John Wilson

And the morning of the second round of auditions, I was in the kitchen doing the washing up, as all good au pair girls do.

And she comes in and says, what are you doing?

I said, well, there's no point in me going.

I'm never going to get in.

There's no point.

And she was furious.

She grabbed my wrist, pulled me downstairs, hailed a cab, gave the man 50 francs, said, take her to the whatever the theatre was.

And I got in.

I couldn't believe it.

Something that I'd managed to do.

But also your life could have been so different if she hadn't grabbed you by the scruff of the neck and thrown you towards that audition.

I think that was a very, I mean, a total turning point.

Yeah.

Your next choice for This Cultural Life, Kristen Scott Thomas, is the musician Prince, who, in 1986, cast you in the lead role of a film that he directed and starred in called Under the Cherry Moon.

How did you land a lead role in a Prince film?

Well...

I was actually doing something which was I was much more drawn to theatre and I didn't really want to be a film actress.

I wanted to carry on in the theatre and I was doing a play by Marguerite Duras in a field in Burgundy.

I got my first review, which was the best review I've ever had.

Downhill since then.