How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Kristin Scott Thomas – ‘Having children allowed me to see where I’d gone wrong’

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

In a career spanning four decades, Dame Kristin Scott Thomas has become one of Britain’s most celebrated actors: Four Weddings and a Funeral, The English Patient, The Horse Whisperer, Tell No One and Slow Horses, alongside acclaimed stage work including her Olivier‑winning performance in The Seagull. Yet her path was far from straightforward: discouraged at drama school, she moved to Paris as an au pair and rebuilt her training from scratch. Her childhood had already been shaped by profound loss after the deaths of her father and stepfather in near‑identical accidents. She has now channelled these experiences into her directorial debut, My Mother’s Wedding, which she also co‑wrote and stars in, alongside Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller and Emily Beecham. We talk about her early grief, the emotional armour she built as a teenager, the chaotic experience of filming with Prince, making My Mother’s Wedding, the power of women writing women, her unforgettable Fleabag monologue and the joy and clarity she has found in her 60s. ✨ IN THIS EPISODE: 00:00 Intro 03:15 Reclaiming a Tragic Narrative 04:59 Joy in her 60s 06:22 Co Writing With Her Husband 07:03 Animation and Childhood Memory 09:07 Casting and Creative Reunions 12:23 Failure One: Prince Film Debut 17:06 Fame Theater and Radical Roles 24:09 Under the Cherry Moon Lessons 25:28 Failure Two: Teenage Grief 26:24 Childhood Losses 27:58 Eldest Sibling Burden 28:37 Acting Through Sadness 29:59 English Patient Reflections 33:19 Four Weddings Role 36:39 Therapy and Healing 43:41 Grief Advice and Faith 45:45 Football and Identity 49:16 Aging and Gratitude 💬 QUOTES TO REMEMBER: “I wanted to take my past and make it into something positive.” “If people enjoy what you do, it’s not bad.” “Having children allowed me to see where I’d gone wrong and where I was beating myself up.” 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: Kristin’s directorial debut, My Mother’s Wedding, is now available in UK cinemas and streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime and Apple TV Join the How To Fail community: www.howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Elizabeth’s Substack: www.theelizabethday.substack.com 📚 WANT MORE? Rosamund Pike - this episode explores how her career has resisted tidy narratives, how she’s navigated fame without reading reviews for 25 years and how her so‑called “failures” – not getting married, struggling with fear, raising two sons while working, even a disastrous attempt at cooking a rabbit – have shaped her. It’s ultimately about a woman interrogating identity, courage and the stories she tells herself:http://swap.fm/l/tePOA4HZ2PoaBBwudnv7 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod Website: www.elizabethday.org Guest bookings for How To Fail only come from official @sonymusic.com emails Elizabeth and Kristin answer listener questions in our subscriber series: www.howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Engineer: Matias Torres Assistant Producer: Shania Manderson Senior Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Alex Lawless Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I was very good at holding it in, at not letting anybody, don't cry in class, don't do this, don't do that, don't keep it all back, be the funniest in the room. Having children allowed me to see where I'd gone wrong and where I was beating myself up and where I was doing unnecessary sabotage and damaging. And of course, because I'd been used to father's dying, and I'd come. kind of grown up with it and got over it and, as I said, kept going. Grieving for my mother was just like being run over by a tank. This episode of How to Fail is brought to you by Dove Whole Body Deodorant. Welcome to How to Fail, the podcast that looks beneath the hood of success to see the failure that lies underneath. Before we get started on this episode, please do remember to subscribe, follow and like said that you never miss a single conversation.

Hello, I'm Mare Bergdorf. I'm Clara Ampho. And welcome to our brand new podcast, Into It. Very good luck at us. We've got to go. We've got the 90s. There we go. So we're talking about all things, pop culture, and whatever we are into. Across music, film, fashion, politics, tech, whatever. If we're into it, we're going to talk about it.

And especially if we're over it, too. Exactly. So do make sure you listen. Watch and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. For years, a deranged man in Wichita known as the poet, stalked Ruth Finley. He sent her letters, gifts, and poems. The Wichita police put everything they had into Ruth's case, but got nowhere. The poet was always two steps in front of us, and we just didn't know why. And the city was already living in fear under the watch of another monster who called himself BTK. And he also had a thing for poetry. Could we really have two different people? But no one could have

guessed how this would end. That's one of those Hitchcock endings that we did not expect. From Sony Music Entertainment and New Metric Media, this is the poet. I'm Rachel Brown. Coming July 1st to The Binge, search for the Poet wherever you get your podcast to start listening today. Subscribers to the Binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, add free. We all have our favorite Dame Kristen Scott Thomas performance. It might be the brittle but heart saw Fiona in four weddings and a funeral, or the married woman who experiences a sexual awakening with an enigmatic Hungarian count in the English patient. Perhaps it's her turn in the horse whisperer, which she acted in despite being terrified of horses, or her role as the businesswoman

in Fleabag, who delivers a memorable monologue about women being born with pain built in. Maybe it's one of the riveting performances Scott Thomas has delivered in fluent French, the lead in thriller Tell No One, or the doctor released from prison in I've loved you so long. Or it's the icy Diana Taverner, Deputy Director General of MI5 in Apple TV's Slow Horses. Then there are her stage performances.

She won an Olivier for her turn in the Seagull in 2008. It's a hugely successful career, and yet it almost. ended in failure when teachers at the central school of speech and drama discouraged her from acting in probably saying that she lacked talent. Instead, she moved to Paris as an au pair and restarted her training there. Her childhood had been beset by both happiness and tragedy. Her father, a Navy pilot, was killed in a plane crash when she was five. Her mother left widowed at 28 with four children,

remarried one of his colleagues, only for him to do. die in a near identical accident when Scott Thomas was 11. It's an unimaginable experience. She has used as inspiration for her directorial film debut, My Mother's Wedding, in which she also co-stars and which she co-wrote with her second husband, John Mickleffawait. The film tells the story of three sisters who return home for the wedding of their twice widowed mother. In bringing it to the screen, Scott Thomas says, I wanted to take my pass. I wanted to take my pass. and make it into something positive and to show that, yes,

catastrophe at a young age can be disastrous and sometimes it just makes you who you are. Dame Chris and Scott Thomas, welcome to how to fail. Thank you. It's so lovely to meet you in this studio. And I'm also aware that writing a potted introduction like that

can be rather emotionally bruising, I imagine, to hear again and again and again your life story sort of rehashed for the purposes of journalism. When you hear it over and over again, as I have, because I've been doing this a very, very long time, it's so boring. Everybody knows that, but actually lots of people don't. And then when they do find out the sort of the kind of catastrophic element, they're often quite kind of flummoxed by it.

And I guess that's why it's in all the articles, because people can't quite believe what they're reading. The film that you have directed, starred in and written, is that an attempt to reclaim that narrative for yourself? Yeah, absolutely, spot on. I just got a bit fed up with seeing that every single profile always had a little paragraph about my tragic childhood and I said, oh hang on it wasn't that bad.

And then looking at it, you think, well, actually, that is quite serious. Serious damage could be caused by that. And then I had a think and I thought that that perhaps could be shared and understood by lots of other people and turn it into a story with a kind of positive tilt to it rather than just under the label tragic. Yes.

And it is a very joyous film. Yeah, I think so. Do you feel more joyous now at the age of 65, which I can't believe, looking at you? But do you feel more joyous now than you did 10, 20 years ago? Yes. No, I do. I do. And I think it's because, well, I've found love, which is a very lovely. thing to happen. And I've also managed to kind of complete things in my career. And when I say that,

I mean, I've played, I sort of done tragedy now. I feel I've sort of done it. And I've emptied the bag. There's no more left. And I think I did that. When I did Electra, I think that's what I thought, oh, don't have to do that ever again. I don't have to weep for a dead father ever again. And so that was, that was quite healing, I would say, playing that. So there's a lot of stuff. And, you know, time and lots of work. I've done lots of work. I've never made a secret of that. I've done lots of work with therapists and people, you know, psychoanalysts to keep myself on track. And that's worked. You mentioned finding love and you co-wrote as I said in the introduction this film with your husband what was it like working together

It was great it was really fun because we sort of compliment each other he's a very he manages to hold a lot of things in place at the same time whereas I'm totally scatterbrained and find that quite difficult

but I'm much better at dialogue than he is I could hear the voices but he could sort of build a structure. So anyway, I could hear the voices. I don't know whether that's a good thing to admit to. I hear voices. You can take that to the psychoanalysts. Yes, yes, yes.

There are so many things I want to ask you about the film. One is the decision, which I found a very moving one, to use animation. When there is one sister in particular played by Scarlett Johansson, who has these memories, and those memories are shown through animation, Why did you choose to use that form? The reason I chose animation was because my memory is that, you know, I was five. I'm not sure how true they were. And so the lovely thing about animation and the drawing,

and particularly that technique, which is painting on glass, which is why it has that sort of quivering feel, that gives a sort of looseness to it. and it's sort of not precise and it's not exactly real and none of the characters have eyes and that's because they're not alive and I just felt that that was the right way to go.

I think you can be very emotional with it really can be piercing animation. You can get a lot done with a drawing. Yes. Did playing the mother character give you new insights into how you feel your mother might have felt? Gosh, I'd never thought about that. No, not really. I mean, they're so, so different.

I mean, it certainly gave me insights into how I was as a mother. But it's, it, what the ideal, I think she's the ideal mother, really. I think she's fantastic. Yes. But, yeah, I mean, it was just about, it was, funnily enough, the scene that everybody says, what a wonderful scene, because you really, that was written by my husband. Very generous of you to say that. Is that the one with the children line? Yes.

Yes. We won't. I won't want, but it's very, very good. And you got a phenomenal cast together. So the sisters are played by Scarlett-Ehanson, Sienna Miller and Emily Beecham. I know. It's unbelievable. I mean, how terrific.

And Frida Pinto. It's unbelievable. And James Fleet. I love to me. Who you're reunited with. I know. Again. Wait, so you did you, was your first...

I've been married to him before, you know. Okay. So you first professionally worked together on for weddings and a funeral. Yes. Okay. That's where we met. And how many times you've been reunited? I think that was only the third time we've worked together.

But we were married in the three sisters. Oh, okay. So, you know, we've been down that. road. And is it nice being reunited with someone who's known you for so long? It is. It is. I mean, we're not friends outside. I mean, we're always pleased to see each other, but, you know, I don't have very many friends in this business, actually, funnily enough. But it's really nice to be able to, there's something that happens when there's somebody you

work really well with, and I work really well with James, is that you just, they bring out the best in you and you can sort of relax and it just sort of clicks and you don't have to feel, you have to pull the scene in any one direction. It just has its own life. And that's a really fun thing to happen. And that doesn't happen all the time. You know, it can happen when it does.

It's great, but it's not all the time. Where are most of your friends from if they're not from the business? I don't know. I keep trying to think, do I have any friends? Yes, I do. No, a lot of them are in filmmaking. but not necessarily actors. But there are actors that I love,

and I'm always really happy to find again. But because we live such nomadic lives, it's quite difficult. Let's get on to your failures. There's so much more I could ask you about, but let's hope they come up as part of your failures. Your first failure is your first ever film with Prince. I know. Can you believe that was a failure?

It was. It was awful. Oh. So at this time, You've gone to France as an opair, you've re-kick started your training as an actress. You get a part in a French play and that gets you on audition. Oh, that, no, the French play, by the way, was a huge hit, even though it was tiny, tiny, tiny. But I got my first ever proper review, which was the best review I've ever had.

And it was tragic that it should be my first. Anyway, and then the reviews come for the film that we do, with Prince and they were not good. But so I was doing this show in a field in Burgundy and creating a bit of a fuss and it was all brilliant riding high. And I get called up to go and do this audition. And they're shooting in France

and they need local actresses to play, you know, bit parts, girlfriends, girlfriend one, girlfriend two. And so I think, great, that's fantastic. trotter along go to this amazing hotel called the Criand in Paris which is just beautiful I'd never been anywhere like that

never even been in a hotel actually to be honest and I walk into this thing and do my interview and my interview my audition and because the roles was so short

they gave you the lead to read because it was only like exclamations oh Mary you look great you know this sort of thing and so there was no sort of content, there wasn't enough content to find out whether you were any good. So they gave us this other scene and I did it and there was a bit of a kerfuffle behind the camera

and I was getting a bit worried and somebody poked their head up and said, would you like to audition for the lead? Yeah, I would, I'd love to. So off I go and I do that. And as I said, I'd never been in a hotel before. I got asked which hotel I wanted to stay in in Nice. I met Prince. That was incredible.

What's that like meeting Prince for the first time? You know, I was a massive fan. It was, what, 1988, two, 83, something like this. And I was listening to the record of that summer on my Walkman, you know, listening to it nonstop on a loop. And just loved it. And there I was with this man. And hello, how'd you do? and there were three other men around him.

Already men for me was something a bit scary, to be honest. But like, and then there was this person dressed and it was really him. I'd never met anyone as famous in my life. You know, I really was sort of gobsmacked. But, you know, you have to keep going. So you put one foot in front of the other and you go and sit on that chair and you're sort of a little bit trembly in the rest of it. And then he blew it because he was also a bit nervous.

And he, because we were kids. You know, I was 23. He was 24. And it was in a very impressive dining room. He goes, he makes some sort of movement with his hand. And this bread roll, this nice crispy bread roll, there's skedaddling across this polished floor. Anyway, it was all a bit odd.

And then the next day, niece, hair, makeup, you know, the whole shebang and costumes and dancing lessons. And I just really couldn't believe. could not believe it was happening to me. Was he mesmeric in his charisma? Yeah, but I'm not sure it was him or whether it was just the thing around him,

which is this monster of fame and talent and people protecting him like crazy. So it was a very weird vibe where everyone's laughing hilariously at anything vaguely funny he could say and everybody's sort of making sure everything's all right all the time. And it's a weird energy around people who are incredibly talented and precious because they bring in a lot of money.

Did it teach you how to deal with fame when later you became famous? No. No. That did not shed any light on that, on my particular brand of fame. That was out there. I mean, it was, you know, extraterrestrial. It wasn't anything that I've never encountered anything like that since, really. I want to come back to Prince and Under the Cherry Moon, the movie that you did together. But I'm intrigued as to your take on what fame is and whether you find it boring.

Yeah, do I think it's boring? No, I think it's actually the older I get, and I have. I think this is what you were talking about in the beginning, is, am I happier? Yeah, definitely. Is that I've come to terms with the fact that if people enjoy what you do, it's not bad. I think there's some sort of old bit of bad Catholicism in me or something that makes me think that wanting people to like me as a bad thing or wanting people to enjoy or I'm sure. showing off or something. There's always something sort of a bit iffy about that for me or was.

But now I've come to terms of the fact that if people enjoy it, it's okay. It's good. It's nice. Yes. And I think that's because I do more theatre. So I understand more what it's like to be in a room with people who've bought a ticket for that night. They've got this contract with the theatre. They're going to come and they're going to have a really good time.

And they might cry, they might laugh. They might, you know, get bored. but they are, they've decided to come and they've decided to come for a reason and often you are part of that reason. Is there a character in the lexicon of characters that you've played that feels to you that it speaks most to your soul? Well, if I tell you that when I played Irina R. Cardena in The Seagull,

my children said, oh well, no acting required then. Okay, okay. But I did love Bridget in, I think she was called Bridget, in Phoebe's piece. Oh, Fleabag. Fleabag. Yes. Yes. I loved that.

Belinda. Belinda. Yes. Bridget was in, Belinda, Bridgett. Bridget was in salmon fishing in the Yemen. I loved playing Bridget. Belinda, I know I'm getting off on a tangent, but we just have to talk about Belinda. Yeah.

Because that monologue was so seismic. It's brilliant. for so many women. And Phoebe was my first ever guest on How to Fail, FMI. She's a very good friend of mine. And I'm so grateful to you for doing that justice. And it felt so radical at the time. Did it also reflect your experience of getting older as a woman in terms of the radicalization of it?

I can't even tell you how this thing, when it arrived in my letterbox, it was just like, oh, this is at last someone insane. these things, thank God. Yes. Loved it. And there was no way I wasn't going to do that. You know, yes. You also recently read an extract from Giselle Pelikos's autobiography. And you've said some very interesting things about male critics,

not really understanding the depth or nuance of the female experience. Do you feel that you've become more radical as a... I don't... Can I... I just make a little correction about that. It's not that male critics don't understand, is that we need more women playwrights so that it becomes more normal for women

to stand up on stage and talk about our bodies, about our experience of childbirth, about our experience of menopause, about our experience of life, full stop. So I just think that, I don't know how many, what the ratio is male to female, But I think that that argument was misconstrued. Okay.

Well, thank you for clarifying. But I definitely feel that I'm becoming more radical as I get older. More impatient. I'm just impatient with the, I'm just impatient with why are we still doing this? Why is this not? Why is there only, I mean, hopefully it's changed, but I read somewhere that there was 4% of medical research goes into women's bodies. Yeah, I mean, it is extraordinary.

Yeah. Extraordinary? Mm-hmm. Yes. I mean, this is... Stuff like that. Yes. It's deeply irritating.

And that sense of shame that we were touching upon is so often internalized by women when they go through some sort of medical experience that is so underfunded and under-researched. And in my personal experience, what I bring to that is the experience of miscarriage or infertility, which I went through. And there's so little money in research devoted to that. I mean, that's changing. but I think you're completely right that it adds to this feeling that we have to be silent about what we go through.

Yeah. Well, we haven't been very silent thanks to people like Phoebe and thanks to women writing plays. You know, it all comes back to we just need to be able to say more. Giselle Pellicoe, what she did writing that book

is fantastic. Thank you, Giselle, for writing that. You know, it takes a lot of guts to do that. Yes. So, yeah, I mean, but I don't really think of myself as being, you know, a campaigner or anything like that. I just, sometimes I just lose patience with it.

Your early performances, and this was one of the things that lazy journalists like me used to say, were notable for their restraint. Do you think that that was a reaction to being too much in Under the Cherry Moon? And I mean restrained and good. No, I think that I don't think it was. It wasn't consciously that anyway, but it was just doing things the way I wanted them. I wanted to do them and it seemed to work. So if I wanted to be restrained, I could be and they seem to like it.

So I'll go and be restrained again. I mean, lately my performances have got a lot more extravagant. Are you enjoying Diana Tavernor? Yes. Why? Well, you've watched it, haven't you? Of course. Well, there you go.

Well, part of what I value about Diana Tavern and Slow Horses is the lack of private life. We don't know that much about her. Nothing at all. It's all top secret. Which is really important as playing a female character. To have some sort of background? No, it's actually important not to in a way. It's a sort of privilege that has been afforded to male characters.

That we don't care whether she's. She's got, you know, six kids at home and has to go do the shopping. Exactly. No, it is. It's true. It's, it is, that is one thing. I'd never thought of that, and I think you're quite right. It's a good point.

Oh, thank you. I should send the interview that. Let's quit while we're ad. Have you ever rewatched under the cherry moon? Well, only snippets of it because it really does. But, you know, the soundtrack is amazing. The photography's amazing. Some bits are acting.

You know, Francesca Rannis is acting. acting as Sox Off's and she's brilliant. It's, you know, it is what it is. It was an 80s film in the period of dynasty and the rest of it. I'm very grateful for it, to be honest, because it taught me a lot. I mean, literally, I did not know you had to do the same thing twice when they have a wide shot and a close shot.

I didn't know it. I knew nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. There was one scene where I was being kissed and it was in a, I don't know where it was, racetrack or something, lying on the ground. And I had my hands by myself because I never happened to me before. I'm lying there, waiting.

And then the kiss happens. And the script, very nice script supervisor, comes over to me. So, Kristen, can you just move a bit? You look a bit stiff. lying there waiting oh bless there are those weeks when everything lands at once and it feels overwhelming

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But thank you for talking about it because so many people will get a lot from this, I think. And it's your failure to deal with grief as a young teenager. Yes. Well, I think that that is a failure. that needn't have been a failure, an unnecessary failure. It wasn't really me sabotaging anything. It was because at the time, this was in the 1970s,

there really wasn't any kind of pastoral care or there wasn't any therapy or anything like. Canceling, call it what you like. And there I was, a small girl made orphaned, And my father died when I was nearly, well, I was five and a half. And then when I was 11 and I just started a new school, it happens again. And that was much more than anybody could really handle, I think, by themselves. And I know terrible things.

Believe me, I know no one was doing it to me on purpose. It wasn't cruelty. It wasn't. It was just life. fate. So I know that it's, but everybody deals with their own stuff differently, but I wasn't able to get over that really for a very, very long time. And it need to be in the case.

So it wasn't genuinely my failure, I suppose, but I do wish that I had, I do wish that I'd been able to at least look at it as a, you know, young girl. And in fact, I didn't really do anything about it until I was 30. And by then I had two children. And having children allowed me to see where I'd gone wrong and where I was beating myself up and where I was, you know, doing unnecessary sabotage and damaging. just because of this enormous sadness that had never been allowed out. I'm so sorry you went through that. Thank you. Was there part of you as the eldest child

that felt a responsibility? Oh, definitely, definitely. And that's what I try to put in the film. I try and get that across with the character played by Scarlett, the eldest sister, Catherine, this idea that I'm in charge and I have to make sure everyone's happy and everyone does it.

And that was definitely, definitely, because there were five of us. So I definitely felt a sort of stiff upper lip, come on. And I think that's why I get this sort of bossy. I'm so good at being bossy is because I have had lots of practice. You know, yeah. Yeah. And now looking back at it as a human, I mean, not as human, children are human, but as a grown-up, I think, you know, I see myself as a,

as a somebody else's child, you'd think, oh God, poor little thing, somebody help her. But that wasn't available. And I think that not being, having, I think the only thing that has been, I mean, one of the reasons, and I've said this before,

so forgive me if it's not completely original thought, but I've, one of the reasons that I was good at playing these characters who are, who have a sort of, secret longing or secret sadness or a secret, a secret, is that I was very good at holding it in, not letting anybody, don't cry in class, don't do this, don't do that, don't keep it all back, be the funniest in the room, be this, you know, show off, that actually I was able

to connect and communicate a kind of inner sadness because I had this thing called a camera that wasn't going to judge me that I could just sort of do it. So I'm afraid to say it came out. Sorry, that's so beautiful. And I'm just thinking of your performance in the English patient, which I rewatch this weekend. God, it's good, isn't it?

Oh, my God, Christ. It's so good. It's so good. I mean, Anthony Mangala, I think, is such a genius I love all of his films but the way that you act that part is

there's so much repression but there's so much fire beneath the surface and I think that I haven't watched it for a very long time I haven't watched it in 10 years but I know that it's

it still has an incredible effect on people which is the proof of a good film isn't it? And the role was so beautifully written I mean most of the

successes that I've ever had is all down to the writing to be honest you know anyone can say those lines

and be brilliant so it was it was very very very good writing and good and good not bad partner

to partner so it was all right I don't know what's become of him No, no, no, no, no, no, what he does. The other day I went to see him, I went to a rehearsal for an opera he was doing in Paris. And it's so wonderful to see your friends. He's my friend.

He's your friends. He's my friend. Oh, that makes me happy. To see your friends sort of suddenly take off in another direction. And watching him direct these singers and getting them to perform in a way that just brings chills to you. Unbelievable. So anyway, I was very happy about that. So what we're talking about, not rave.

No, grief and the sort of cathartic process of the camera being non-judgmental. Yeah, yeah. So I think that that served me well in, you know, it was useful. And I think, you know, there again, now I'm able to look at that and think that isn't me just being indulgent or self-indulgent or whatever. It's not, you know, nasty. It's actually great because a lot of people can. can see that, can empathise, can feel something, can, the whole point of cinema, if you want my opinion, is that you go into a, you buy a ticket, you go and you sit down and you share with a whole lot of other people,

you will probably never see again in your life, or maybe two of them, you will, or three of them, or one of them, you might, but they're all strangers and you're all going to be going on this roller coaster together, and some will sob and you can feel somebody sniffling in the next row round and it's a safe place to go and have all those feelings

and I think that that is such a loss because we don't go to the cinema anymore. I know and I love the cinema so much. It's so nice when you go with a load of people and the lights go down and the thing is about to begin and then people get cross because they're rustling their popcorn

and then it stops because you're all watching. the same thing and you're going through hell or you're going, you're the edge of your seat or you're ducking or whatever you're doing, it's just such an adventure. Yes. And I love that. Is it annoying when people ask you about Fiona in four weddings and a funeral? No. What do you want to know? Everything. What memories do you have of playing that part? Oh, having to beg for it. Did you? Yes. Yes. I'd met Hugh on a film called Bittermoon that we made. Roman Plansky.

Hugh was in Hugh Grant. Yeah. So we got on very well and he said, you should go up for this. It's a film I'm doing next. The way he is. Grump, grump, grump. And so I managed to get myself a copy and I thought, oh, I can definitely do this. And no, I said, sort of so, well, if you can come to England, we can give you an audition, but we're not sure.

So I've had to do like two auditions to get that role. Well, thank goodness. Thank goodness you got it. And such great hats. The best hat. I love a hat. Oh my gosh, that pink hat that you wore with the polka dots. Yes, this is my tribute to you.

I didn't bring the hat in even though it is how to fail pink in so many ways. It's such a good thing. And I suppose that highlights another thing that you bring to roles, which is this innate sense of style. How much have you enjoyed over the years playing with clothes? It's the best. Because clothes are so important when you're making a character. The first thing you do really is get the costume because they have to be made and it takes months. So you go in and you talk to the costume designer and they whip out some colours and have a look at it and you stand there and you're in your knickers.

I remember when we did the English people, The costume designer on that is a woman called Anne Roth, who's an absolute miracle. Anyway, she got me into the dressing room. So take off your clothes. What do you mean? Just pants and bra. She made me stand on a box in the middle of this room. It was vaguely humiliating.

In fact, it wasn't vaguely who. It was utterly humiliating. But I didn't, you know, it's just the way things go. And she walked around me. Oh, my God. I said, yep, it's the tush. Oh my gosh! Wow! Do you think of that sometimes when you need a little Philip?

Yeah, I need a little, you know, I think, well, you know, might work. Have you ever got to keep anything? Yes, loads of things. Do you have that jacket in the English person? No, that disappeared. Criminal. And the wonderful thing happened the other day. I say the other day.

It wasn't the other day. It must have been a year or two years ago. I was wearing one of those great big coats they give you. to keep you warm. And I put my hand in my pocket. And there's a piece of paper in it. I pull it out. And it's the sides from the English patient.

The sides. The sides. Okay. Sides are a piece of paper that you get with your words for the day on it. Huh. From the English paper. Wow. I don't know if it was my coat or not, but it was in there.

What have you done with them? Did you take it? Oh, I just chucked them out. What? Stop it. It was so one sentence. Is that amazing? That's incredible. Back to this failure and that repressed grief that you carried for so many years. And then you said the turning point was when you had children and you went to psychoan. The turning point was when I had children because I just didn't want to pass it on. Because I think it's a duty as a parent to get your stuff sorted out before you start bringing them up. In fact, before you start thinking about having them really. But so I wanted to do. do that. And yeah, I went into

psychoanalysis quite seriously for about six, seven years. And then she died. Oh gosh. I had to find another one. I'm sorry. That's awful. For someone with, I imagine, a fear of abandonment. Yeah, it was quite difficult. It was that in French that you did

psychoanalysis? No. It was in English. It was a English speaking an American woman in numb, well actually two American women in Paris. How do you feel now about your fathers? Are you able in a way to connect with them without the obfuscation of a kind of unexamined grief, if that makes sense?

It's such a funny thing. I mean, the thing in the film is really quite sort of on it. That's on the money, that thing about what she says to her children when they've got to get over the fact that their father has died. I see my father, my father was what, 36, I think, when he died. I remember him as a sort of beautiful young man, daddy, who I was madly in love with because I was five. But actually now he'd be 80-something, quite old. Very old.

And my stepfather, I knew less because I was away at boarding school when my stepfather was around. But, you know, he brought us all up. So I just feel admiration for him, admiration and gratitude towards him. And, you know, I'm pretty amazed that someone would marry a woman with four children, The smallest was only like 18 months when they were married because mummy was pregnant when she was widowed. So I feel admiration, gratitude for that man and just a sense of, I don't know what the word is,

but half of me is my dad. So he's here wherever he is. Yes. He's this. Yes. Yes, and your mother, tell me about her. She sounds completely extraordinary. My mother was extraordinary because she was, it's so weird to talk about her as was.

She died four years ago, which really is a thing, your mother dying. It's a huge thing. And of course, because I'd been used to father's dying, and I've kind of grown up with it and got over it. And as I said, kept going. grieving for my mother was just like being run over by a tank I just could not because now I was I'd got over all those things and I'd accepted the fact that one is able to grieve and all this and so that was a massive shock

but she was such she was an extraordinary person she was so brave and so unprepared I mean how do you do that you're 20, 26 or 27, you're widowed, you've got three little girls, you've got another one on the way, that's bad enough. I mean, how you get over that, I just don't know. And she was on her own, her parents didn't live in the same country, she was all on her own. And she'd given up. She'd wanted to be an actress, my mom. She'd gone to Lambda. And then she met my dad, and they fell madly enough. And in those days, you know, that's what you did. You got married and had children. And so she followed him down to Cornwall where he was based and then he went off to sea and she was stuck in this tiny little house with pregnant and then with me and then with another one and then she managed to once and then she really came into her own when my stepfather was killed because I think that did mess her up quite a lot I think I remember her being massively massively massively massively

depressed and just never really leaving her room and being really and not eating, you know, and other, it was amazing how people came in, you know, friends of hers and how they were all rallied around and looked after her. It was amazing. But we were both at school at that time, so I didn't see much of that. But, and then she sort of, I don't know, something happened and she just said, I've got, I've got to live everything. And she took us to Cyprus for the whole of the Christmas summer holidays. Somebody lent her a house.

She managed to blag her way to getting tickets to Cyprus on a flight run by the RAF of service families. Because you did, in those days, you got pretty swiftly cut off. Anyway, she managed to do that. And we were out there for six weeks. we had an absolutely fantastic time. She'd already learned Greek because she thought she ought to learn some Greek before she took us there.

And we whizzed around in a mini-moke and had six weeks in this country that the following year was in Civil War. But it was pretty brave. Yes. And she just never stopped doing things like that. And when you went through this period of unraveling your own knots

of how you felt in your 30s, Did you speak to your mother after that about what she'd gone through? No, I'm afraid to say I didn't. I spoke to, it was a sort of non-subject. Yes. She was from a very different generation. She got through it by not getting through it, by just not going there. And so I knew that opening that door would be very different.

difficult for her. And so, I mean, you know, during my therapy, I talked about me, nonstop. If you had any advice for someone who is going through the ravages of grief right now, what would you say to them? God. Well, there's a very hackneyed phrase, which is, you know, time is a great healer. Well, that's absolutely true. I think people who've lost parents, the thing that's really helped me is what I was saying earlier about being, you know, I am the result.

I am. Part of that person is me. That's really, really helped me, particularly with my father. And my mother, wow, what an amazing woman. And I really miss her. I don't miss my mother. I mean, I've sort of, got over missing my mother, but missing the woman Deborah. Yes. She was great. She was such fun. She was great. I often find myself wishing, I do like Instagram, wishing I could send her a funny video or something.

I love all that. And every time I get into the car to go to the market on Saturday, I think, oh, just call my, no, you won't. Still, four years ago she died. So it is a thing, but it just gets. does get less and less and less painful. Do you have a belief in an afterlife? Does any of that Catholic faith still reside in you? I'm still wrestling with all of that.

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. So it's pretty wavering. I'm not sure about afterlife, but I do think that there are... Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not going to say what I believe in, because I'm not even sure I believe it, but there are nice thoughts to be had that are reassuring about spirits, souls.

Yes. Your final failure, there's no seamless link, Kristen. I know, I'm sorry about that. No, it was brilliant because I knew nothing. I knew nothing. I still know nothing. There's very little context for this, but your final failure is being a football supporter.

I'm rubbish. But as in your rubber, you don't support football. I think I bring them bad luck. Okay. I don't think I support. I don't think I support. I think I'm maybe solely responsible for their decline. No, because what happened was that in 2015, I read an article about how Lester had come up and won the Premier League, I think it was.

I remember that, yes. And it was at the same time as finding Richard the third. heard. Yes, which I'm obsessed with that whole story. There's a wonderful article in The Guardian about how the, Lester was really, you know, amazing. I loved this idea of this little city winning the thing, you know, the David and Glythe thing. I loved it, loved it, loved it. And became a little bit more curious about football and started to watch the World Cup and stuff like that.

In 2019, I meet a very lovely man who says he's very interested in football. I hadn't quite figured out how interested in football. But anyway, very interested in football. And that he supports a team that are doing really well. It's called Lester City. And I knew all about Lester City because I'd read up about it. And so he took me to a couple of games. And I missed the Wembley because I gave the ticket to his son

because I knew that his son would appreciate it more. I understood so much more about football. I understood why they have mad haircuts because then you can see them. Never realised that. I hadn't either. It suddenly occurred to me. But then I got into trouble because I thought that the Arsenal goalkeeper was our goalkeeper because they both had blonde hair. Okay. And they were both very tall. Schmichael, his name was.

Anyway, it might not have been Arsenal. I can't remember. But so I've been to games and it's fun and but I obviously, you know, do them no good at all. Is the lovely man now your husband? Yes. Okay, great. So that's good. That's one good thing that's come out of it. Do you enjoy watching football? I do. Yeah, I do. Not as much as I enjoy watching rugby, I have to say.

I also wonder on this, whether there's something quintessentially British about, definitely rugby. And because you have this duality to you, the Frenchness and the Britishness. Oh, but watching the France play England. Oh, it's agony. Yes, who do you support? Well, I do. Do you know what, I don't, but that's the thing about rugby is that you find that you don't. really support, they'll probably be slaughtered for saying this, but you don't really support anyone because it's such a wonderful game to watch. You, you're just, you know, whoever wins the point is brilliant, you know. How French or British are you feeling right now

in this phase of your life? I'm about to go back to Paris for a bit, but I suppose I feel It's the most, it's the hardest question in the world that. Because I really don't know. Yeah. I mean, when I was in France, everyone was saying, oh, a little English, you know, no. Oh, she's very French, you know. And it's just, I just don't, I don't know. And how are you feeling now in your 60s with this extraordinary career?

it feels to me as an outsider that you are only just getting started, that there's this energy and vitality and joy that you're bringing to what you're doing now. Does that feel accurate? Does it feel accurate to you? It's certainly, I certainly enjoy things more. I'm able to enjoy things more. I'm allowed to enjoy things more now. And I'm not quite sure what that is to do with, whether that is just maturity or what it is. But I feel much more able and brave enough to try things out and brave enough to accept things and brave enough to sort of do new things. It's been such a pleasure talking to you.

Thank you. Thank you so much for trusting me. and for coming on How to Fail. A pleasure. Thank you so much for listening and watching. This episode has been brought to you by Dove Whole Body Deodorant. Please do follow How to Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends.

This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.