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Kate Elizabeth Winslet (born 5
October 1975) is an English actress and occasional singer. She is highly
regarded for her performances in several films and has received multiple
award nominations. She is the youngest person to accrue six Academy Award
nominations, and she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Reader
(2008). Winslet has been acclaimed for both dramatic and comedic work in
projects ranging from period to contemporary films, and from major
Hollywood productions to less publicised indie films. She has won awards
from the Screen Actors Guild, British Academy of Film and Television Arts,
and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association among others, and has been
nominated for an Emmy Award for television acting.
Raised in Berkshire, Winslet studied drama from childhood, and began her
career in British television in 1991. She made her film debut in Heavenly
Creatures (1994), for which she received her first notable critical
praise. She achieved recognition for her subsequent work in a supporting
role in Sense and Sensibility (1995) and for her leading role in Titanic
(1997), the second highest grossing film of all time.
Since 2000, Winslet's performances have continued to draw positive
comments from film critics, and she has been nominated for various awards
for her work in such films as Quills (2000), Iris (2001), Eternal Sunshine
of the Spotless Mind (2004), Finding Neverland (2004), Little Children
(2006), The Reader (2008) and Revolutionary Road (2008). Her performance
in the latter prompted New York magazine to describe her as "the best
English-speaking film actress of her generation". The romantic comedy The
Holiday and the animated film Flushed Away (both 2006) were among the
biggest commercial successes of her career.
Winslet was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children
in 2000. She has been included as a vocalist on some soundtracks of works
she has performed in, and the single "What If" from the soundtrack for
Christmas Carol: The Movie (2001), was a hit single in several European
countries. Winslet has a daughter with her former spouse Jim Threapleton
and is currently married to Sam Mendes, with whom she lives in New York
City.
Born in Reading, Berkshire, Winslet is the daughter of Sally Anne (née
Bridges), a barmaid, and Roger John Winslet, a swimming-pool contractor.
Her parents were "jobbing actors", which led Winslet to comment that she
"didn't have a privileged upbringing" and that their daily life was "very
hand to mouth". Her maternal grandparents, Linda (née Plumb) and Archibald
Oliver Bridges, founded and operated the Reading Repertory Theatre, and
her uncle, Robert Bridges, appeared in the original West End production of
Oliver!. Her sisters, Beth and Anna Winslet, are also actresses.
Raised in an Anglican household, Winslet began studying drama at the age
of 11 at the Redroofs Theatre School, a co-educational independent school
in Maidenhead, Berkshire, where she was head girl. At the age of 12,
Winslet appeared in a television advertisement directed by filmmaker Tim
Pope for Sugar Puffs cereal. Pope said her naturalism was "there from the
start".
Winslet's career began on television, with a co-starring role in the BBC
children's science fiction serial Dark Season in 1991. This role was
followed by appearances in the made-for-TV movie Anglo-Saxon Attitudes in
1992, the sitcom Get Back for ITV and an episode of medical drama Casualty
in 1993, also for the BBC.
In 1992, Winslet attended a casting call for Peter Jackson's Heavenly
Creatures in London. Winslet auditioned for the part of Juliet Hulme, a
teenager who assists in the murder of the mother of her best friend,
Pauline Parker (played by Melanie Lynskey). She won the role over 175
other girls. The film included Winslet's singing debut, and her a capella
version of "Sono Andata", an aria from La Bohème, was featured on the
film's soundtrack. The film was released to favourable reviews in 1994 and
won Jackson and partner Fran Walsh a nomination for an Academy Award for
Best Original Screenplay. Winslet was awarded an Empire Award and a London
Film Critics Circle Award for British Actress of the Year for her
performance. The Washington Post writer Desson Thomson commented: "As
Juliet, Winslet is a bright-eyed ball of fire, lighting up every scene
she’s in. She's offset perfectly by Lynskey, whose quietly smoldering
Pauline completes the delicate, dangerous partnership." Speaking about her
experience on a film set as an absolute beginner, Winslet noted: "With
Heavenly Creatures, all I knew I had to do was completely become that
person. In a way it was quite nice doing [the film] and not knowing a
bloody thing."
The following year, Winslet auditioned for the small but pivotal role of
Lucy Steele in the adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility,
featuring Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, and Alan Rickman. She was instead
cast in the second leading role of Marianne Dashwood. Director Ang Lee
admitted he was initially worried about the way Winslet had attacked her
role in Heavenly Creatures and thus required her to exercise tai chi, read
Austen-era Gothic novels and poetry, and work with a piano teacher to fit
the grace of the role. Budgeted at US$16.5 million ($23.1 million in
current year dollars) the film became a financial and critical success,
resulting in a worldwide box office total of US$135 million ($188.7
million) and various awards for Winslet, winning her both a BAFTA and a
Screen Actors Guild Award, and nominations for both an Academy Award and a
Golden Globe.
In 1996, Winslet starred in both Jude and Hamlet. In Michael
Winterbottom's Jude, based on the Victorian novel Jude the Obscure by
Thomas Hardy, she played Sue Bridehead, a young woman with suffragette
leanings who falls in love with her cousin, played by Christopher
Eccleston. Acclaimed among critics, it was not a success at the box
office, barely grossing US$2 million ($2.7 million) worldwide. Richard
Corliss of Time magazine said "Winslet is worthy of the camera's
scrupulous adoration. She's perfect, a modernist ahead of her time and
Jude is a handsome showcase for her gifts." Winslet played Ophelia,
Hamlet's drowned lover, in Kenneth Branagh's all star-cast film version of
William Shakespeare's Hamlet. The film garnered largely positive reviews
and earned Winslet her second Empire Award.
In mid-1996, Winslet began filming James Cameron's Titanic (1997),
alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. Cast as the sensitive seventeen-year-old Rose
DeWitt Bukater, a fictional first-class socialite who survives the 1912
sinking of the RMS Titanic, Winslet's experience was emotionally
demanding. "Titanic was totally different and nothing could have prepared
me for it. We were really scared about the whole adventure. Jim [Cameron]
is a perfectionist, a real genius at making movies. But there was all this
bad press before it came out, and that was really upsetting." Against
expectations, the film went on to become the second highest-grossing film
of all time, grossing more than US$1.843 billion ($2.5 billion) in
box-office receipts worldwide, and transformed Winslet into a commercial
movie star. Subsequently, she was nominated for most of the high-profile
awards, winning a European Film Award.
Shot prior to the release of Titanic, Hideous Kinky, a low-budget hippie
romance, was Winslet's sole film of 1998. Winslet had rejected offers to
play the leading roles in Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Anna and the King
(1999) in favour of the role of a young English mother named Julia who
moves with her daughters from London to Morocco hoping to start a new
life. The film garnered generally mixed reviews and received only limited
distribution, resulting in a worldwide gross of US$5 million ($6.4
million). Despite the success of Titanic, the next film Winslet opted to
star in was Holy Smoke! (1999), featuring Harvey Keitel, another
low-budget project — much to the chagrin of her agents, who felt
"miserable" about her preference of arthouse movies. Feeling pressured,
Winslet has said she "never saw Titanic as a springboard for bigger films
or bigger pay cheques", knowing that "it could have been that, but would
have destroyed [her]." The same year, she voiced Brigid in the computer
animated film Faeries.
In 2000, Winslet appeared in the period piece Quills with Geoffrey Rush
and Joaquin Phoenix, a film inspired by the life and work of the Marquis
de Sade. The actress served as somewhat of a "patron saint" of the film
for being the first big name to back it, accepting the role of a
chambermaid in the asylum and the courier of the The Marquis' manuscripts
to the underground publishers. Well-received by critics, the film garnered
numerous accolades for Winslet, including nominations for SAG and
Satellite Awards. The film was a modest arthouse success, averaging
US$27,709 ($34,284) per screen its debut weekend, and eventually grossing
US$18 million ($22.3 million) internationally.
In 2001's Enigma, Winslet played a young woman who finds herself falling
for a brilliant young World War II code breaker, played by Dougray Scott.
Her first war film, Winslet regarded "making Enigma a brilliant
experience" as she was five months pregnant at the time of the shoot,
forcing some tricky camera work from the director Michael Apted. Generally
well-received, Winslet was awarded a British Independent Film Award for
her performance, and A. O. Scott of The New York Times described Winslet
as "more crush-worthy than ever." In the same year she appeared in Richard
Eyre's critically acclaimed film Iris, portraying Irish novelist Iris
Murdoch. Winslet shared her role with Judi Dench, with both actresses
portraying Murdoch at different phases of her life. Subsequently, each of
them was nominated for an Academy Award the following year, scoring
Winslet her third nomination. Also in 2001, she voiced the character Belle
in the animated motion picture Christmas Carol: The Movie, based on the
Charles Dickens classic novel. For the film, Winslet recorded the song
"What If," which was released in November 2001 as a single with proceeds
donated to two of Winslet's favourite charities, the National Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the Sargeant Cancer Foundation
for Children. A Europe-wide top ten hit, it reached number one in Austria,
Belgium, and Ireland, number six on the UK Singles Chart, and won the 2002
OGAE Song Contest.
Her next film role was in the 2003 drama The Life of David Gale, in which
she played an ambitious journalist who interviews a death-sentenced
professor, played by Kevin Spacey, in his final weeks before execution.
The film underperformed at international box offices, garnering only half
of its US$50,000,000 budget, and generating mostly critical reviews, with
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times calling it a "silly movie."
Following The Life of David Gale, Winslet appeared alongside Jim Carrey in
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), a neosurrealistic
indie-drama by French director Michel Gondry. In the film, she played the
role of Clementine Kruczynski, a chatty, spontaneous and somewhat neurotic
woman, who decides to have all memories of her ex-boyfriend erased from
her mind. The role was a departure from her previous roles, with Winslet
revealing in an interview with Variety that she was initially upended
about her casting in the film: "This was not the type of thing I was being
offered I was just thrilled that there was something he had seen in me, in
spite of the corsets, that he thought was going to work for Clementine.”
The film was a critical and financial success. Winslet received rave
reviews for her Academy Award-nominated performance, which Peter Travers
of Rolling Stone described as "electrifying and bruisingly vulnerable."
Her final film in 2004 was Finding Neverland. The story of the production
focused on Scottish writer J. M. Barrie (Johnny Depp) and his platonic
relationship with Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Winslet), whose sons inspired
him to pen the classic play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up.
During promotion of the film, Winslet noted of her portrayal "It was very
important for me in playing Sylvia that I was already a mother myself,
because I don’t think I could have played that part if I didn’t know what
it felt like to be a parent and have those responsibilities and that
amount of love that you give to a child and I've always got a baby
somewhere, or both of them, all over my face."The film received favourable
reviews and proved to be an international success, becoming Winslet's
highest-grossing film since Titanic with a total of US$118 million
worldwide.
In 2005, Winslet appeared in an episode of BBC's comedy series Extras as a
satirical version of herself. While dressed as a nun, she was portrayed
giving phone sex tips to the romantically challenged character of Maggie.
Her performance in the episode led to her first nomination for an Emmy
Award. In Romance & Cigarettes (2005), a musical romantic comedy written
and directed by John Turturro, she played the character Tula, described by
Winslet as "a slut, someone who’s essentially foulmouthed and has bad
manners and really doesn’t know how to dress." Hand-picked by Turturro,
who was impressed with her display of dancing ability in Holy Smoke!,
Winslet was praised for her performance, which included her interpretation
of Connie Francis's "Scapricciatiello (Do You Love Me Like You Kiss Me)".
Derek Elley of Variety wrote: "Onscreen less, but blessed with the
showiest role, filthiest one-liners, [and] a perfect Lancashire accent
that's comical enough in the Gotham setting Winslet throws herself into
the role with an infectious gusto."
After declining an invitation to appear in Woody Allen's film Match Point
(2005), Winslet stated that she wanted to be able to spend more time with
her children. She began 2006 with All the King's Men, featuring Sean Penn
and Jude Law. Winslet played the role of Anne Stanton, the childhood
sweetheart of Jack Burden (Law). The film was critically and financially
unsuccessful. Todd McCarthy of Variety summed it up as "overstuffed and
fatally miscast Absent any point of engagement to become involved in the
characters, the film feels stillborn and is unlikely to stir public
excitement, even in an election year."
Winslet fared far better when she joined the cast of Todd Field's Little
Children, playing Sarah Pierce, a bored homemaker who has a torrid affair
with a married neighbour, played by Patrick Wilson. Both her performance
and the film received rave reviews; A.O. Scott of The New York Times
wrote: "In too many recent movies intelligence is woefully undervalued,
and it is this quality — even more than its considerable beauty — that
distinguishes Little Children from its peers. The result is a movie that
is challenging, accessible and hard to stop thinking about. Ms. Winslet,
as fine an actress as any working in movies today, registers every flicker
of Sarah’s pride, self-doubt and desire, inspiring a mixture of
recognition, pity and concern that amounts, by the end of the movie, to
something like love. That Ms. Winslet is so lovable makes the deficit of
love in Sarah’s life all the more painful." For her work in the film, she
was honored with a Britannia Award for British Artist of the Year from
BAFTA/LA, a Los Angeles-based offshoot of the BAFTA Awards. and nominated
for an Academy Award for Best Actress, and at 31, became the youngest
actress to ever garner five Oscar nominations.
She followed Little Children with a role in Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy
The Holiday, also starring Cameron Diaz, Jude Law, and Jack Black. In it
she played Iris, a British woman who temporarily exchanges homes with an
American woman (Diaz). Released to a mixed reception by critics, the film
became Winslet's biggest commercial success in nine years, grossing more
than US$205 million worldwide. Also in 2006, Winslet provided her voice
for several smaller projects. In the CG-animated Flushed Away, she voiced
Rita, a scavenging sewer rat who helps Roddy (Hugh Jackman) escape from
the city of Ratropolis and return to his luxurious Kensington origins. A
critical and commercial success, the film collected US$177,665,672 at
international box offices
In 2007, Winslet reunited with Leonardo DiCaprio to film Revolutionary
Road (2008). Directed by husband Sam Mendes, it was Winslet who suggested
that both should work with her on a film adaptation of the 1961 novel of
the same name by Richard Yates after reading the script by Justin Haythe.
Resulting in both "a blessing and an added pressure" on-set, the reunion
was her first experience working with Mendes. Portraying a couple in a
failing marriage in the 1950s, DiCaprio and Winslet watched period videos
promoting life in the suburbs to prepare themselves for the film, which
earned them favorable reviews. In his review of the film, David Edelstein
of New York magazine stated that "[t]here isn’t a banal moment in
Winslet’s performance—not a gesture, not a word. Is Winslet now the best
English-speaking film actress of her generation? I think so." Winslet was
awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance, her
seventh nomination from the Golden Globes.
Also released in fall 2008, the film competed against Winslet's other
project, a film adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's 1995 novel The Reader,
directed by Stephen Daldry and featuring Ralph Fiennes and David Kross in
supporting roles. Originally the first choice for her role, she was
initially not able to take on the role due to a scheduling conflict with
Revolutionary Road, and Nicole Kidman replaced her. A month after filming
began, however, Kidman left the role due to her pregnancy, enabling
Winslet to rejoin the film. Employing a German accent, Winslet portrayed a
former Nazi concentration camp guard who has an affair with a teenager
(Kross) who, as an adult, witnesses her war crimes trial. She later said
the role was difficult for her, as she was naturally unable "to sympathise
with an SS guard." While the film garnered mixed reviews in general,
Winslet received favorable reviews for her performance. The following
year, she earned her sixth Academy Award nomination and went on to win the
Best Actress award, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress, a Screen Actors
Guild Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress, and a Golden Globe for
Best Supporting Actress.
While on the set of Dark Season, Winslet met actor-writer Stephen Tredre,
with whom she had a nearly five-year relationship. He died of bone cancer
soon after Winslet completed filming Titanic, causing her to miss the
film's premiere in order to attend his funeral in London. She and Titanic
co-star Leonardo DiCaprio have remained good friends since the filming.
Winslet was later in a relationship with Rufus Sewell, but on 22 November
1998 she married director Jim Threapleton, whom she met while on the set
of Hideous Kinky. They have a daughter, Mia Honey, who was born on 12
October 2000 in London. Winslet and Threapleton divorced in 2001, Winslet
began a relationship with Sam Mendes, whom she married on 24 May 2003 on
the island of Anguilla in the Caribbean. Their son, Joe Alfie Winslet
Mendes, was born on 22 December 2003 in New York City.
Mendes and his production company, Neal Street Productions, purchased the
film rights to the long-delayed biography of circus tiger tamer Mabel
Stark. The couple's spokesperson said, "It's a great story, they have had
their eyes on it for a while. If they can get the script right, it would
make a great film."
The media have documented her weight fluctuations over the years. Winslet
has been outspoken about her refusal to allow Hollywood to dictate her
weight. In February 2003, British GQ magazine published photographs of
Winslet which had been digitally enhanced to make her look dramatically
thinner than she really was. Winslet issued a statement that the
alterations were made without her consent, saying "I just didn't want
people to think I was a hypocrite and that I'd suddenly lost 30 lbs. or
whatever". GQ subsequently issued an apology. She won a libel suit in 2009
against British tabloid The Daily Mail after it printed that she lied
about her exercise regime. Winslet said she had always expressed the
opinion that women should be encouraged to accept their appearance with
pride, and therefore "was particularly upset to be accused of lying about
my exercise regime, and felt that I had a responsibility to request an
apology in order to demonstrate my commitment to the views that I have
always expressed about body issues, including diet and exercise."
Winslet and Mendes reside in Greenwich Village in New York City. They also
own a Grade II-listed five-bedroom house, set in 22 acres in the village
of Church Westcote in Gloucestershire, England. After purchasing the house
for £3 million, they have reportedly spent a further £1 million in
renovations, as the house had fallen into disrepair after the death of its
former owner, the equestrian artist Raoul Millais in 1999.
Mendes was scheduled to fly on American Airlines Flight 77, which was
hijacked on 11 September 2001 and subsequently crashed into the Pentagon.
In October 2001, Winslet was seven hours into a London-Dallas flight with
her daughter Mia when a passenger who claimed to be a terrorist, later
charged with creating mischief, stood up and shouted "We are all going to
die." As a result of these incidents, Winslet and Mendes never fly
together on the same aircraft, as they fear leaving their children
parentless. |
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[talking about her screen
debut in Heavenly Creatures (1994)]: "I was reading the script in
the back of the car and I turned to my dad and yelled, 'I've GOT to
get this!' And he replied, 'Then you will.' And I thought, 'Yep,
that's it. I'm bloody well going to.' And that was it. I was so
determined. It was something crucial to my life. I just so
communicated with her, the story and their relationship. And when I
found out, I just couldn't believe it. I was so happy, I cried. I
remember I was working part-time at a deli at the time because I
didn't have any money and was in the middle of making a sandwich
when they phoned and said I'd got the job. I burst into tears and
had to leave work because I couldn't control myself. It was
absolutely brilliant."
In 2002 she had this to say about doing nude scenes: "I like
exposing myself. There's not an awful lot that embarrasses me. I'm
the kind of actress that absolutely believes in exposing myself."
"I'd rather do theatre and British films than move to L.A. in hopes
of getting small roles in American films."
"It's very important for me to make the statement that I am English
and just because I've done one really big film, it doesn't mean that
I don't want to keep a finger in the fantastic British film industry
and do films like this."
About her spur-of-the-moment marriage to Sam Mendes - "We hadn't
been planning to do it but we thought it was rather a good idea, so
we just did it."
"After Titanic (1997) it would have been completely foolish for me
to go and try and top that. I'm an English girl, I've always loved
England, I've never felt the desire to leave it for any particular
reason. And whilst I'm ambitious and care very much about what I do,
I'm not competitive. I also don't want to act every day of my life.
... So it was important to me after Titanic (1997) to just remind
myself of why it was that I was acting in the first place, which is
of course because I love it."
"Since I was 13 or 14, I've always felt older than I actually am."
"I was on the tube just before Christmas. and this girl turned round
to me and said, 'Are you Kate Winslet?'. And I said, 'Well, yes. I
am actually'. And she said, 'And you're getting the tube?' And I
said, 'Yes'. And she said, 'Don't you have a big car that drives you
around?' And I said, 'No'. And she was absolutely stunned that I
wasn't being driven round in some flash car all the time. It was
ludicrous."
"People say to me, 'You seem to have made this conscious decision to
do independent films'. In reality, I haven't. After each movie, I
always think, how different can I possibly be?... Is this going to
challenge me, is this going to inspire me, and is this going to make
me love my job more than I already do?"
"There is no way we are going to move out of England. Some might
think that we want to live in Hollywood but that is not what we want
at all. We will go and live in New York when it is necessary because
of work but we prefer to be in England. I'm proud to be English - we
both are. It's very important to me to retain that. I am an English
girl and I love England. I have never felt the desire to leave. I am
still ambitious and I will have to travel and live elsewhere because
of that but England is always home."
On a scene from the movie Holy Smoke (1999),: "It was a difficult
scene. When I read the script and I saw this scene was there, I
laughed hysterically. I just couldn't believe it. When it came to
shooting it, I had been sort of putting it off, and pretending it
wasn't going to happen. And suddenly, I am there naked, peeing and
thinking "Oh no!" It was really hard to do, but I've always loved
the fact that it was there, and it's such a sort of turning point
for the character I play in the movie that I've always felt sort of
good, that it should be there."
On receiving her 4th Oscar nomination: "I can't believe it. I am
ecstatic! This nomination means so much to me. To be remembered for
a film that was released a while ago, I am unbelievably honoured and
completely overwhelmed."
"There's more to life than cheek bones."
"Mum and dad were very much friends, and up to life. There was no
anxiety for anything when I was growing up, they just taught me to
be me."
"Life is short, and it is here to be lived."
"Loving someone is setting them free, letting them go."
I don't know if it's a skill, but I have been really lucky. I've
always got on with every actor I've had to work opposite. I just
always try and be as accepting of that person as I possibly can, and
remain non-judgmental about their process, because every actor works
in a different way.
I was a wayward child, very passionate and very determined. If I
made up my mind to do something, there was no stopping me.
On going to the 1996 Oscars: Emma Thompson said to me 'Listen, it's
honestly just like going to see a fantastic show', and actually it
really is, because there are so many people to look at and all those
fabulous frocks and it's really fascinating. But mum and dad and I
did kind of amble through it a bit, a bit like the Beverly
Hillbillies, getting out the car, my mum stepping on my dress and
I'm going 'Mum, mum!'
I'm really proud of being English, because I learned my job in
England, in English films with English actors. But I never dared
dream of such a success... it's more than a dream. I realize it's
extraordinary for a British actress. I feel good, but guilty at the
same time, cause I wish I could share this emotion with all my
British actors' friends... I play the main character in the most
expensive and probably successful film, but that's not a good reason
to leave England and become a superstar. Not at all.
"It seems daft that I'm famous and I've not really got to grips with
that." |
