04:39:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T04:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/302836\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T04:39:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T04:39:13","slug":"the-ice-queen-on-slow-horses-late-marriage-and-why-shes-happier-in-her-60s-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/302836\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018ice queen\u2019 on Slow Horses, late marriage and why she\u2019s happier in her 60s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size<\/p>\n

When Dame Kristin Scott Thomas first watched herself playing spy boss Diana Taverner in Slow Horses<\/a>, the Apple TV+ spy drama, she had a shock. \u201cI thought, \u2018Bloody hell, I get it. Now I see why people are so terrified of me.\u2019 It was the coldness. I\u2019d had no idea before why I came across like that. It worries me to think it might seep out into real life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, throughout the 39 years Scott Thomas has been in the public eye she\u2019s been dogged by \u201cice queen\u201d similes. For decades, headlines decreed her to be chilly, aloof, frosty. It\u2019s a perception that seems to derive from a notion she wasn\u2019t acting when she was repeatedly cast as stoically heartbroken aristos \u2013 most memorably in Four Weddings and a Funeral and The English Patient. But the description, she says with one of her trademark withering eye-rolls, is \u201cvery disappointing. Because I\u2019m not.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that, in person, Scott Thomas has presence, but she isn\u2019t cold at all. This isn\u2019t to give the impression the 65-year-old\u2019s a big softie. She\u2019s exacting, with a reputation she doesn\u2019t deny for being \u201cstroppy\u201d, when necessary, on set. She has a very English horror of gushiness.<\/p>\n

Yet she\u2019s also confiding, self-deprecating and very entertaining, every line delivered for full effect, vowels elongated and accompanied by a kaleidoscope of facial expressions. Not least when she\u2019s bemoaning the ageing process, such as when she tells me, in mock despair, \u201cSomeone called me \u2018dear\u2019 in a shop the other day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curled up opposite me, she\u2019s chic in grey pinstripe drawstring trousers (\u201cI bought them in New York. Where from? A shop\u201d), a Marc Jacobs \u201cHooligan\u201d slogan T-shirt (\u201cVery old. I love it\u201d) under a sheepskin-lined leather car coat. Round her neck are a string of pearls, a small diamond crucifix and a dagger on what looks like a piece of rope. \u201cIt\u2019s a dagger of infinite wisdom, a souvenir from a trip to Bhutan with a girlfriend. I lost mine, but my friend had bought two or three, so she gave me one.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s clear is that Scott Thomas is happy. After 20 years of being mainly single following her 2005 divorce from Fran\u00e7ois Olivennes, a French fertility specialist and the father of her three children, last year she married John Micklethwait<\/a>, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, also divorced and with two adult children. The couple had been together for five years.<\/p>\n

The wedding took place in Rutland, where Micklethwait\u2019s family come from. \u201cIt was so nice because it was just us and our children and siblings. No nephews and nieces. No cousins. I\u2019d recommend anyone who\u2019s thinking about marrying to do it with only your nearest and dearest. Wonderful! Just thinking about it makes my heart swell.\u201d<\/p>\n

They ate coronation chicken, \u201cbecause we love old-fashioned things\u201d, and Scott Thomas wore a cream A-line Valentino dress with buttons up the front. She\u2019d spotted it when shopping with her sister \u201ceight years ago, way before I met John. She said, \u2018You\u2019ve got to get that.\u2019 I said, \u2018When am I going to wear a cream dress?\u2019<\/p>\n

\"Scott<\/p>\n

Scott Thomas was rejected from a UK drama school by a teacher who thought she was talentless.Credit: Times Media Limited<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it had my name written all over it, so I bought it and it sat in the cupboard with its tag still on, unworn. Then, when I got asked [she affects a regal tone] to marry, I thought, \u2018Oh bloody hell, now I\u2019ve got to look for a dress.\u2019 Then [her voice rises to a shriek], \u2018I\u2019ve got it already!\u2019 And I splashed out and got a very, very, very pretty hat made.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is remarrying at 64 what Oscar Wilde described as a triumph of hope over experience? \u201cI\u2019d say it\u2019s a triumph of experience over hope. I don\u2019t know how to describe it without going mushy, but to have two hearts, two brains, two minds, two energies all striving for the same thing is fantastic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you\u2019re looking for when you\u2019re in your 50s and 60s is very different from what you\u2019re looking for in your 20s, when you want to make babies and you\u2019ve got the dream of a family. I\u2019ve worked out what\u2019s worth paying attention to, what the really important things in my life are, and I\u2019ve found someone who thinks the same. So it\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019d been in relationships during her singleton years, notably with actor Tobias Menzies and French tycoon Arpad Busson. \u201cBut I hadn\u2019t imagined getting married again. Not at all. I don\u2019t know what I imagined, but I\u2019d been living in Paris for 22 years and I never thought I\u2019d come back [to the UK] and marry an Englishman.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019d also previously said she\u2019d never act in a television series, telling a journalist, \u201c[A series] just goes on and on. I get terribly bored.\u201d But here she is, winning a whole new generation of fans with Slow Horses. Season five has just finished, season six is in the bag and season seven is said to be in preparation.<\/p>\n

Scott Thomas grew up in Dorset, the oldest child of a navy pilot. When she was five, he was killed when his plane crashed. Her mother, who was 28 with four children, then married one of his colleagues. When Scott Thomas was 11, her stepfather died in exactly the same way. It was left to the housemistress at her boarding school to break the news.<\/p>\n

\u201cBelieve me, I\u2019ve spent a lot of money and many, many hours dealing with all the stuff that goes with childhood catastrophe. It does make you who you are, having to deal with stuff like that when you\u2019re five and then again when you\u2019re 11. It gives you something to lug around your whole life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Scott<\/p>\n

Scott Thomas as \u201cLady Di\u201d (Diana Taverner) in Slow Horses.Credit: Jack English<\/p>\n

In 2023, she directed her first film (co-written with Micklethwait), My Mother\u2019s Wedding, in which she stars as a twice widowed mother of three daughters who marries for a third time at 66. \u201cQuite fun,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s about how these events have affected the women\u2019s love lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

And how is that? \u201cWell, one daughter is an overachiever. One is desperate for affection. And one tries to do everything right.\u201d Which one is she? \u201cAll of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d imagine such trauma contributed to the don\u2019t-mess-with-me vibe she\u2019s, however subconsciously, exuded ever since. She was \u201criveted\u201d by her children\u2019s close relationship with Olivennes. \u201cI thought, \u2018I really did miss out.\u2019 Their father has been so influential in their lives. You think, \u2018How on earth did I manage to do it all with just my mum?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

At 18, having been rejected from a drama course in London by a teacher who said she had \u201cno talent\u201d, Scott Thomas moved to Paris to become an au pair. There she won a place at drama school and met Olivennes, whom she married aged 26. By then she\u2019d starred with Prince in his film Under the Cherry Moon.<\/p>\n

While she was pregnant with her first child, Hannah (now 37, with two children aged eight and five), she was cast as callous toff Brenda Last in A Handful of Dust, the inspiration for her subsequent typecasting as \u201ctough, wicked bitches\u201d. Around the time her second child, Joseph, now 34, was born, the call came from Hollywood to star in Anthony Minghella\u2019s The English Patient, which won her an Oscar nomination.<\/p>\n

Flavour of the month, she was cast in Random Hearts with Harrison Ford and The Horse Whisperer with Robert Redford. They took six months to shoot and although her children were with her for some of it, \u201cI thought, \u2018I can\u2019t do this. I want to live in Europe.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\"Scott<\/p>\n

Scott Thomas in one of her breakthrough roles, in The English Patient.<\/p>\n

She went on to star in a string of French arthouse films \u2013 Tell No One, I\u2019ve Loved You So Long \u2013 but just over a decade ago declared she\u2019d had enough of hanging around film sets and was going to concentrate on theatre. By then she and Olivennes had split. She told the podcast Rosebud her divorce was \u201ctraumatic\u201d but the relationship had \u201crun its course\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet she and Olivennes are friends and whatever midlife hump she hit has vanished. A turning point in the way she was perceived came in 2019, when Phoebe Waller-Bridge cast her in Fleabag as Belinda, a businesswoman whose speech rhapsodising the menopause went viral.<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen are born with pain built in,\u201d says Belinda. \u201cIt\u2019s our physical destiny: period pains, sore boobs, childbirth\u2026 We have pain on a cycle for years and years and years and then, just when you feel you are making peace with it all, what happens? The menopause comes, and it is the most wonderful f—ing thing in the world. Yes, your entire pelvic floor crumbles and you get f—ing hot and no one cares, but then you\u2019re free, no longer a slave, no longer a machine with parts. You\u2019re just a person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Says Scott Thomas, \u201cYou know, when I went through meno\u2026\u201d She stops. \u201cThis is very personal; I\u2019m not sure I want to talk about this.\u201d She collects herself. \u201cI found the passage from being a fertile, producing mother very difficult: \u2018What am I for? What do I do now? What is my purpose?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI absolutely loved childbearing; that was my raison d\u2019\u00eatre. When nature takes that away, you\u2019re a bit lost. You\u2019re no longer of service. I\u2019d always thought of parenting as the ultimate creation. So the shock took a while, but you get used to it and find other outlets for your creativity. You think, \u2018This is who I am. I don\u2019t have to please anybody. I don\u2019t have to be attractive. I can just be.\u2019<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou gain more energy, more stamina. That\u2019s when I started doing theatre and being much braver in my choices. You\u2019d have thought that would happen when you\u2019re young, but I was so frightened of everything then.\u201d<\/p>\n

She remembers another time she got \u201cvery cross and sulked\u201d when a director told her she needed to be \u201cmore attractive\u201d. It turned out he\u2019d meant something different but, at the time, \u201cI took it incredibly badly. I was very upset. Why should I be \u2018attractive\u2019? Why should I be sweet and kind? Since 50, my life has just got better and better. My 60s have been fantastic. It\u2019s once you\u2019ve dealt with childbearing and having to seduce and be attractive that you can be adventurous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slow Horses is on Apple TV+.<\/p>\n

The Times (UK)<\/p>\n

Get the best of Sunday Life magazine delivered to your inbox every Sunday morning. Sign up here for our free newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size When Dame Kristin Scott Thomas first watched herself playing spy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-302836","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}