British-born actor’s status raised from chevalier to officier in
Bastille Day honours list and follows damehood awarded in January by the
Queen
The British-born actor Kristin Scott Thomas has been awarded an upgraded Légion d’honneur in France’s traditional Bastille Day honours list.
Not to be outdone by the Queen, who made Scott Thomas a dame in January – the French president, François Hollande, raised the star’s status from chevalier to officier of the Légion d’honneur.
Scott Thomas has lived in France since she was 19 and has said she sometimes considers herself more French than British. Hollande presented her with the award as “a foreigner living in France”, but in an interview with the Guardian last year the actor said she was considering moving back to the UK.
Since splitting from her husband, French gynaecologist François Olivennes, with whom she has three children, she has spent more time on the English side of the Channel.
The multi-award-winning Scott Thomas, 55, was brought up in Cornwall and lost her father Simon, a pilot in the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm, in a flying accident when she was five. Her stepfather, also a Royal Navy pilot died in an air crash six years later.
Educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, she was told by the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama that she would never be a good actor so she left to work as an au pair in Paris, where she studied drama. After graduating she was cast as a French heiress opposite the pop star Prince in the 1986 film Under the Cherry Moon. Her role in a 1988 adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust won her an Evening Standard British Film Award for most promising newcomer.
She is best known in Britain for her roles opposite Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral, which earned her a Bafta, and as Katharine Clifton in the English Patient, which brought an Oscar nomination.
More recently, she has appeared on the stage in London, notably playing Electra in Sophocles’ classic tragedy and the Queen in Peter Morgan’s The Audience, which runs at the Apollo theatre until 25 July.
She was made a chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 2005, and, in Britain, awarded an OBE in 2003.
In an interview with French Gala magazine, Scott Thomas suggested she found it amusing being addressed as a dame. “To me, a dame is someone in a tweed skirt with four dogs that bark at everyone. It makes me laugh when I see letters marked “Dame”. I find it hard to believe it’s me.”
The Légion d’honneur is awarded to about 3,000 people every year, two-thirds of them civilians and the rest military personnel.
Not to be outdone by the Queen, who made Scott Thomas a dame in January – the French president, François Hollande, raised the star’s status from chevalier to officier of the Légion d’honneur.
Scott Thomas has lived in France since she was 19 and has said she sometimes considers herself more French than British. Hollande presented her with the award as “a foreigner living in France”, but in an interview with the Guardian last year the actor said she was considering moving back to the UK.
Since splitting from her husband, French gynaecologist François Olivennes, with whom she has three children, she has spent more time on the English side of the Channel.
The multi-award-winning Scott Thomas, 55, was brought up in Cornwall and lost her father Simon, a pilot in the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm, in a flying accident when she was five. Her stepfather, also a Royal Navy pilot died in an air crash six years later.
Educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, she was told by the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama that she would never be a good actor so she left to work as an au pair in Paris, where she studied drama. After graduating she was cast as a French heiress opposite the pop star Prince in the 1986 film Under the Cherry Moon. Her role in a 1988 adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust won her an Evening Standard British Film Award for most promising newcomer.
She is best known in Britain for her roles opposite Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral, which earned her a Bafta, and as Katharine Clifton in the English Patient, which brought an Oscar nomination.
More recently, she has appeared on the stage in London, notably playing Electra in Sophocles’ classic tragedy and the Queen in Peter Morgan’s The Audience, which runs at the Apollo theatre until 25 July.
She was made a chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 2005, and, in Britain, awarded an OBE in 2003.
In an interview with French Gala magazine, Scott Thomas suggested she found it amusing being addressed as a dame. “To me, a dame is someone in a tweed skirt with four dogs that bark at everyone. It makes me laugh when I see letters marked “Dame”. I find it hard to believe it’s me.”
The Légion d’honneur is awarded to about 3,000 people every year, two-thirds of them civilians and the rest military personnel.
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