Kristin Scott Thomas confronted the tragedies of her childhood head-on through her directorial debut My Mother's Wedding

Now, after four decades in the industry, she has turned these personal histories into a semi-autobiographical drama.

She told People about her My Mother's Wedding movie: "I felt that it was time to reclaim my story.

"If you read a profile on me, it will more often than not, I mean 99 percent of the time, say 'Tragedy struck' or whatever."

Kristin's film follows three sisters, played by Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, and Emily Beecham, who reunite for their mother's third wedding in the English countryside.

The actress herself stars as the twice-widowed mother.

Co-writing the screenplay with her husband John Micklethwait, whom she married in 2024, Kristin says she sought to transform catastrophe into something positive.

She added: "Yes, catastrophe at a young age can be disastrous, and sometimes it just makes you who you are."

John, who has been editor-in-chief of Bloomberg since 2015, helped make the narrative accessible. Kristin said: "He's very good at organising and editing and making a kind of narrative out of a string of events. And so that's what we did and it was really fun."

Kristin also highlighted a pivotal line from the film's emotional climax in her interview saying: "'Let go of the children you were, and pay attention to the children you have' - that is what growing up is.

"It's much easier to do once you have children because your perspective shifts."

A mother to three kids - Hannah, 37, Joseph, 34, and 24-year-old George - with her ex-husband François Olivennes, Kristin also clarified the daughters' relationship in the film was not modelled on her own family.

Instead, it drew on broader observations of sibling dynamics.

She said: "How siblings react and spin off each other, and how one thing said can get completely out of control and turn into something else (is what it is about.)

"Life observation, listening, hearing people, all of those things contribute."