Kristin Scott Thomas’s first foray into directing is surprisingly personal. “It was about six or seven years ago,” the British star of screen and stage tells The Hollywood Reporter about the origins of her upcoming film. “I realized that my brothers had absolutely no recollection of their father.” Scott Thomas, the eldest of five children, found herself wanting to make something for her siblings.

 Her father, an English Royal Navy pilot, died in a flying accident when she was just five. Her mother remarried and had more children with another Navy man, who also passed away in a similar tragedy when Scott Thomas was 11. She used to turn her memories of these two father figures into animated films for her brothers and sisters, but one day, someone suggested she make a feature film instead.

“I’ve been curious about it for a very long time,” Scott Thomas, best known for her roles in Four Weddings and a Funeral, The English Patient, and more recently, Fleabag and Slow Horses, says about sitting in the director’s chair. 

“I find it very difficult to actually get my head around the fact that I made the decisions. That was really hard for me, because for so long I’ve been in the position where I am being driven rather than driving.”