Quelle horreur! Kristin Scott Thomas, she of the elegant eyebrow and the bilingual career featuring such masterful performances as the matriarch in “Only God Forgives,” the fragile and powerful best friend in “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” and the returning criminal in “I’ve Loved You So Long,” says she’s retiring from acting. In a recent Guardian interview, Thomas calls herself a “recovering actress” and stated she’s done with the whole business of getting in front of the camera.
“I realised I’ve done the things I know how to do so many times in different languages, and I just suddenly thought, I can’t do it any more. I’m bored by it. So I’m stopping,” she said. So what specially is she tired of? You name it, and she’s not happy with it. Big productions? “No, it’s also that I can’t bear all the kind of rubbish that goes on on those big films. I just can’t stand sitting around for hours in a great big luxury trailer, waiting, bored out of my head. I used to do.”
Hmm, okay, so what about smaller films? “The kinds of films that I do are usually quite rapidly put together, and it always seems to be a little bit of a shambles. I like filming, but what I don’t like is having to rearrange things and rewrite scenes. I just can’t be bothered,” she said adding, “I’m often asked to do something because I’m going to be a sort of weight to their otherwise flimsy production. They need me for production purposes, basically. So they give me a little role in something where they know I’m going to be able to turn up, know what to do, cry in the right place. I shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds, but I keep doing these things for other people, and last year I just decided life’s too short. I don’t want to do it any more.”
Which is a hell of a shame, if it’s the case. But reader, indulge me in a moment of cynicism. As even the Guardian piece notes, Thomas quit acting once before in 1999, and she’s only saying this in the context of an interview to promote a forthcoming performance in “The Invisible Woman” (which is underrated — go see it!) Fair play to Thomas if she’s bored, right now, of making movies: she’s got a couple more in the can and on their way to theaters some time this year or the next, and maybe she deserves a break. But we do hope that’s all it is. [via The Dissolve]