Kristin Scott Thomas, renowned for Four Weddings and a Funeral and The English Patient and more recently playing the steely Diana Taverner in Mick Herron’s Slow Horses co-starring Gary Oldman, has made her directorial debut with “North Star.” Partly inspired by the death of her father and then her stepfather during her childhood, it has premiered at the Toronto Festival and is due on screens this year.
She was born 24 May 1960 in Redruth, with a navy pilot father who died in an air crash when she was five, and her stepfather, also a navy pilot, died in a “terrifyingly similar” crash when she was 11. She was educated at private boarding school, worked in a department store and then as an au pair in Paris where she studied acting. Her career has been constant though low key as she prefers, with dozens of films in French and one in Romanian, as well as English.
What is intriguing about her chart is that it is riddled with quincunxes (150 degree angles). She has a yod of Neptune sextile Jupiter inconjunct a Gemini Sun and Mercury. Another yod comes from Pluto sextile Neptune inconjunct Mars in Aries. Another wide-ish yod of Uranus sextile Mercury is inconjunct Saturn in Capricorn. Mars sextile Sun Mercury inconjunct Neptune. So Sun, Mars, Saturn and Neptune are all yod focal planets which will have created the need for a massive amount of adjustment in her early adult life to find a track that suited her and to manage the contradictions in her temperament.
She said recently in an FT interview: “I suppose I’ve always been quite pro-conflict. I think a lot of people have found me very difficult. Especially when I was a much angrier younger woman.” That would be her Mars in Aries veering around trying to find a balance. And a yod Sun wobbling between ego-centricity and low self-esteem.
Her Chiron at 2 degrees Pisces is being nurtured by her Solar Arc Jupiter in an exact conjunction at the moment. The festival reviews of North Star were not overwhelmingly positive but perhaps making the movie in itself helped to heal her childhood loss.
Quincunxes are connected to the 12th harmonic and hers, not surprisingly, is strongly aspected with a Jupiter opposition Uranus square Mars and a Sun opposition Saturn square Venus. Creative with a life marked by sacrifice. The victim/healer.
For previous post on quincunxes see in Search – 22 August 2023
I really only registered her strongly in Slow Horses recently. I am a huge Mick Herron fan who wrote the books on which the TV Apple + series is based now into season three and she is perfectly cast as the plummy voiced, steely, plotting and planning Deputy in MI5 who finally topples her boss to take her place.
I’ve always loved her and was drawn to that posh, upper-class look with those sleepy eyes, but haven’t followed her much after The English Patient and Four Weddings, and I wonder if I always wanted or kept waiting for her career to soar to even loftier heights. But it turned out well, maybe this is for the best, and I’m glad for her.
Where is it that I read a deacription of the quincunx as an aspect that ties two positions that have nothing in common at all: different elements, different modalities, one is yin, the other is yang, one is feminine, the other is masculine. So it is difficult to bring it together, even if one of the keywords of the aspect is adjustment.
Yod is also an aspect of (feeling) being pushed against the wall, and you can’t breathe. It is a crisis, there is nowhere to go, you feel trapped and cannot escape.
I think quincunx, and yod, I believe, are also configurations of that buzzing voice in your head that something is wrong and you cannot determine what it is.
I don’t have the resources at hand that I used to so that I can check what I wrote, but I believe I got it right.
That sounds about right. The constant adjustment comes out of the difficulty/impossibility of bringing together two different elements. Try, try, try again even in the face of experience.
Thank you – I’m glad I got it right. Of course, I described yod as an aspect when it is a particular configuration of planets made of two types of aspect, as we all know.
My late mum had a Mars in Aries, she could be misunderstood by those not close to her, thinking she was hard and difficult..she had a Pisces Moon and was soft as butter to her loved ones. Maybe they really could not handle her combative directness. None knew she lost her father in childhood as Kristin did and this destabilised her. She had a devoted husband and a stable marriage which I think healed the difficulties she had as a child with a widowed mother when she was aged nine. She had six siblings so it was difficult for the family (mum born 1934). I see Kristin in my mum.
Such an intriguing actress, even her strong connection with France makes her rather a complicated one. The relationship with Tobias Menzies, which was, at the time credited with being the reason for the break up of her marriage, did not last but both parties are rather private people.
Her cut glass accent, a la Patricia Hodge, would tend to typecast her to a certain extent, a Dame no less.
Hi Marjorie,
I know nothing of this woman and actress. Funny how certain things just pass us by without our engagement!!
Anyways… I was absolutely fascinated with her chart and with you touching in on yods.
It’s always heartwarming (and intriguing!) to see a person embody a “difficult” chart.
I’ve known one person who had a number of yods in his chart and, yes, he was always adjusting.
There is much to learn about this aspect!…. and harmonics…. and eclipses!
Thanks!
Harmonics, Eclipses and Yods, O My.
Just staring at KST and Alain Delon makes me think it must be “a thing” to be dreamt upon. Unforgettable – and complex- beauties, both.