Our darling Clementine
Kristin Scott Thomas on playing Churchill’s wife in new movie
FEW figures loom as large in Britain’s public consciousness as Sir Winston Churchill.
His image is as easy to conjure up – cigar in hand – as members of our own family.
To many, he is a picture of British defiance and strength.
It is harder to visualise the woman who helped him through his first weeks as prime minister in 1940, during the early days of World War II – his wife Clementine, who is played in new film The Darkest Hour by Kristin Scott Thomas.
It is that period,
as he faced pressure from within his party to pursue peace with Hitler at any cost, that is the focus of the new film by Atonement director Joe Wright.
Gary Oldman has been transformed into Churchill, thanks to a face mould and foam bodysuit that took four hours to get in place, while Scott Thomas takes on the chic and stoic Clementine.
She said: “These parts have been played so many times by brilliant people, like Harriet Walter in The Crown. I’m trying to portray somebody who is a national treasure.
“Clementine is less well known today than Winston but, at the time, she was really important.
“She was a proper first lady and how do you bring life into something that belongs to everybody? That is public property?
“That was very much her situation, because her husband was public property, her husband was the prime minister in a very, very tense and worrying time, a terrifying time.”
Clementine would not be the first woman in history to see her role downplayed, if not airbrushed out of history.
So does this film, which makes clear their bond and her influence, redress that injustice?
“In a very small way,” Kristin said. “It’s not a film about Clementine.
“The day will come when there will be a film about Clementine and then we can talk about redressing. “But it is very difficult to create a space for her because he is such an overwhelmingly fabulous character, in all senses of the word. “Not only was he brilliant and saved us but he was also wildly entertaining and kind of eccentric.” Be that as it may, Kristin is anxious that the role Clementine played is not underestimated. “I don’t think she does get as much credit as she should. “She was a great support to him, she provoked him, she consoled him, she kicked him when he needed a boot, and they had a very stormy relationship, a very passionate relationship, which lasted for many, many years. “I think she was absolutely part of the engine. She was at the heart of it all.” ●Darkest Hour is in cinemas on Friday.