I was groped but they sacked ME for being rude, says Dame Kristin Scott Thomas: Actress reveals she was groped as a teenage waitress in Paris
- The actress and equality champion first faced down sexism as a 19-year-old
- Following the restaurant exchange, she recalled feeling guilty for lashing out
- Now, the Fleabag actress is much less squeamish about speaking out on sexism
Dame Kristin Scott Thomas has revealed she was fired as a teenage waitress after berating a diner who grabbed her bottom.
The actress, who champions equality issues in the film industry, told one her first experiences facing down sexism as a 19-year-old aspiring star.
But following the spiky Paris restaurant exchange, she recalled feeling guilty for lashing out at the groper despite her being the victim.
Speaking to the Telegraph magazine about her male co-stars taking home bigger pay cheques, which she used to put up with, Dame Kristin said: It’s like when I was working as a waitress, years ago, and one of the clients grabbed my a***.
‘I was rude to him. He reported me and I got fired. But I believed that I had done something wrong.’
Dame Kristin Scott Thomas has revealed she was fired as a teenage waitress after berating a diner who grabbed her bottom
The actress, who champions equality issues in the film industry, told how she first faced down sexism as a 19-year-old aspiring star (pictured in the 1980s, a Handful of Dust, left and Under the Cherry Moon, right)
The flare-up 40 years ago was during a time when sexism was rife and many women ‘sucked up’ unwarranted behaviour from men.
Yet, looking back, Dame Kristin doubled down on her retaliation: ‘Why should I put up with some bloke grabbing my bum when I am 19?’
Now, the Fleabag actress is much less squeamish about speaking out on sexism in the workplace.
She said: ‘I started thinking about it, and actually, that really p****s me off, when I find out that someone who does the same job as me got paid more because he has a penis.’
The wide-ranging interview also saw the actress open up about her horrible teenage bullies who teased her for her middle-class background.
During her studies at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama She told how ‘super mean’ students would relentlessly claim she was born ‘with a silver spoon’.
The Four Weddings star said: ‘It was very uncool to be middle class at the time, so I got bullied because of the way I spoke. It was horrible.’
Dame Kristin, who quit drama school and moved to Paris, recalled her amazement at how her tormentors assumed she had enjoyed a comfortable upbringing – when in reality she had been on a rollercoaster of grief.
The Fleabag actress (pictured middle Phoebe Waller-Bridge, right) and Sian Clifford, left)with is now much less squeamish about speaking out on sexism in the workplace
Her naval pilot father Simon was killed in a flying accident when she was four, leaving her then 27-year-old pregnant mother Deborah to care for her three daughters.
Deborah remarried, but, in a cruel twist of fate, her new husband also died in an airplane seven years later.
Despite suffering terrible heartbreak at such a young age, Dame Kristin spoke of the woeful lack of support.
She told the Telegraph: ‘My stepfather was missing. My sister and I were sent back to school… It was my housemistress who told me that he was dead.
‘We were given no counselling, anything like that. None. Zero… What we did to our children…’
In a Channel 4 documentary called My Grandparents War, Dame Kristin was overwhelmed with emotion to be told that her grandfather captained the HMS Impulsive into the treacherous waters off Dunkirk as part of the daring Operation Dynamo in May 1940.