The real Kristin Scott Thomas?

In I've Loved You So Long, Kristin Scott Thomas gives one of the strongest, deepest, darkest performances of her career. The English actress has lived in France for 28 of her 48 years, and she's appeared in more than a few French films, but Philippe Claudel's I've Loved You So Long -- in which Scott Thomas plays a woman just out of prison, trying to assimilate back into the real world -- is easily her finest.

That said, she was pretty great in a supporting role in another Gallic title, this summer's sleeper art house thriller, Tell No One. (It just passed $6.2 million in US domestic box office, making it the highest grossing foreign language film of the year.) Playing a restaurateur friend of the on-the-run pediatrician-turned-action-hero Francois Cluzet, Scott Thomas comes off as tough, witty, and, yes, gay.

"I did that really because I wanted to stay in France that summer and this sweet guy, [director] Guillaume Canet, asked me to do it," she says, on the phone from New York. "And I really wanted to work with Francois Cluzet, because I had worked with him 20 years ago and I loved it. So I said yes — and I had no idea that it was going to be this phenomenal success. Extraordinary!"

And as for her character, the lesbian restaurant owner Helene: "It's so funny because people have said, `Oh, we’ve never seen you like this,' but you know what, I’m more like that character, and she’s more like me, than any of the others -- all those frosty aristocrats that you see.

"Helene's much more like me… apart from one aspect, which would probably be the most titillating," she adds, laughing. "But no, I’m not."