The inimitable Kristin Scott Thomas celebrates her birthday Monday (May 24), so we're marking the occasion by making her our British Icon of the Week. Here are 10 reasons we love the actress who's shone in everything from The English Patient to Four Weddings and a Funeral.

1. She can legitimately say that she was discovered by Prince.

Scott Thomas's movie debut came in the 1986 Prince movie Under the Cherry Moon, which was filmed in Paris, where she was living at the time. It performed poorly at the box office and cleaned up at the Golden Raspberry Awards after being panned by critics, but Scott Thomas spoke fondly about the experience during her recent appearance on The Graham Norton Show.

2. She has built a truly bilingual career.

Scott Thomas moved back to the U.K. in 2013, but for more than three decades she lived in France, where she met her husband of 18 years – fertility expert François Olivennes – and raised three children with him. For much of her career she has balanced roles in French films with work in British and American movies; she's twice been nominated for Best Actress at the César Awards, the top prize in French cinema.

Her haunting performance in the 2008 French movie I've Loved You So Long, in which she plays a woman returning to her hometown following a spell in prison for a horrifying crime, is definitely a career highlight.

3. She holds prestigious honors in both the U.K. and France.

Scott Thomas was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2003, then Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2015, meaning she is now Dame Kristin Scott Thomas.

She was also named a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by the French Government in 2005, then upgraded to an Officier in 2017.

According to The Guardian, she said self-deprecatingly in 2017: "To me, a Dame is someone in a tweed skirt with four dogs that bark at everyone. It makes me laugh when I see letters marked 'Dame.' I find it hard to believe it's me."

4. In the past, she has readily admitted to being a bit of a stickler.

"I've become what they call in French exigeante — a polite way of saying a pain-in-the-arse stickler," Scott Thomas told The Sunday Times in 2008. "I want everything to be the best, to be done properly. If I've asked someone to do something and they don't, I get terribly cross."

Asked if she is difficult with directors, Scott Thomas replied: "Yeah, I am. I'm not that assured in the rest of the world, but with my work I feel I know what I'm doing. Sometimes I make a complete arse of myself, saying we can't do it a certain way, and I can see everyone thinking, 'Just shut up — get back in your box.' There's a hush when the technicians look at their shoes when you know you've gone too far."

5. She made sure her role in Winston Churchill biopic Darkest Hour wasn't two-dimensional.

When director Joe Wright asked Scott Thomas to play Churchill's wife Clementine in the 2017 movie, Vanity Fair reports, Scott Thomas originally passed because the script didn't give the character enough agency. "I feel that she should not just be at the table as the symbol of a woman in the home,” she told Wright. "Make her more proactive. Make her more reactive to what’s going on. Give her more of a motor, and then I might want to do it."

Wright took her suggestions to heart and Scott Thomas went on to earn a BAFTA nomination for her performance.

6. She has played Queen Elizabeth II on stage.

When Dame Helen Mirren completed her West End run as the British monarch in Peter Morgan's stage play The Audience, who else but Dame KST could step into her regal shoes?

7. She's honest to a fault.

During her appearance on The Graham Norton Show last year, Scott Thomas admitted that she initially thought Four Weddings and a Funeral was a bit of a dud. She wasn't too impressed with her character's signature headwear, either, by the sounds of it.

8. She realizes that some people can find her kind of intimidating.

Admitting she was too scared to approach writer Alan Bennett when she was in the same room as him, Scott Thomas told The Guardian: "People think that about me, too. They don’t dare speak to me either. It’s all silly, just human. I can’t stand it. I’d love it if people thought they could talk to me. Because… ugh… I don’t know. I have heard it said about me, you know, ‘You’re too grand,’ or ‘You’re too this’, or they admire you too much… whatever it is.”

9. She's embraced Instagram.

Give @kristinscotthomas a follow for the latest on her acting projects, vacation snaps, and the odd post about soccer – KST is a Leicester City fan. Who knew?

(Photo: @kristinscotthomas / Instagram)

10. And finally, she delivered one of the greatest moments in Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag.

Scott Thomas appears in a standout episode of season two as Belinda, a businesswoman Waller-Bridge's title character meets at a bar and shares an incredibly poignant conversation with.

“I was a huge Fleabag fan.. I thought it’s a work of total genius,” Thomas told NME last year. "So when she wrote to me to ask me to do it, I think that was probably the happiest I’ve ever been.”

Happy birthday, Dame Kristin Scott Thomas!