Kristin Scott Thomas, 66, Says She’s ‘Conflicted’ About Getting a Facelift

Kristin Scott Thomas, 66, is wrestling with whether to get work done and what that decision could mean for her career as she gets older.

“I suppose the question is to facelift or not to facelift,” Scott Thomas told The Telegraph in an interview published Sept. 26. She recalled discussing the procedure with a younger woman in New York who warned that she would never look the same.

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“You just look expensive,” the woman told her. Scott Thomas concurred: “I thought, She has a point.”

The Oscar-nominated actor, whose films include Four Weddings and a Funeral and The English Patient, plays top MI5 official Diana Taverner on the Apple TV spy series Slow Horses.

Scott Thomas is more conflicted about whether to change her appearance as she gets older. She told The Telegraph that a facelift has “become a kind of status symbol” associated with displaying wealth and acknowledged the judgment women can face when they let themselves visibly age.

“But I’m quite conflicted about it, because it’s always slightly diminishing when someone says, ‘That woman hasn’t taken care of herself.’ Deep down we do care about these things. Sometimes you see women who are 70 and they look fantastic. And it’s clear they’ve had a brow-lift, perhaps. What’s dangerous is when all the things that people think are little things build up,” she said.  

The actor said she has tried noninvasive treatments, including lasers and buccal massage, a technique that involves massaging the cheeks and facial muscles from inside and outside the mouth, according to the University of Technology Sydney. But she has tried “nothing that requires any recovery time,” she said.

Although Scott Thomas embraces getting older, she is unsure about whether cosmetic surgery is necessary to keep working. Asked by The Telegraph if she thought it was, she pointed to two actors who worked into their later years without, as far as she knows, having surgery. “I don’t know. I mean, actresses such as Imelda Staunton keep on working, and I don’t think she’s ever gone down that road,” Scott Thomas said. “I don’t think Maggie [Smith] ever did either.” 

Scott Thomas is hardly alone in weighing whether to go under the knife as she gets older. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, cosmetic procedures among patients 66 and older jumped 24 percent in 2025, the largest increase of any age group. Eyelid surgery was the most common cosmetic surgery among adults 66 and older, followed by facelifts and breast augmentations. 

Scott Thomas also sees an advantage to getting older when it comes to her work. “As you get older, you know that when you take on a role, you have something you can bring,” she told The Telegraph. She said she is seeing more parts written for women her age. “There are more interesting roles for grown-up women than there were before,” she said. “I’ve been asked to do quite a lot of things that are just for women of that age. It feels like there is a change. Good.”