Kate Winslet's storied film career began when she was just a teenager.
Her talent has taken her from period pieces to blockbusters like Titanic and offbeat projects
like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Here's a look at her journey to becoming one of Hollywood's top actors.
Kate Winslet grew up in Reading, England, where her grandparents had a repertory theater.
"I am actually from England, Ms. Stewart."
Her father, Roger John Winslet, was an actor, as was her uncle Robert Bridges, who was a
cast member of the original West End production of Oliver!.
Winslet told The New York Times:
"It's in my family to act.
I always knew that this was what I wanted to do."
But her family's roots in the theater weren't always glamorous.
She described her father as a jobbing actor, who took on odd jobs to support his family,
according to The Sun.
Winslet said of her humble beginnings:
"I come from a family of actors who lived their lives, and still do rather stubbornly,
on a shoestring."
Winslet even kept her job at a deli after landing her first movie role, thinking she'd
need to fall back on it between gigs, according to BerkshireLive.
Along with a love for acting, Winslet credits her father for her strong work ethic.
She said:
"He would always say to me, 'You know what, baby?
You have got to keep on keepin' on.
You can only do your best, and your best is good enough, kid.'
He still says it to me now.
It's wonderful to have that."
Winslet's first paid acting gig was a commercial for Sugar Puffs cereal in 1987.
But at 11 years old, she learned the hard way that sometimes your work ends up on the
cutting room floor.
Winslet told Empire:
"My first-ever job, I was indeed in a Sugar Puffs commercial, but you didn't see me on
screen.
I was the left arm, in the right of frame."
Good Morning America tried to surprise Winslet with a clip of her early work with Sugar Puffs,
but the pigtailed redhead in the commercial wasn't Winslet.
The Brit said with a straight face before the conversation moved on:
"Very strange.
Very strange moment right there."
Winslet corrected the show's team on air, telling Empire:
"I said, 'that's actually not me.'
On live television.
They didn't like me too much for that."
Before she became a household name, Kate Winslet had a rough time throughout her years in school.
According to the Evening Standard, she spoke about her experience at the youth empowerment
event WE Day UK.
She told the attendees:
"I had been bullied at school.
They called me Blubber.
Teased me for wanting to act.
Locked me in the cupboard.
Laughed at me."
She shared with The Hollywood Reporter that a drama teacher once advised her she'd have
to, quote, "settle for the fat girl" parts when she was just 14 years old.
The constant body shaming unfortunately didn't stop in her teenage years.
Winslet revealed to Rolling Stone that while filming Titanic, director James Cameron nicknamed
her "Kate Weighs-a-Lot" on set.
Despite the unreasonable standards set for women and cruel remarks she's heard in the
past, Winslet learned to never hold herself back.
According to Insider, she said:
"I learned to embrace my flaws, to make no apology for who I am.
I dug deep, and I decided that I simply wouldn't listen when they said that my body didn't
fit."
Winslet's foray into film was met with robust praise.
She appeared in a few television series before landing a leading role in Peter Jackson's
1994 film Heavenly Creatures, a critically acclaimed movie about deranged teens set in
the '50s.
And her career took a sharp turn when she landed the part of Marianne Dashwood in Ang
Lee's 1996 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.
Starring in a Jane Austen period piece alongside heavyweights like Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant,
and Alan Rickman was intimidating to the young actress.
Winslet remembers asking Lee how she did on her first day of shooting, hoping for some
encouragement.
Winslet told CBC radio host Eleanor Wachtel:
"He put his hand on my shoulder and he went, 'Ah, you'll get better.'"
Lee helped Winslet with piano lessons, calming tai chi exercises, and Austen-era reading
assignments to help her relax and develop the grace needed for the part.
In the end, she was nominated for a supporting actress Oscar and won BAFTA and SAG awards
for the role.
Not too long after the success of Sense and Sensibility, Kate Winslet won the role of
a lifetime — and she didn't even audition for it.
Twenty years after Titanic was released, Winslet told The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter
podcast that director James Cameron asked her to begin screen testing in Los Angeles,
skipping regular protocol with casting directors.
She prepared for scenes, filmed in costume, and after a second camera test, she landed
the part.
Titanic had an enormous budget and was filmed for over five months.
The days were grueling with several injuries happening on set, including Winslet getting
hypothermia while filming in freezing water.
"Did you really get pneumonia after filming the scene in the water?
No, but I did get hypothermia."
After a record-breaking release, Winslet became a true Hollywood starlet, alongside her co-star
Leonardo DiCaprio.
But superstardom wasn't always fair to the actress.
Winslet explained:
"I was subject to quite a lot of also personal physical scrutiny, and criticized quite a
lot.
The British press were actually quite unkind to me."
She purposefully chose smaller films after Titanic to focus on her acting ability and
to escape the media circus.
Following her star-making role in Titanic, Kate Winslet's next project was decidedly
smaller, but no less impactful.
According to WSJ Magazine, she met assistant director Jim Threapleton on the set of indie
film Hideous Kinky, and the pair fell in love.
She described being smitten when locking eyes with him on set, saying:
"I knew that was it and there was nothing either of us could do about it."
They married in 1998 and welcomed their child, Mia, two years later.
But they ended up divorcing in 2001 in an amicable separation.
Winslet later met director Sam Mendes and moved her small family to New York City to
be close to him.
They married in 2003 and had a son, Joe, together.
Though, for a time, they seemed like the ultimate Hollywood power couple, they divorced in 2010.
Winslet is protective of her private life and tries to avoid tabloid coverage of her
past relationships.
She said:
"No one really knows why my first marriage didn't last; no one knows why my second didn't.
And I'm proud of those silences."
In 2012, Winslet married Ned Rocknroll, otherwise known as Edward Abel Smith.
And after welcoming their child, Bear, in 2013, the couple is still going strong.
Winslet told The New York Times: "He's the superhot, superhuman, stay-at-home
dad.
He looks after us, especially me."
Winslet had her choice of roles after Titanic, but she opted for a different career path.
According to Variety, Winslet was offered the starring role of Viola de Lesseps in 1998's
Shakespeare in Love, but turned it down.
Director John Madden recalled meeting with Winslet about the part, saying:
"She was ecstatic about it.
And then a week later, she called up and said, 'I don't think I can.'"
Hollywood was knocking, yet Winslet chose to use the opportunity to shape her career
on her own terms.
She told Entertainment Weekly:
"I remember having this overwhelming feeling of, 'Oh, my God, if I'm ever going to have
to hang on to the seat of my pants, it's now.
Not in terms of losing my mind, but sticking to my guns and hanging on to what was most
important to me in terms of work, regardless of the size of budgets and regardless of what
a role could do for me in the long run."
Winslet's intuition has given an incredible range in her career, pushing her limits as
an actress in indie flicks, prestige films and TV series.
She can comfortably switch from the manic pixie dream girl Clementine in Eternal Sunshine
of the Spotless Mind to Ophelia in Hamlet.
Winslet told NYT Magazine:
”I've never really had a plan other than to do interesting work."
In 2009, Kate Winslet won her first Oscar for her performance in The Reader.
She said in her acceptance speech:
"I'd be lying if I haven't made a version of this speech before."
She joked that, as a child, she'd say a speech into the mirror while holding a shampoo bottle
in place of the golden statuette.
In total, she's been nominated seven times, beginning with her first nod in 1995 for her
role in Sense and Sensibility.
Though she took home the top prize only once, she's made history at the Academy Awards.
According to Gold Derby, Winslet was the youngest actress to receive five Oscar nominations
at age 31, as well as the youngest to receive six nominations, at 33.
And according to Guinness World Records, she also holds the record for most characters
played by two actors nominated for the same film.
In 1997, both Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart were nominated for playing Rose DeWitt Bukater
in Titanic and in 2001, Winslet and Dame Judi Dench were nominated for playing Iris Murdoch
in the film Iris.
Heroic efforts
While vacationing in the British Virgin Islands in 2011, Kate Winslet experienced something
right out of a Hollywood film.
According to ET, Winslet, her children, and her then-boyfriend were staying on Sir Richard
Branson's private Necker Island when the vacation house caught fire during a wind and lightning
storm.
The home was completely destroyed, but luckily none of the 20 guests were hurt.
And Winslet was partly to thank for that, as she helped Branson's elderly mother out
of the burning building.
Branson told The Telegraph:
"My mum is 90 and can walk, but it was more just to speed the process up than anything
else.
But anyway, she was great.
She swept her up into her arms and got them out of the house as fast as possible."
In an interesting twist, another guest involved was Branson's nephew, Winslet's future husband,
Edward Abel Smith.
She later joked that seeing him with a headlamp and less disheveled than the other survivors
made him stand out.
She told ET:
"He was the only dude to have a head torch and a pair of shoes, everyone else left everything
behind.
So I married him!
I was like, 'I'll go for the guy with a head torch!'"
Sure, being recognized at prestigious awards shows is nice, but Kate Winslet's enormous
talent has enchanted her all the way to Windsor Palace.
In 2012, Queen Elizabeth II granted Winslet the honor of Commander of the Most Excellent
Order of the British Empire for "services rendered to drama."
The honor, otherwise known as CBEs, are the highest ranking award bestowed by the Order
of the British Empire outside of knighthood, and are given out twice a year.
A committee chooses honorees and then sends the list to the prime minister before the
Queen signs off on them.
According to BBC News, Winslet said when accepting her honor:
"The sense of gravity is enormous and you very much feel you are being acknowledged
by the whole country in a way."
While receiving the award, Winslet and the queen made small talk about acting and parenting.
Winslet recounted telling the queen of her career, saying:
"I said yes, I liked it, but not as much as being a mother.
She said, 'It is the best job.'"
Only 16 people have reached EGOT status – meaning they've won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony
award — and Kate Winslet could be joining their ranks soon.
Along with her Oscar for The Reader, Winslet has won two Emmy Awards — one for her role
in 2011's Mildred Pierce, and again in 2021 for the HBO limited series Mare of Easttown.
She also nabbed a spoken word album Grammy back in 2000 for the children's audio storybook
Listen to the Storyteller.
If you're not familiar with that last honor, well, neither was she.
She told late-night host Jimmy Fallon that the award was a total surprise at the time.
"Someone kind of called me afterwards and said 'Hey, we all won Grammys.'
I was like, 'Wh-wh-what?
What are you talking about?'"
Which leaves the Tony award, and if it's up to her middle child, Winslet will be hitting
Broadway ASAP.
According to Reuters, she said her son Joe is completely obsessed with records and wants
her to pursue a Tony.
She admitted:
"So since he has learnt about this EGOT thing, he's like, 'Mum you've gotta do it.'"
As for when Broadway will come calling for Winslet, we'll just have to wait and see.
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