November 4, 2024 • 27 mins
The world knows Kristin Scott Thomas as an actress, starring in films such as The English Patient, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and most recently, playing Diana Tarverner in Slow Horses. Having lived in Paris for decades, Kristin is passionate about French cuisine and culture, and today at The River Cafe we speak about how food, France, and family have all played a role in her journey.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:48):
Sometimes a brilliant actor plays who they are and sometimes
who they are not. The world knows. My friend Kristin
Scott Thomas as a brilliant actor, often playing characters who
are strong, steely, and a turn Fiona and Four Weddings
at a Funeral, Catherine and the English Patient and most
recently Diana Taverner and sell Horses. She is strong, steally
(01:08):
and determined, but she is also warm, she's funny, and
she's empathetic. A rare woman. Sitting here today in the
River Cafe, Kristin is basking in love and the joy
of just a few weeks ago marrying the editor and
my friend John Michalswaite. Kristin loves good food. In fact,
the last time I saw her perform in the theater,
(01:28):
I greeted her backstage, I'm in awe of your performance, Kristin,
I said, good to know, Ruthie, but I'm starving. Let's
have something delicious for dinner. A rare woman. Indeed, So
the beginning, at the beginning. So you grew up your parents,
four sisters and brothers.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yes, I have two sisters and two brothers, and my
mother brought us up by herself, mostly because my father
was in the Navy and was killed in an accident.
And he was a pilot, you know, he flew planes
for the Navy. And then my little and after his death,
(02:08):
my little brother was born, and then my mother married
again to another pilot. She had a child with him,
and then he was also killed. So yeah, by the
time I was twelve, lost to two fathers, and my
mother was battling on at thirty three with five little children.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Do you have any memories of your father cooking or
your stepfather.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
I have memories of my father eat eating. Do you
what are they current buns on a Wednesday? Okay, I'm
still quite sort of. Yeah. We in those days the
bread was delivered because we lived in the country, and
the bread the baker would come around in his van
and on Wednesdays it was current bun day and you'd
(02:51):
get these these big, very plain buns, but with currents
in them, as their name would suggest. And I remember
him delivering and the baker delivering, and Daddy was about
to go off to work, so he was night flying
or something, so it was in his uniform and we
pinched the buns before mummy could appear, and it was
(03:13):
like a secret thing that we ate. We ate the
buns in secret before she could get there. And that
was a great moment that I've treasured, you know, because
it's one of the rare memories that I do have.
So this sort of sneakily eating something which perhaps shouldn't
be encouraged, but.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
I think if your father does it, but.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
It was such fun. It was rebellion disobedience, which was
just it was. It was great. It's a great memory.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
And food in the house.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Food in the house was.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
She loved cooking, and I think it was a way
it was slightly sort of meditative for her. I think
it was a way of escaping.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
When her husbands were alive or after the true well
after after it all went, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I think she enjoyed because it was kept her busy.
It was useful. Obviously she had to feed her children.
And she was very inventive and had grown up in
Africa and grown up in Hong Kong, and was very
curious about different flavors and curious about everything. Actually, I
remember one one year her going macrobiotic, which was a hell.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Was that.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Everything had lotsots and raisins.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Did she cooked food from Hong Kong or from Africa?
Speaker 3 (04:36):
No, she did quite a lot.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
My granny lived up the road and my granny did
a lot of South African cooking. Was she South Africa,
So she has a lot of South African And that
would be things like biboti or what they call curry,
which is the most extraordinary thing with a brilliant array
of all sorts of things. I think they called it
mandala curry or something. Anyway, it was a sort of
(04:59):
colonial has had been picked up bits from all over
the world.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Really, when your father and your stepfather died, did you
feel that in your mother's cooking that she you said it.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Was well there?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
It's difficult to say, or because I was at boarding
school most of the time, So do you remember the
food there?
Speaker 3 (05:16):
It was awful.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
I've had anyone say that they had a great time
eating at boarding school. No, is it you pay all
this money? I don't know. I think in America's probably
the same thing, you know, they just.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
What was it like when I was at prep school?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Boarding school, because because my stepfather was in the navy,
we had to be put into boarding school when we
were really.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Little, basically eight just eight too young too.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
I became institutionalized at eight and literally did not just
would not eat. And the nuns who were looking after
us were very, very sweet, and they thought all children
loved sugar, so they would put sugar in the teapots
and give us tea with sugar in it pre sweet
for breakfast. And since then I just cannot drink sweet.
(06:04):
Oh it's pretty well, I can't stand it. Do you
have a sweet tooth at all. Yes, I like current buns,
current buns cake. Yeah, I love sweet things, but I
don't like hot, hot drinks with sweet sweet drinks. I
don't like sweet drinks or.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Meal times that there can be families getting together and talking.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
And laughing and calling things.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
It could be a kind of tyranny where you had
to come to the table, you had to Yeah, that
was what it was like at school.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
At home, it was very, very joyous.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
I could say, yeah, are there many memories of your father?
Is the food memory the one that sticks?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
The food memory is a good one. There, I have
got a few. I've got a few.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
And actually that's we were talking earlier about my film,
My Mother's Wedding, And that is how the idea to
make a film came to be, is because I wanted
to hold on to these memories and I wanted to
make little animated films of these memories.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
That I have of my father because up to five
well because yeah, I was well.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Five and a half six, so you know, I have
maybe half a dozen little sort of vignettes that I
could little stories that I can tell, and I wanted
to give these to my siblings because they don't really remember.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Because I was the eldest.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, so that's how the the film came to be.
And then I was persuaded to integrate them into a
larger story and make a story about three women and
it's them going home for their mother's wedding and the
shenanigans that ensue.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
And when you went off on your own after Bardy school,
you came came to London. Was there a revelation of
what food could be? Did you eat in Greek or
did you really?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I mean I went to France very young, so and
I was an o pair girl. So I used to
cook for my charges. And then I learned a lot
of my friends through cookery books.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
They gave you recipes.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Well, they would have recipe books in there in their
house that I would sort of browse and think, what
does appa hae me?
Speaker 3 (08:12):
What on earth is this?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
And learn In Paris it was outside, that was outside
of Paris.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
And then I moved into town more.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
But I did a lot of the shopping, so I
did all the market or going to the market every day.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Lots of different experience from school or Yeah, I loved it.
You embraced Paris. You cooked for these children, You lived,
you went to the markets, but was there anything apart
from family? But were there foods that you missed?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Well, sort of stodgy English things I really missed. I
missed sort of pastry pastry, like suet pastry, you know,
like a beef pudding or something.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Taking in pudding delicious?
Speaker 1 (09:00):
What do you like about it?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
I love kidneys.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Then I discovered better than steaking kidney pudding is when
you get the whole thing of kidneys and you cook
them and you blew them with mustard.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
But that's French.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So I got there with these longings for these English things,
and then discovered, you know, the French.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Way of doing it actually quite like that and prefer it.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And I lived in Paris. We went I like brains'
brains at all?
Speaker 3 (09:27):
We see them little packets.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Guess what. We went to a butcher where he brought
up the head. He brought it the head of the veal.
And then first time ever I was probably twenty two,
and Richard said, let's have brains. I said, okay, we'd
have them in a restaurant. And I went to on
the run Boucheau. There was a butcher and he brought
up the head and he took the brains out.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Oh no, that's awful, don't I couldn't have.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yeah, but kidneys are very good.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Kidneys are delicious, and they look they look sort of
vaguely unidentifiable in the brain, and there's little baskets they
put them in.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
So just thinking about there you were in Paris. There
are so many films we could discuss and what it
was like, but of course one of the ones your
relationship with Prince. Prince, Yeah, how did you meet him?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
I auditioned for a role in his film, which was
a supporting role. He was making the film in France,
and they were looking for English speaking actresses who could
play these smaller roles and the supporting roles, and so
I trot along to the Klion Hotel do this audition,
and then suddenly there's sort of huddle behind the camera,
(10:36):
a lot of whispering, and they say, would you be
interested in auditioning for the lead, And I said, know,
I thought the lead had been cast. Well, so I did,
and I got the part, and I went home sort
of slightly reeling from all of that, and the phone
rang and it was them saying, Prince wants to meet you.
(10:58):
I mean This was just insane for me. I was eight,
what was it, twenty three, So the idea that this man,
this god du Midieu wanted to meet me.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
It was just extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
And you became friends.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
We became friends.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I mean, it was it was very different from me,
you know, it was quite difficult to be He was
such a genius, I mean, a proper genius, played so
many instruments, had his entourage, he had this whole thing
going on which was sort of a big rampart around
him of people and managers and all this kind of thing.
(11:40):
So it's quite difficult to get to know the guy.
And we were children, I mean, not we're children. We weren't.
We weren't children. You can't say we were children. But
virtually twenty three, he was twenty four. I was twenty three,
and he'd been given this enormous production with these Oscar
winning head of departments.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
And it was all huge.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
And he was a musician, you know, and he was
very creative and he had lots of ideas. He would
watch seventies sort of seventies B films, Italian made B films,
all dubbed really really badly.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
He loved those. But we did become friends and he didn't. No,
he did not eat.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
I remember going to a restaurant with him in Nice.
It was very late at night and he'd managed to
get it opened for us.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Anyway, we go in.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
The whole place is empty, and he sits down and
I take a look at the menu, get awfully over
excited about what's on the menu. This looks great, and
he says, no, I just want an omelet. Can you
just make me an omelet nice and greasy? And it
was so disappointing. I think that eating is one of
(12:53):
the most basic privileges and joys that we have, so
let's just do it.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
The River Cafe Cafe are all day space and just
steps away from the restaurant. Is now open in the
morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, ciambella and crostada from
our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, ice creamed coops and
River Cafe classic desserts. We have sharing plates Salumi, misti, mozzarella, brusqueto,
(13:26):
red and yellow peppers, fortello, tonato and more. Come in
the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar.
No need to book. See you here. You could start
(13:48):
if you could read the recipe you chose. Oh yeah,
the recue shows from cookbook one, the first cook.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
I think it is.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
My copy is extremely battered and held together by tape,
so it must be quite old.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
It's a nice way to look at a cookbooks.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
I know.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
I love it, and I love it when they've got
sort of slightly crusty pages and a stain. And you
know this is your favorite because it's spattered with something.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
You have a chocolate cake from a cookbook and we
had it Rosen, I had it, and honestly, there is
so much chocolate page you really can't read the recipe.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
So here we are. Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
So this is pork cooked in milk, which sounds awful,
but it is the most delicious thing. So it's one
two kilo boned pork loin rind and fat room very important,
two tablespoons and olive oil, fifty grams of unsalted butter,
five garlic cloves peeled in half, a large handl of
fresh sage leaves.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
I love sage. It's just my favorite, isn't it. Yeah?
I love it.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
One and a half liters of milk and the pared
rind of three lemons, with the pith removed. I like
scratching the pith off lemon peel as well. Strange things
one gets up to in the kitchen. So generously season
the pork. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan that's
large enough to hold the pork. Brown the meat on
all sides and then remove. Pour away the fat. Melt
(15:10):
the butter in the pan and add garlic with the
sage leaves. Before the garlic begins to color, return the
pork in a separate pan. Heat the milk to warm
but not boiling. Add enough to come to three quarters
of the way up the pork. Bring gently to a boil.
You have to be quite careful because it over boils
quite quickly and.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
It goes over.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Yeah, Add the lemon rind and reduce the heat. Place
the lid on the pan slightly askew, and very slowly
simmer for about two hours. And resist the temptation to
disturb the meat. That's also very important. When the pork
is cooked, the milk will have curdled into beige nuggets.
Carefully remove the meat, slice it quickly, and spoon over
(15:53):
the sauce.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
That is yummy.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
This is yummy, and the thing that you don't one
of the reasons you don't want to disturb the me
then you disturbed the curds, Yes, because it's all kind
of sticky and yeah, and it's a very Tuscan dish.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
I haven't ever really lived in Italy, but I've spent
a lot of time there because when I was living
in France, because I lived in France for forty two years,
we would spend every summer all August in Italy. And
because the French film industry is quite closely linked to
the Italian film industry, we do quite a lot of
co productions and things like that.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
When you were in Paris, did you go out to
restaurants a lot?
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Quite a lot?
Speaker 2 (16:32):
But there again, you know, I'm very happy cooking in
Paris because of because I like being able to just
run downstairs and buy really great stuff so easily. The
man I married and had children with was it's I
think obsessed is not the wrong word.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
I think it's it's.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Not far off that, but really really really interested in food,
food provenance, food.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Quality, you know, and he loves to eat.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
And his family brought him up, and his family that
they've been married into a French family, a.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
French Jewish family, so I got a whole new thing
with with Eastern European food, you know, the filter fish
and the bleanies, with the you know, and it was
all such a treat and an eye opener, and I
just loved all of that. His granny, my ex husband
(17:29):
franst While Franti's granny was a very good cook, and
she longed for her Polish Jewish Polish food and taught
me how to do good filter fish.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Taught me how to do chickens stich filter fish.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, I have done. I mean, I have got the
recipe somewhere.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
I grew up with that foods were from Hungary and
from Russia and first of immigrants coming, that wave of immigrants,
and that.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
I just lived with them.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
And his other granny taught me how to make cheese
blintzes deliciousness. And every Saturday we would go. It was
such a cultural sort of shock to me. We would
go to this tiny, tiny, tiny little restaurant with about
four or five tables in the seventh on the corner
of the Rusandra Migue. I can't remember the name of
the lady who ran it, but she was a survivor
(18:22):
and had had her tattoo, her sleeves rolled up her tattoo.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
She was older, she was.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Already Yeah, And we would have bleanies and smoked salmon
and egg salmon. We'd have that and little shots of
vodka every Saturday with his with his paternal his maternal grandmother.
(18:50):
So it was really a sort of ritual and a
celebration and a kind of claiming of something which was
which I didn't really know tis at the time. It
was just something that we did on a Saturday morning.
But I loved it, loved it.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
And also I think again it goes back to grandmothers
and history and memories. And they came to Paris as
a way of escaping.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Yeah, they were escaping.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Well they different different parts of different families, but a
lot of them came to escape the Nazi regime and
others came to escape the programs from the North.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
And then you had your own children, children, what was
that like?
Speaker 3 (19:33):
That was a mixture babies.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
And I had a baby in Paris. I was at
the clinic Belvedere.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Very smart. It was really now I was in Madame.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
It was like it was like staying at the writ.
I know, did your husband cook he was fiel obsessed, really,
but he would travel and you know, he traveled across
Paris for a tomato, so he would he would do
the source to do lots of shopping out. So you
would bring up these three children in Paris acting when
they were growing up.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Or no, I started acting, well, gosh, this sounds awful.
When my first child was born. Well, I was actually
pregnant when when I shot what was it called a
handful of dust?
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Do you remember? That was great?
Speaker 2 (20:20):
There's a pork pie in there. There's a pork pie
or beef pie. And I had to go and I
was broke, and I had to go and ask the
pie stand man for.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
I have a pie, please, pork or beef.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Pork.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
I think probably because it was cheating.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Every time every time my siblings saw it, they'd weep.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Because they thought I was hungry.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
You were, so I was acting with I was carrying
Hannah while I was acting. Elder made it quite difficult
with girdles and things. And when she was only about
three weeks old, I took her on her first aeroplane
flight and brought her to London to do promotion for
the film, and in fact, in the first night. I
(21:10):
remember it was Phoebe child, Starry's wife, Phoebe. We both
had children at the same time because Matilda is the
same age as Hannah, and we parked them in a
It was for the first night we were both nursing
our children. We had to rush back mid premiere plug
our babies in.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Yeah, and unplugged them and rushed back.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
It was fine.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
It was such fun. Babies and paras sounds completely you
have to be so. It was so complicated to be
sort of film actress on one side promoting something and
glamorous as you possibly could manage, and on the other side,
you know, mummy and nursing, and it required great sort
(21:56):
of agility, brain agility.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Really, if you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would
you please make sure to rate and review the podcast
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, O wherever you get
your podcasts. Thank you. We will have a moment on
(22:25):
slow horses. Yeah, you know, we love I love slow horses.
I have to say you can hear my voice that
I'm addicted. I love it and I think about I
see you in it and and Gary Oldman and it
just feels like is it a good crew to be working.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
With, a great I mean we've been working together now.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Did you know him before? Gary?
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Yeah, yeah, because we did The Darkest Arch of.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Course you did. Yeah, the Churchill. Yeah. Did you know
from the first day that you were going this was
something that.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
You well, when I read the script, the first the
pilot script, this is really go Had you read the books?
Speaker 3 (23:01):
No, I haven't. Yeah, I didn't know the stories.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Particularly I've been longing stability and not tearing around the
world and being able to sleep in the same bed
for more than two weeks.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Oh, bliss. And this is that sort of job. You know.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
It's the same people behind the camera for four years.
It's been the same same people, a makeup, same people,
and you get to so much life happens in those
four years. People have died, people have been born, people
have got divorced, people have got married. And this year
we've had two weddings. We had Jack's wedding, my wed wedding. Yeah,
(23:35):
what did you have for your wedding? Tell me about
the wedding day? The wedding day, Okay, so we had
coronation chicken.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Ah, I know, it was a treat.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
It was absolutely delicious and she made little time.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
It was up in Rutland.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Is that where Jo's family is?
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Yeah? Do you know?
Speaker 2 (23:57):
For my wedding present, my sister got all the family
recipes that my mother had collected from my great grandmother
in Scotland to the other one in wherever, I mean,
all over the place, and scanned them all and made
them all into a book, photographed them, and then we gave.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Us all a book at a great present. It's a
fantastic It's a history, isn't it's it's a biography and
memoir recipes. It's your mother's, your grandmother's.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
My mother, and my grandmother, my great grandmother, grandmother and
on both sides, on both sides.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Yeah, but I love to cook, do you yeah?
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Tell me about it?
Speaker 3 (24:34):
What do you I have to say?
Speaker 2 (24:36):
I'm out of practice now and I longed to get
going again. And there are places that I like to
cook in. For instance, we have a sort of family
house in Burgundy, and I love to cook in that
kitchen because it's really well organized, even though you would
probably wouldn't say that, no one else would say that.
(24:56):
But I know exactly where everything is. I know where
the lids are and the big lid and the small lid,
and we've collected from various sort of sales, auction, house
sales or whatever, you know, junk sales, good pans, you know,
cast iron pans, clean them up, use them. Very few
things we bought new in that house, and it's all
(25:17):
sort of gathered. And then there's the granny stuff, you know,
when the granny died, then we got all this other stuff.
And so I's got plenty, lots and lots and lots
of utensils, and then of course the you go to
the market there and it's just unbelievably delicious, So I.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Just want to buy everything. It's in.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
What is the regional food of burger?
Speaker 3 (25:42):
What are they They do it well?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Obviously snails, and they do a lot of gibu, and
they do of what'sbi in English game, lots of cheesy things.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
So what do you cook? When you do you cook?
Do you have things that you go to straight away
when you get there? I liked cooking. I like cooking.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
My favorite thing to cook in that kitchen of all
is a pantadoshu, which is guinea fowl cooked in cabbage.
Do it whole, do it in a cocotte and I
caught it the cabbage, branche it and then I pack
it round the round the guinea fowl.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
I haven't made that for years.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
It's so good. I love that.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Yeah, I did it with pheasant as well, very much
and cabbage.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Thanks for really good.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
So I think if we're talking about actually it's nice
because we're talking about food and family and food and friends.
And so if I were to ask you, Kristen Scott Thomas,
for your last question, and I hope you do this again,
if you needed comfort from food, was there a food
you would go to?
Speaker 3 (26:47):
There is, and there are.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
There are actually two versions of it, because there's a
French version and there's an English version. So I'll start
with the English version because it's the oldest. But that
is very strong brown bread, big thick slice of it,
and some good butter and a cup of tea. That's
heaven for me. And the French version of that is
(27:14):
just slight upgrade. Basically half a pint of beer, a
half a baguette, good butter, slice of ham, and corniche.
You've got to have Connie shan but what are they
called an English Connie pickleskins. You got to have the
gurkins and that's happiness. Definitely, well, thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
That's really nice.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Is there anything that you
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Like not everybody gets around
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Sometimes a brilliant actor plays who they are and sometimes
who they are not. The world knows. My friend Kristin
Scott Thomas as a brilliant actor, often playing characters who
are strong, steely, and a turn Fiona and Four Weddings
at a Funeral, Catherine and the English Patient and most
recently Diana Taverner and sell Horses. She is strong, steally
(01:08):
and determined, but she is also warm, she's funny, and
she's empathetic. A rare woman. Sitting here today in the
River Cafe, Kristin is basking in love and the joy
of just a few weeks ago marrying the editor and
my friend John Michalswaite. Kristin loves good food. In fact,
the last time I saw her perform in the theater,
(01:28):
I greeted her backstage, I'm in awe of your performance, Kristin,
I said, good to know, Ruthie, but I'm starving. Let's
have something delicious for dinner. A rare woman. Indeed, So
the beginning, at the beginning. So you grew up your parents,
four sisters and brothers.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yes, I have two sisters and two brothers, and my
mother brought us up by herself, mostly because my father
was in the Navy and was killed in an accident.
And he was a pilot, you know, he flew planes
for the Navy. And then my little and after his death,
(02:08):
my little brother was born, and then my mother married
again to another pilot. She had a child with him,
and then he was also killed. So yeah, by the
time I was twelve, lost to two fathers, and my
mother was battling on at thirty three with five little children.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Do you have any memories of your father cooking or
your stepfather.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
I have memories of my father eat eating. Do you
what are they current buns on a Wednesday? Okay, I'm
still quite sort of. Yeah. We in those days the
bread was delivered because we lived in the country, and
the bread the baker would come around in his van
and on Wednesdays it was current bun day and you'd
(02:51):
get these these big, very plain buns, but with currents
in them, as their name would suggest. And I remember
him delivering and the baker delivering, and Daddy was about
to go off to work, so he was night flying
or something, so it was in his uniform and we
pinched the buns before mummy could appear, and it was
(03:13):
like a secret thing that we ate. We ate the
buns in secret before she could get there. And that
was a great moment that I've treasured, you know, because
it's one of the rare memories that I do have.
So this sort of sneakily eating something which perhaps shouldn't
be encouraged, but.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
I think if your father does it, but.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
It was such fun. It was rebellion disobedience, which was
just it was. It was great. It's a great memory.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
And food in the house.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Food in the house was.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
She loved cooking, and I think it was a way
it was slightly sort of meditative for her. I think
it was a way of escaping.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
When her husbands were alive or after the true well
after after it all went, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I think she enjoyed because it was kept her busy.
It was useful. Obviously she had to feed her children.
And she was very inventive and had grown up in
Africa and grown up in Hong Kong, and was very
curious about different flavors and curious about everything. Actually, I
remember one one year her going macrobiotic, which was a hell.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Was that.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Everything had lotsots and raisins.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Did she cooked food from Hong Kong or from Africa?
Speaker 3 (04:36):
No, she did quite a lot.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
My granny lived up the road and my granny did
a lot of South African cooking. Was she South Africa,
So she has a lot of South African And that
would be things like biboti or what they call curry,
which is the most extraordinary thing with a brilliant array
of all sorts of things. I think they called it
mandala curry or something. Anyway, it was a sort of
(04:59):
colonial has had been picked up bits from all over
the world.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Really, when your father and your stepfather died, did you
feel that in your mother's cooking that she you said it.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Was well there?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
It's difficult to say, or because I was at boarding
school most of the time, So do you remember the
food there?
Speaker 3 (05:16):
It was awful.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
I've had anyone say that they had a great time
eating at boarding school. No, is it you pay all
this money? I don't know. I think in America's probably
the same thing, you know, they just.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
What was it like when I was at prep school?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Boarding school, because because my stepfather was in the navy,
we had to be put into boarding school when we
were really.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Little, basically eight just eight too young too.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
I became institutionalized at eight and literally did not just
would not eat. And the nuns who were looking after
us were very, very sweet, and they thought all children
loved sugar, so they would put sugar in the teapots
and give us tea with sugar in it pre sweet
for breakfast. And since then I just cannot drink sweet.
(06:04):
Oh it's pretty well, I can't stand it. Do you
have a sweet tooth at all. Yes, I like current buns,
current buns cake. Yeah, I love sweet things, but I
don't like hot, hot drinks with sweet sweet drinks. I
don't like sweet drinks or.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Meal times that there can be families getting together and talking.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
And laughing and calling things.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
It could be a kind of tyranny where you had
to come to the table, you had to Yeah, that
was what it was like at school.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
At home, it was very, very joyous.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
I could say, yeah, are there many memories of your father?
Is the food memory the one that sticks?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
The food memory is a good one. There, I have
got a few. I've got a few.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
And actually that's we were talking earlier about my film,
My Mother's Wedding, And that is how the idea to
make a film came to be, is because I wanted
to hold on to these memories and I wanted to
make little animated films of these memories.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
That I have of my father because up to five
well because yeah, I was well.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Five and a half six, so you know, I have
maybe half a dozen little sort of vignettes that I
could little stories that I can tell, and I wanted
to give these to my siblings because they don't really remember.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Because I was the eldest.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, so that's how the the film came to be.
And then I was persuaded to integrate them into a
larger story and make a story about three women and
it's them going home for their mother's wedding and the
shenanigans that ensue.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
And when you went off on your own after Bardy school,
you came came to London. Was there a revelation of
what food could be? Did you eat in Greek or
did you really?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I mean I went to France very young, so and
I was an o pair girl. So I used to
cook for my charges. And then I learned a lot
of my friends through cookery books.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
They gave you recipes.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Well, they would have recipe books in there in their
house that I would sort of browse and think, what
does appa hae me?
Speaker 3 (08:12):
What on earth is this?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
And learn In Paris it was outside, that was outside
of Paris.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
And then I moved into town more.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
But I did a lot of the shopping, so I
did all the market or going to the market every day.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Lots of different experience from school or Yeah, I loved it.
You embraced Paris. You cooked for these children, You lived,
you went to the markets, but was there anything apart
from family? But were there foods that you missed?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Well, sort of stodgy English things I really missed. I
missed sort of pastry pastry, like suet pastry, you know,
like a beef pudding or something.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Taking in pudding delicious?
Speaker 1 (09:00):
What do you like about it?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
I love kidneys.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Then I discovered better than steaking kidney pudding is when
you get the whole thing of kidneys and you cook
them and you blew them with mustard.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
But that's French.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So I got there with these longings for these English things,
and then discovered, you know, the French.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Way of doing it actually quite like that and prefer it.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And I lived in Paris. We went I like brains'
brains at all?
Speaker 3 (09:27):
We see them little packets.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Guess what. We went to a butcher where he brought
up the head. He brought it the head of the veal.
And then first time ever I was probably twenty two,
and Richard said, let's have brains. I said, okay, we'd
have them in a restaurant. And I went to on
the run Boucheau. There was a butcher and he brought
up the head and he took the brains out.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Oh no, that's awful, don't I couldn't have.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yeah, but kidneys are very good.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Kidneys are delicious, and they look they look sort of
vaguely unidentifiable in the brain, and there's little baskets they
put them in.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
So just thinking about there you were in Paris. There
are so many films we could discuss and what it
was like, but of course one of the ones your
relationship with Prince. Prince, Yeah, how did you meet him?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
I auditioned for a role in his film, which was
a supporting role. He was making the film in France,
and they were looking for English speaking actresses who could
play these smaller roles and the supporting roles, and so
I trot along to the Klion Hotel do this audition,
and then suddenly there's sort of huddle behind the camera,
(10:36):
a lot of whispering, and they say, would you be
interested in auditioning for the lead, And I said, know,
I thought the lead had been cast. Well, so I did,
and I got the part, and I went home sort
of slightly reeling from all of that, and the phone
rang and it was them saying, Prince wants to meet you.
(10:58):
I mean This was just insane for me. I was eight,
what was it, twenty three, So the idea that this man,
this god du Midieu wanted to meet me.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
It was just extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
And you became friends.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
We became friends.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I mean, it was it was very different from me,
you know, it was quite difficult to be He was
such a genius, I mean, a proper genius, played so
many instruments, had his entourage, he had this whole thing
going on which was sort of a big rampart around
him of people and managers and all this kind of thing.
(11:40):
So it's quite difficult to get to know the guy.
And we were children, I mean, not we're children. We weren't.
We weren't children. You can't say we were children. But
virtually twenty three, he was twenty four. I was twenty three,
and he'd been given this enormous production with these Oscar
winning head of departments.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
And it was all huge.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
And he was a musician, you know, and he was
very creative and he had lots of ideas. He would
watch seventies sort of seventies B films, Italian made B films,
all dubbed really really badly.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
He loved those. But we did become friends and he didn't. No,
he did not eat.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
I remember going to a restaurant with him in Nice.
It was very late at night and he'd managed to
get it opened for us.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Anyway, we go in.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
The whole place is empty, and he sits down and
I take a look at the menu, get awfully over
excited about what's on the menu. This looks great, and
he says, no, I just want an omelet. Can you
just make me an omelet nice and greasy? And it
was so disappointing. I think that eating is one of
(12:53):
the most basic privileges and joys that we have, so
let's just do it.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
The River Cafe Cafe are all day space and just
steps away from the restaurant. Is now open in the
morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, ciambella and crostada from
our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, ice creamed coops and
River Cafe classic desserts. We have sharing plates Salumi, misti, mozzarella, brusqueto,
(13:26):
red and yellow peppers, fortello, tonato and more. Come in
the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar.
No need to book. See you here. You could start
(13:48):
if you could read the recipe you chose. Oh yeah,
the recue shows from cookbook one, the first cook.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
I think it is.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
My copy is extremely battered and held together by tape,
so it must be quite old.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
It's a nice way to look at a cookbooks.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
I know.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
I love it, and I love it when they've got
sort of slightly crusty pages and a stain. And you
know this is your favorite because it's spattered with something.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
You have a chocolate cake from a cookbook and we
had it Rosen, I had it, and honestly, there is
so much chocolate page you really can't read the recipe.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
So here we are. Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
So this is pork cooked in milk, which sounds awful,
but it is the most delicious thing. So it's one
two kilo boned pork loin rind and fat room very important,
two tablespoons and olive oil, fifty grams of unsalted butter,
five garlic cloves peeled in half, a large handl of
fresh sage leaves.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
I love sage. It's just my favorite, isn't it. Yeah?
I love it.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
One and a half liters of milk and the pared
rind of three lemons, with the pith removed. I like
scratching the pith off lemon peel as well. Strange things
one gets up to in the kitchen. So generously season
the pork. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan that's
large enough to hold the pork. Brown the meat on
all sides and then remove. Pour away the fat. Melt
(15:10):
the butter in the pan and add garlic with the
sage leaves. Before the garlic begins to color, return the
pork in a separate pan. Heat the milk to warm
but not boiling. Add enough to come to three quarters
of the way up the pork. Bring gently to a boil.
You have to be quite careful because it over boils
quite quickly and.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
It goes over.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Yeah, Add the lemon rind and reduce the heat. Place
the lid on the pan slightly askew, and very slowly
simmer for about two hours. And resist the temptation to
disturb the meat. That's also very important. When the pork
is cooked, the milk will have curdled into beige nuggets.
Carefully remove the meat, slice it quickly, and spoon over
(15:53):
the sauce.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
That is yummy.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
This is yummy, and the thing that you don't one
of the reasons you don't want to disturb the me
then you disturbed the curds, Yes, because it's all kind
of sticky and yeah, and it's a very Tuscan dish.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
I haven't ever really lived in Italy, but I've spent
a lot of time there because when I was living
in France, because I lived in France for forty two years,
we would spend every summer all August in Italy. And
because the French film industry is quite closely linked to
the Italian film industry, we do quite a lot of
co productions and things like that.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
When you were in Paris, did you go out to
restaurants a lot?
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Quite a lot?
Speaker 2 (16:32):
But there again, you know, I'm very happy cooking in
Paris because of because I like being able to just
run downstairs and buy really great stuff so easily. The
man I married and had children with was it's I
think obsessed is not the wrong word.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
I think it's it's.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Not far off that, but really really really interested in food,
food provenance, food.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Quality, you know, and he loves to eat.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
And his family brought him up, and his family that
they've been married into a French family, a.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
French Jewish family, so I got a whole new thing
with with Eastern European food, you know, the filter fish
and the bleanies, with the you know, and it was
all such a treat and an eye opener, and I
just loved all of that. His granny, my ex husband
(17:29):
franst While Franti's granny was a very good cook, and
she longed for her Polish Jewish Polish food and taught
me how to do good filter fish.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Taught me how to do chickens stich filter fish.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, I have done. I mean, I have got the
recipe somewhere.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
I grew up with that foods were from Hungary and
from Russia and first of immigrants coming, that wave of immigrants,
and that.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
I just lived with them.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
And his other granny taught me how to make cheese
blintzes deliciousness. And every Saturday we would go. It was
such a cultural sort of shock to me. We would
go to this tiny, tiny, tiny little restaurant with about
four or five tables in the seventh on the corner
of the Rusandra Migue. I can't remember the name of
the lady who ran it, but she was a survivor
(18:22):
and had had her tattoo, her sleeves rolled up her tattoo.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
She was older, she was.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Already Yeah, And we would have bleanies and smoked salmon
and egg salmon. We'd have that and little shots of
vodka every Saturday with his with his paternal his maternal grandmother.
(18:50):
So it was really a sort of ritual and a
celebration and a kind of claiming of something which was
which I didn't really know tis at the time. It
was just something that we did on a Saturday morning.
But I loved it, loved it.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
And also I think again it goes back to grandmothers
and history and memories. And they came to Paris as
a way of escaping.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Yeah, they were escaping.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Well they different different parts of different families, but a
lot of them came to escape the Nazi regime and
others came to escape the programs from the North.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
And then you had your own children, children, what was
that like?
Speaker 3 (19:33):
That was a mixture babies.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
And I had a baby in Paris. I was at
the clinic Belvedere.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Very smart. It was really now I was in Madame.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
It was like it was like staying at the writ.
I know, did your husband cook he was fiel obsessed, really,
but he would travel and you know, he traveled across
Paris for a tomato, so he would he would do
the source to do lots of shopping out. So you
would bring up these three children in Paris acting when
they were growing up.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Or no, I started acting, well, gosh, this sounds awful.
When my first child was born. Well, I was actually
pregnant when when I shot what was it called a
handful of dust?
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Do you remember? That was great?
Speaker 2 (20:20):
There's a pork pie in there. There's a pork pie
or beef pie. And I had to go and I
was broke, and I had to go and ask the
pie stand man for.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
I have a pie, please, pork or beef.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Pork.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
I think probably because it was cheating.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Every time every time my siblings saw it, they'd weep.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Because they thought I was hungry.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
You were, so I was acting with I was carrying
Hannah while I was acting. Elder made it quite difficult
with girdles and things. And when she was only about
three weeks old, I took her on her first aeroplane
flight and brought her to London to do promotion for
the film, and in fact, in the first night. I
(21:10):
remember it was Phoebe child, Starry's wife, Phoebe. We both
had children at the same time because Matilda is the
same age as Hannah, and we parked them in a
It was for the first night we were both nursing
our children. We had to rush back mid premiere plug
our babies in.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Yeah, and unplugged them and rushed back.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
It was fine.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
It was such fun. Babies and paras sounds completely you
have to be so. It was so complicated to be
sort of film actress on one side promoting something and
glamorous as you possibly could manage, and on the other side,
you know, mummy and nursing, and it required great sort
(21:56):
of agility, brain agility.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Really, if you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would
you please make sure to rate and review the podcast
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, O wherever you get
your podcasts. Thank you. We will have a moment on
(22:25):
slow horses. Yeah, you know, we love I love slow horses.
I have to say you can hear my voice that
I'm addicted. I love it and I think about I
see you in it and and Gary Oldman and it
just feels like is it a good crew to be working.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
With, a great I mean we've been working together now.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Did you know him before? Gary?
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Yeah, yeah, because we did The Darkest Arch of.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Course you did. Yeah, the Churchill. Yeah. Did you know
from the first day that you were going this was
something that.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
You well, when I read the script, the first the
pilot script, this is really go Had you read the books?
Speaker 3 (23:01):
No, I haven't. Yeah, I didn't know the stories.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Particularly I've been longing stability and not tearing around the
world and being able to sleep in the same bed
for more than two weeks.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Oh, bliss. And this is that sort of job. You know.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
It's the same people behind the camera for four years.
It's been the same same people, a makeup, same people,
and you get to so much life happens in those
four years. People have died, people have been born, people
have got divorced, people have got married. And this year
we've had two weddings. We had Jack's wedding, my wed wedding. Yeah,
(23:35):
what did you have for your wedding? Tell me about
the wedding day? The wedding day, Okay, so we had
coronation chicken.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Ah, I know, it was a treat.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
It was absolutely delicious and she made little time.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
It was up in Rutland.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Is that where Jo's family is?
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Yeah? Do you know?
Speaker 2 (23:57):
For my wedding present, my sister got all the family
recipes that my mother had collected from my great grandmother
in Scotland to the other one in wherever, I mean,
all over the place, and scanned them all and made
them all into a book, photographed them, and then we gave.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Us all a book at a great present. It's a
fantastic It's a history, isn't it's it's a biography and
memoir recipes. It's your mother's, your grandmother's.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
My mother, and my grandmother, my great grandmother, grandmother and
on both sides, on both sides.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Yeah, but I love to cook, do you yeah?
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Tell me about it?
Speaker 3 (24:34):
What do you I have to say?
Speaker 2 (24:36):
I'm out of practice now and I longed to get
going again. And there are places that I like to
cook in. For instance, we have a sort of family
house in Burgundy, and I love to cook in that
kitchen because it's really well organized, even though you would
probably wouldn't say that, no one else would say that.
(24:56):
But I know exactly where everything is. I know where
the lids are and the big lid and the small lid,
and we've collected from various sort of sales, auction, house
sales or whatever, you know, junk sales, good pans, you know,
cast iron pans, clean them up, use them. Very few
things we bought new in that house, and it's all
(25:17):
sort of gathered. And then there's the granny stuff, you know,
when the granny died, then we got all this other stuff.
And so I's got plenty, lots and lots and lots
of utensils, and then of course the you go to
the market there and it's just unbelievably delicious, So I.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Just want to buy everything. It's in.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
What is the regional food of burger?
Speaker 3 (25:42):
What are they They do it well?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Obviously snails, and they do a lot of gibu, and
they do of what'sbi in English game, lots of cheesy things.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
So what do you cook? When you do you cook?
Do you have things that you go to straight away
when you get there? I liked cooking. I like cooking.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
My favorite thing to cook in that kitchen of all
is a pantadoshu, which is guinea fowl cooked in cabbage.
Do it whole, do it in a cocotte and I
caught it the cabbage, branche it and then I pack
it round the round the guinea fowl.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
I haven't made that for years.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
It's so good. I love that.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Yeah, I did it with pheasant as well, very much
and cabbage.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Thanks for really good.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
So I think if we're talking about actually it's nice
because we're talking about food and family and food and friends.
And so if I were to ask you, Kristen Scott Thomas,
for your last question, and I hope you do this again,
if you needed comfort from food, was there a food
you would go to?
Speaker 3 (26:47):
There is, and there are.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
There are actually two versions of it, because there's a
French version and there's an English version. So I'll start
with the English version because it's the oldest. But that
is very strong brown bread, big thick slice of it,
and some good butter and a cup of tea. That's
heaven for me. And the French version of that is
(27:14):
just slight upgrade. Basically half a pint of beer, a
half a baguette, good butter, slice of ham, and corniche.
You've got to have Connie shan but what are they
called an English Connie pickleskins. You got to have the
gurkins and that's happiness. Definitely, well, thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
That's really nice.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Is there anything that you
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Like not everybody gets around
Host
Ruth Rogers
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