Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the actress Kristin Scott Thomas. She was born in Redruth, Cornwall in 1960. Her father, a Naval pilot, was killed in a crash when she was five. Her mother married another pilot six years later, but he was also killed under similar circumstances. Kristin moved around the country with her parents and four siblings until she went to Cheltenham Ladies College at the age of eight, where she was 'always bottom of the class'.

On leaving school she didn't go to drama school, but took up a teaching course instead. When she tried to move over to the acting course she was told the only way she'd get to play Lady Macbeth was if she joined an amateur dramatic society. Stung, she moved to Paris where she was encouraged by the family she was working for to enroll at a Parisian drama school, which she did. She has worked almost constantly since, in France, England and America, on stage, television and film.

Her first starring film role was opposite Prince in his film Under the Cherry Moon and others soon followed. Among her most famous roles are Lady Brenda in A Handful of Dust, Fiona in Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Katherine Clifton in The English Patient. She has lived in Paris ever since moving there at the age of 19 and is married to a French obstetrician, Francois Olivennes. The couple have three children aged 14, 10 and two. Kristin Scott Thomas is in London to appear in Chekov's Three Sisters at the Playhouse in the West End. This is her first British stage appearance.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Morgen, Op.27.No 4 by Richard Strauss