Kristin Scott Thomas

“The Night Porter. Charlotte Rampling is a great hero of mine. I’ve always meant to see this, but it was one of those things that never happened.”

“Oh, Casque d’or! That’s brilliant. Simone Signoret. These actresses are just extraordinary. Simone Signoret, she was just so beautiful and so… sort of different looking. And it’s very kind of… I like Jacques Becker anyway, but the photography and the style of the whole thing, and the danger within it, I really love that.”

“This is my favorite film in the entire world. Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Leo McCarey. The Awful Truth. The funniest film. And it’s got this amazing sort of almost improvised quality to it. And it’s just… She’s just a genius of comic timing and freedom. They feel so free. And so often in these films at this period, everything feels a bit tight and stifled and posed, but this feels completely kind of wild. So I really, really, really enjoy that. I’m going to have that.”

“Women in Love. Is that the… That’s the Ken Russell film with… Oh, it’s the D. H. Lawrence thing. Now, of course, one should know this because one’s English, but I’ve never seen it. If it’s one of the best movies in here, I’m having it in my bag.”

“This is wonderful. This is Louis Malle’s first film. I can’t imagine that it’s his first film, it’s just so brilliant. Elevator to the Gallows, with Jeanne Moreau, who I adored and is just so, so, so brilliant. And Maurice Ronet. Anyway, that’s definitely going in.”

“Purple Noon is one of my favorite films in the world and it’s always a sort of reference of mine. Again, Maurice Ronet. And Alain Delon, who was just amazing.”

“Oh, I’ve never seen this. I really want to see this, You Can Count on Me. Yep, I’ve got to watch this. I love Laura Linney. And Mark Ruffalo. All these are really exciting things to watch because it’s just such a… such a development in filmmaking, I suppose.”

“When I was a very young au pair girl, I was on duty one evening and I watched La piscine, with Jane Birkin, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet again! And Alain Delon. And it was just one of the most extraordinary, tense, really frightening films because it was so… everything was so beautiful, and yet there was this awful lurking tension. One of the sort of bricks in my film Education, I guess.”

“Did I get Ivan’s Childhood? I happen to know this is Tarkovsky’s first film. It’s amazing. And I watched it when I was starting to think about how to make memories in my film. And so I watched this because I thought he’d know how to do it. And, yeah, the dream sequences of when he’s going back into his… to happier times with his parents and his aunt. It’s all so beautiful. And the horror of everything else and the way he’s being manipulated, it’s really quite a chilling– a very chilling film,...”

“Chantal Akerman. I just feel this is an enormous piece Missing out of… out of everything I should have seen in my life. These amazing Faces. You just want to watch them. And they’re sort of transparent and you can see thoughts sort of passing through these Faces, which I find… which is something I really yearn for when I’m watching something or when I’m even performing with someone or filming someone, as I’ve had the privilege to do.”