Early in her career it looked as though British actress Kristin Scott Thomas was going to be relegated to elegant British women like she did in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), but with her role as the aristocratic but passionate Katharine Clifton in The English Patient, Thomas broke the mold, proving herself capable of projecting a good deal of sensuality and heat as her character embarked upon a tragic affair with Hungarian adventurer Ralph Fiennes.

As at home in French films as she is in British ones, Scott Thomas's work in The English Patient attracted the attention of Hollywood when she appeared in Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer (1998) a beautifully photographed adaptation of British screenwriter Nicholas Evan's internationally best-selling novel.

Despite her blue-blooded bearing, Scott Thomas was born the eldest of five children in Cornwall, the daughter of a Royal Navy pilot who died in an air crash when she was five. When she was eleven, her stepfather, also a military pilot, died in almost exactly the same way. The tragedies surely left their scars, but they also taught Thomas to be strong and to carry on with life when bad things happen. Her interest in acting began at a young age, but her mother was determined that Thomas attend university and so sent her daughter to Cheltenham Ladies College. Scott Thomas dropped out at age 16 and then spent time in a convent before enrolling at the Central School of Speech and Drama to take a teacher training course. Unable to resist the call of the stage, Scott Thomas studied drama, but apparently did not show much initial talent and the staff advised Thomas to pursue other professions. By then, Scott Thomas was 18 and fed up with school. Seeking to gain perspective on her life, she went to Paris. What originally began as a two-week vacation ended permanent change of residence after Scott Thomas took an au-pair job and then fell in love with a Frenchman.

Though her new French friends teased Thomas for being a "funny little English girl," she found herself embraced by Paris life and this gave her the confidence to try acting again. Scott Thomas enrolled in L'Ecole Nationale des Arts et Techniques de Theatre, to hone her skills and gained experience playing small roles on stage. Her initial film roles were similarly small. Thomas made an inauspicious debut as a leading lady playing a headstrong heiress in pop star Prince's over-inflated self-tribute Under the Cherry Moon (1986). In hindsight, Scott Thomas finds the role an embarrassment and she has gone on to much better things, including her role as the wife of Hugh Grant in Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon (1992), the enigmatic Lady Anne in Richard III and the plain-jane entomologist who finds herself the subject of a romantic obsession in Angels and Insects (1995).