Kristin defrosted

Kristin Scott Thomas has a bee in her bonnet. Actually, she has several bees in her bonnet. It’s more like a beehive than a bonnet. ‘British cinema is at death’s door,’ she rages. ‘Funding is a real issue. But people just aren’t making the right decisions about what gets made.’

I’m speaking to her at her home in Paris, in theory to discuss her latest film, the French thriller Tell No One. But talking about French films has got us talking about British films and talking about British films gets her hopping mad.

It’s all to do with America. It’s so difficult to get financing for films in Britain, she explains, that film-makers have to go cap in hand to the United States. But projects given the green light in America are pale products. That is how our industry is ‘being bridled’, she tells me.

‘There always seems to be a renaissance,’ she sighs.