FACE VALUE

Oscar Nominee, 66, Flags Bleak Side Effect of Facelifts

The screen legend answered candidly when asked whether she had gone under the knife.

Dame Kristin Scott Thomas has revealed exactly how far she is willing to go to keep her face looking young.

The 66-year-old Slow Horses star got candid about her complicated relationship with aging in an interview with The Telegraph published on Saturday.

Asked directly whether she has had any work done, Scott Thomas said she has kept it relatively low-key.

“Yes, but always non-invasive. Lasers, that sort of thing,” she said. “Nothing that requires any recovery time.”

The Oscar-nominated actress said her approach to aging has left her conflicted as more women turn to cosmetic procedures to maintain a youthful appearance.

“I suppose the question is to facelift or not to facelift,” she said.

Scott Thomas recalled discussing the procedure with a younger woman in New York who warned her that getting one would permanently change the way she looked.

“She said that if I had one, I’d never look the same again,” Scott Thomas said. “You just look expensive. And I thought—she has a point.”

The actress now believes facelifts have become as much about signaling money as turning back the clock.

“I think a facelift has now become a kind of status symbol,” she said. “It’s about displaying your wealth. And the rest of us either sink or swim.”

Scott Thomas has spent decades working in an industry where appearance can be closely tied to career longevity.

She won a BAFTA in 1994 for her performance in Four Weddings and a Funeral and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in 1997 for The English Patient before taking on her current role in Apple TV’s spy series Slow Horses.

She is also married to Bloomberg News editor-in-chief John Micklethwait, 64. The couple wed in 2024 after several years together and later co-wrote Scott Thomas’s directorial debut, My Mother’s Wedding.

But even after decades in front of the camera, Scott Thomas admitted she does not always recognize the woman looking back at her.

“Whether I like my face is another matter,” she said. “I sometimes look in the mirror and think, God, who is that?”

She recalled growing up alongside a “very beautiful sister” who modeled bathing suits, while their mother was “exceedingly beautiful indeed.”

“She would float into a room, looking angelic, and everyone would fall silent,” she recalled. “So I always had that too.”

When the conversation turned toward actresses including Demi Moore and Jane Fonda, Scott Thomas pointed out that other women have continued working without dramatically altering their appearance.

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“Actresses such as Imelda Staunton keep on working, and I don’t think she’s ever gone down that road,” she said, adding that she did not believe the late Maggie Smith had either.

Still, Scott Thomas admitted aging naturally comes with its own judgment.

“It’s always slightly diminishing when someone says, ‘That woman hasn’t taken care of herself,’” she said. “Deep down we do care about these things.”

She conceded that some cosmetic tweaks can look “fantastic,” but warned that piling on procedures can eventually become obvious.

One makeup artist, she recalled, had a particularly brutal description for women who had gone too far.

“Her face looks as if it’s been plowed,” Scott Thomas remembered her saying.

For now, Scott Thomas is sticking to lasers—and a far more hands-on treatment.

The actress said she also relies on a massage therapist in Paris who works on her facial muscles from inside her mouth.

“She just releases all these muscles, and it’s amazing,” she said, though the unusual treatment is not exactly relaxing. “Oh, but it hurts.”

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Tamilore OshikanluContributor

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