She doesn't really have big bones and, at 38, she doesn't look the least bit frumpy, five weeks after giving birth. What she has are amazing pale sage eyes that look straight at you with a manner of directness, even though what she's saying is often evasive. She says she aspires to Dame Judi Dench, Anjelica Huston, Sigourney Weaver. "I'm geared to looking at women who are 5 to 10 years older than me, seeing what they're capable of still, and I think that you see more roles for women in their 40s that are interesting. I think it's wonderful that you can carry a picture even if you're not looking like a young stud." She agrees it's dangerous to start believing in your looks, because if looks and youth are all you have going for you, they'll go and you'll become bitter. "I'd certainly like to carry on acting until I drop dead in my boots, and I don't consider my looks the reason I get jobs. I've always assumed it's my ability." Kingston isn't one for being a victim, or striking out at Hollywood for casting young girls opposite old blokes. She just deals with it in her own capable way. Not that one ever imagined her dealing so well with Hollywood. There's lots about her no-fuss attitude and minimalist charm that is quintessentially European. But she hasn't been back in England for two years, and doesn't plan a visit for at least a year because she doesn't want to travel with a small baby. "I never planned living here. I imagined myself living in England, my career dwindling and ending up in a cottage." She knows it could so easily have gone that way. One of her younger sisters, Nicola, trained as an actress but reached a difficult decision. "She had to think of an alternative career. It wasn't easy. I think it was hard for her not being in the spotlight when my career took off." It can't have been easy being married to someone who became so suddenly successful. "It wasn't easy, but it's not easy for anybody, whatever field you're in. But that was last century and I've talked about that so often. I'm over that now, the whole thing." She's not angry, but she's brisk, not going there again. I do ask her, though, about the film Sunshine. I heard she was asked to audition for this epic piece of Hungariana in which Fiennes plays three protagonists: grand-father, father and son. "After I read the script and realised he was playing all the characters, I thought, 'No way.' Naively, I thought I might be playing a role in a scene he wasn't in, but no. I didn't even audition." It might have been difficult? The green eyes roll. "I think it would have been as well, but it probably would have got a large audience coming just out of curiosity. It won't be happening." A crispness comes into her measured tones. It's hardly as though she and Fiennes are in a good-friends situation. I tell her that her new husband is much sexier. "He'll be very pleased to hear that." She casts her eye out into the garden, where he's playing with the dogs and baby. She met him on a blind date. "Yes, a mutual friend set us up and it worked. She's very pleased." Was it one of those bolts from the blue? "No. With Florian it was, but it wasn't for me. I was coming absolutely from a place of caution. I was suddenly in a whole new world. I didn't know what my future would be here, and I didn't want to embark on any relationship without knowing whether I was staying." That must have been all the more exciting for him? "I think frustrating is the word he'd use." Haertel is a German journalist working with a news agency in LA, and she has a German mother. Is she perhaps connecting with her German side? "I thought the last person on Earth I'd ever marry would be a German. There are plenty that are lovely, but there's a side to the German personality I'm not keen on." Is that the sort of detached side? "Detached, humourless, driving ambition. But when you meet them in LA, they're different. They've left all that." The baby is now screaming and Florian has ceased to be able to cope. The baby is hungry. When Kate Winslet took her breast out in a post-baby interview, it all seemed completely appropriate. Kingston tries to look unfazed, but says later: "I don't know what I'd have done if you'd been a male interviewer." I ask what kind of a German her mother was - humourless? "In fact, she's very amusing, but I don't think she's aware of being." Which of her parents is she more similar to: retired-butcher father or home-making mother? She replies, not one nor the other. I comment that it's interesting, two actresses from the same family. Were you all grappling for attention? She says it was to do with her uncle, an actor in Germany. "That influenced me. After a performance he'd give me a tour backstage, which I found magical. I don't think it's unusual for siblings to have the same career choice. As I said, it was tough on my sister." There is another younger sister, Susannah, who is mentally and physically disabled. She perhaps took a lot of her parents' attention as a child, which might have something to do with why Kingston is what she is. Certainly it meant she grew up playing alone a lot. But she steers away from this line of questioning. Does she want to have more babies? "First of all, I have to really enjoy this little one. I don't want to deny her any time with us, especially at the beginning when they're so small." Certainly a reason for postponing another pregnancy would be the gruelling IVF she went through for the first one, but capable Kingston says: "I never got frustrated. I certainly got upset when it didn't happen the first time around, but I knew it would do me no good if I started having tantrums and breaking down because it wasn't working the way I hoped it would. I'm certain also that a part of the reason it worked out in the end was that I held onto the belief that it would. I also allowed myself to know that if it didn't, it didn't matter. We were what mattered, Florian and I. We knew we could continue to have a happy, wonderful life even if we weren't blessed with a child." NEXT |