English actress Kristin Scott Thomas at a photocall for the film Arsene Lupin.

Kristin's mother did not want the eldest of her five children to become an actress and sent her to college. But Kristin dropped out at age 16 and settled down in Paris, ready for a film career.

Earlier, it seemed Kristin would be relegated to playing elegant, bloodless British women like her character in Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994). But she oozed sensuality in Anthony Minghella's The English Patient. She went on to star in John Woo's Mission Impossible, her first big budget film.

(Photo by Steve Finn/Getty Images)

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