Kristin Scott Thomas Is Done With Films; Finds 'Trust' in the Theatre

Kristin Scott Thomas is done with films. After starring in 65 features over the course of 30 years, the actress told the Guardian that she reached her breaking point at some point last September.

"I just suddenly thought, I cannot cope with another film," Thomas said. "I realized 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."

Nor will she be appearing on television: "I can't do miniseries. Once you've got the characters, once you know who they are, they're going to repeat themselves, aren't they, for the next five years? It just goes on and on and on," Thomas said. "I get terribly bored. Series bore me."

Off-screen and onstage seems to be the way Thomas is headed. She played the title role in BERENICE in France in 2001 and loved it. "I suddenly felt independent," she said. "You could walk on stage and you could stand on your head if you really wanted to. No one's going to say stop, don't do that, that's a ridiculous idea. There's this feeling of independence and trust - I could give myself permission to play things in a certain way and see if they worked or they didn't. I could trust myself."

She continued: "Basically, when you are acting in a film, you're giving the director the raw material to make the film. But when you're acting on stage, that's it. And that's when you discover that you can really do it. It's this word 'trust' that keeps coming to me. It's not a question of whether one person is conning you into thinking you can do it, saying, 'Oh, it was beautiful.' On stage, if it works, it works."

Since BERENICE, Thomas has starred in the West End in five plays -- Anton Chekhov's THREE SISTERS in 2003, AS YOU DESIRE ME in 2005, Chekhov's THE SEAGULL in 2008, Harold Pinter's BETRAYAL in 2011 and Pinter's OLD TIMES in 2013. She won an Olivier Award for best actress for her performance in The Seagull.

Her latest film, The Invisible Woman, is an adaptation of Claire Tomalin's biography on Charles Dickens' secret mistress, the 18-year-old actress Nelly Ternan. Thomas plays Ternan's widowed mother, Catherine.

"Well, I don't want to go and see a film about young people," Thomas explained to the Guardian. "I'm just not remotely interested. When I go to the movies, I'd rather watch people who've lived, who have gone through the mill, who've had their heart broken a million times and are still looking for love. That's what's interesting to me."

Thomas' upcoming films include Suite francaise, My Old Lady and The Kitchen Boy. Among her many credits are Before the Winter Chill, Bel Ami, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Sarah's Key, Leaving, Confessions of a Shopaholic, The Other Boleyn Girl, Gosford Park, The Horse Whisperer, The English Patient, Mission: Impossible, Richard III, the TV mini-series Body & Soul and many more.