Jemima Khan, Kit Harrington, Laura Dern and Hugh Jackman make the scene at TIFF events in Toronto

It is not often I get actually star-struck — after all the years of being in the celebrity trenches — but it happened Saturday.

Ladies and gentleman, Jemima Khan.

I mean, there are stars — and then there are witnesses to history, not to mention, the truest sort of ambassadress from the beau monde.

“You have been writing this movie for ten years?” I opened, catching up with her at an after-party held for the delightful gala film she has both produced and penned), “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” (starring Lily James, Shazad Latif, Emma Thompson, Shabana Azmi, among others — lensed by “Elizabeth” director Shekhar Kapur).

“It feels like 300!” Jemima exclaimed, all doe-eyed charm and lush-as-ever-locks. Like a ghost from Tatler magazine spreads past! Looking swell in a well-cut Roland Mouret dress — “from 15 years ago!” she impressed — her journey had evidently reached its station. The Working Title production, which had just debuted at Roy Thomson Hall, and had already started to get good notices (“a vibrant multicultural rom-com,” declared The Hollywood Reporter), is a very personal project.

“All the characters in the film are based on characters I have met along the way in my life,” she told me at this fete held at RBC House, as Diageo cocktails were going around.

And what a life it has been. Jemima was one of Princess Diana’s closest confidantes, and most steadfast friends. Her mother, the society hostess, Lady Annabel Goldsmith — the woman for whom Annabel’s, the exclusive London watering hole, was oh-so-famously named. Her dad, the swashbuckling financier James Goldsmith (the man I always remember for spinning one of the pithiest quotes of all time: “When you marry your mistress, you create a job vacancy.”) That girl of Jewish extraction who then married the most famous man in Pakistan — back in 1995 — leaving behind the predictable whirl of Serpentine Gallery parties and Harrods retail therapy to go live in Lahore, of all places, with legendary cricketer Imran Khan (they would have two sons, that marriage would eventually flatline, he would go on to become Prime Minister of Pakistan).

Tatler, which, indeed, put her at number 42 on their 100 Most Invited list, a few years ago, summed up her social muscle this way: “Any party is improved by a Goldsmith — but if Jemima, 42, is there, you’ve really struck the jackpot. She’s a magnet for all the fun, clever people, who are drawn to her absurd charisma. Oh, and she’s an awesome hostess, mixing thinkers and rock stars at Kiddington Hall, her Oxfordshire paradise, where her generosity knows no bounds.”

But as much as she was characterized, early on, as an It Girl, and as much as the dreaded s-word (socialite! eeks!) often still trails her, Jemima has always been a different kind of heiress. More cerebral. More enigmatic. Less cookie-cutter! Moving into content development more recently, she has produced documentaries, and even teamed up with mega-showrunner Ryan Murphy on “Impeachment,” the Clinton-centric instalment of FX American Crime Story.

The latter? It came about when she serendipitously struck up a friendship with Monica Lewinsky after meeting at a Vanity Fair dinner, in 2015. They instantly felt a rapport, Jemima explained in an interview with The Times that she had felt hounded by the Pakistani press in the same way Lewinsky was in America. “When we met, we were both streaming upstream against old, false narratives constructed about us, looking to define ourselves as women in our forties who had something to contribute.”

Chatting with her a bit, and feeling the buzz at the party — Jemima’s two sons, Sulaimain and Kasim, now both in their twenties, were also there to support mom — it certainly seems she is doing it. And on her own terms. While she made headlines sometime back by taking her name off as a consultant to the series, “The Crown” (she did not like the depiction of Diana), another project that remains in gestation, it seems, is one with Julian Fellowes. Called “Five Arrows,” it is a drama about the Rothschild family and their influence across Europe in the 19th century. The Goldsmiths and the Rothschilds go way back, incidentally … so the lady purportedly knows a bit about the subject.

Write what you know … right?

Scene! Heard!

Laura Dern and Hugh Jackman making the scene at the annual Sony Classics Dinner, hosted by chiefs Tom Bernard and Michael Barker, and held Saturday at Morton’s, on Avenue Road.

Tilda Swinton getting distressed while getting some back-and-shoulder TLC inside Soluna, on Queen West — courtesy of posture expert Dr. Liza Egbogah, on-call inside the Deadline Hollywood lounge housed there during TIFF.

Kit Harrington working a kind of Gene Kelly look in flared pants and knitted short sleeve shirt — while mentioning that he is watching “House of the Dragon” — at a party held to celebrate his TIFF film, “Ruby Baby,” inside the Supper Suite at Marbl, the other night.

Oprah! Oprah! Oprah! The big O seen toasting “Sidney,” the Poitier documentary she has produced, at a weekend reception held in the Apple cocoon inside Clio, on King.

Shinan Govani is a Toronto-based freelance contributing columnist covering culture and society. Follow him on Twitter: @shinangovani

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