Star Power
With
Kate Winslet
KATE WINSLET is no ordinary movie star – somehow managing to pull off both ‘global icon’ and ‘everywoman’ with refreshing poise and self-possession. But how? Here, she talks to PANDORA SYKES about what her three-plus decades in Hollywood have taught her, how acting is a family business, and why she will always push the envelope when it comes to her creative choices
It has become eye-rollingly rote to describe Hollywood A-listers as “down to earth”. But Kate Winslet – with 32 movies, five Baftas, five Golden Globes and an Oscar under her belt – might, genuinely, be the most down to earth of them all. People are drawn to her – “They just come and tell me stuff,” she muses. There is the attendant in her local car park in West Sussex, with whom she engages in a debate about her parking, after collecting me (sans publicist) from the train station; the waitress who brings over her tea, the pair inexplicably bantering in Scottish accents (“Ooh, a wee brew!”); the leather-clad motorcyclist, who stops to say that his wife is her biggest fan and who is rewarded with a hug and a selfie. Winslet radiates a fullness that goes beyond mere movie-star power and charisma. It’s frankly fascinating to behold.
“#MeToo lit a FIRE inside so many of us, collectively – in terms of [what we] want to LEAVE behind and what we want to SAY for ourselves”
Winslet attributes some of this ease in her skin to a recent role – the swashbuckling American model-turned-war-photojournalist Lee Miller, in the biopic Lee. “What I took from her is that absolute freedom she has from her body and her delight in her own physical self. I think that’s very unusual of historical female figures that we know of – and it’s very unusual of women today.”
The movie took eight years to make and, at one point, due to precarious funding, Winslet (who also produced it) paid the entire cast and crew’s salaries for two weeks. “There was just no giving up,” she says, simply. “What [Miller] stands for in representing truth and justice… [someone] who was powerful emotionally and charismatic and sexy and brilliantly skilled at her job and had a way of connecting with people – I am inspired by that. We live in a time as women where we just crave that from other women. #MeToo lit a fire inside so many of us, collectively,” she continues, “in terms of [what we] want to leave behind and what we want to say for ourselves.”
Re-framing the perception of Miller, the compelling and deeply moving film is based on The Lives Of Lee Miller, a 1985 book by her son, Antony Penrose. “In the past, Lee has been known for her encounters with men,” Winslet says. “[But] we wanted to focus on what we perceived as the most interesting decade of her entire life: a middle-aged, flawed woman, who went to war and photographed it.” How did it feel to play her? “Fucking powerful.”
“I have a family. That is my LIFE… [A dream morning is to] get up at 6am, take the DOGS out, then sit with a cup of tea and READ one of my cookery books”
Winslet’s latest work is The Regime, a six-part HBO series written by Succession’s Will Tracy (executive produced by Stephen Frears and Winslet) – and a palate-cleanser after Lee. It’s a satire set in a fictitious country in central Europe, in which she plays a germ-phobic dictator, Elena (the Chancellor), who falls in love with troubled soldier Corporal Zubak (played by Matthias Schoenaerts), who is hired as her personal ‘humidity monitor’ before quickly becoming her lover – all in front of her bewildered husband. “We’re just two little lunatics who fit like a glove,” Elena purrs to Zubak.
Also starring Hugh Grant, Martha Plimpton and Andrea Riseborough, who plays the legendary Vogue editor Audrey Withers in Lee (“I only want to act with Andrea,” she says ardently), The Regime is mad and shocking and filthy – and Winslet clearly had a blast filming it: “I can’t even tell you about the out-takes!”
“I knew that I could push the envelope in terms of creative choices,” she says of Elena’s hilariously cloying accent and long acrylic nails, “because it is meant to be absurd. I wanted to do as many things as I could to let the audience know that you should not take this woman seriously”. Elena, who “has huge issues with the world and within herself, due to a bizarre childhood”, addresses the nation as “my loves”, regularly broadcasts herself singing (Winslet, a typically lovely singer, deliberately out of tune), and keeps her dead father in a glass coffin in the basement. “It’s just so repulsive,” the actor laughs.
Elena and Zubak are a terrible combination – both over-sensitive and tyrannical, they visit a marriage therapist (played with aplomb by Nighty Night’s Julia Davis, who Winslet is a huge fan of). “It’s this awful combination of two people who should never ever be together, falling wildly and properly in love.” Of course, there is a massive twist, which she says is so good she lies in bed thinking about it.
“Fucking Mare… I LOVED playing her. [But] it was really HARD… [and] it took so long to get her out of my BLOODY system”
There have only been three years since 1992 that Winslet hasn’t had a movie or TV series out. Despite admitting to not really understanding the concept of free time, she isn’t a workhorse, she says, aiming to make one thing a year, with plenty of time off each side. Without that, “I’d get too overloaded.” It can take a while to shake some characters off. Mare, from 2021’s Mare of Easttown, about a troubled Pennsylvanian detective, still haunts her. “Fucking Mare” she mutters. Would you make another series of it? I ask, hopefully. “You never know,” she replies, thoughtfully. “I loved playing her. [But] it was really hard… [and] it took so long to get her out of my bloody system.”
Currently in a rest period, Winslet is developing a few things quietly, spending what time she can cooking. “I have a family. That is my life.” A dream morning is to “get up at 6am, take the dogs out, then sit with a cup of tea and read one of my cookery books.” Family and work have begun to overlap, however, with her two older children, Joe (her 21-year-old son with Sam Mendes) and Mia (her 23-year-old daughter with Jim Threapleton) both forging careers as actors. (She also has a 10-year-old son, Bear, with her husband, Edward Abel Smith.) Mia and Joe both acted alongside her in the entirely improvised 2021 TV drama I Am Ruth, about a desperate mother struggling to connect with her social-media-addicted teenage daughter. Mia is phenomenal, holding the screen with a tense, painful fury. “Luckily, they’re good,” Winslet agrees. “It felt normal” to act alongside them. “These are kids who have been testing [me] on [my] lines pretty much since they could read. They’ve seen me terrified beforehand. They’ve gone through it with me.”
“The thing about going through something TRAUMATIC with a teenager is that it is completely automatic for any PARENT to feel like it is your FAULT”
In real life, none of the three have social media (@kate.winslet.official boasting more than a million Instagram followers is “completely fake”). That’s not to say the show’s issues aren’t familiar. “The number of girls I’ve seen go through it. My daughter’s contemporaries talk to me about it.” More than anything she’s ever made, people come up to mention I Am Ruth to her. “The other day, a parking attendant burst into tears when she saw me and said, ‘I Am Ruth’. The thing about going through something traumatic with a teenager is that it is completely automatic for any parent to feel like it is your fault. So then this strange shame comes into play – and when the shame comes in, you shut down and you don’t discuss it or share it. I wanted to tell a story that created a platform for people to just have a conversation. And that part of it has been overwhelming.”
Winslet reflects on how things have changed for women in the industry since the early days of her career. “It’s different now. Mia is very much her own person. [Young women now] know how to use their voice.” She recalls her blockbuster breakthrough Titanic coming out when she was 22. “I felt like I had to look a certain way, or be a certain thing, and because media intrusion was so significant at that time, my life was quite unpleasant.” She pauses. “Journalists would always say, ‘After Titanic, you could have done anything and yet you chose to do these small things’… and I was like, ‘Yeah, you bet your fuckin’ life I did! Because, guess what, being famous was horrible.’ I was grateful, of course. I was in my early twenties, and I was able to get a flat. But I didn’t want to be followed literally feeding the ducks.”
How does she feel about fame now? “Oh, it’s such a ridiculous word! I wear it really lightly. It’s not a burden, any of it. [Titanic] continues to bring people huge amounts of joy. The only time I am like, ‘Oh god, hide’, is if we are on a boat somewhere.” I ask whether she’s seen the meme captioned, ‘Find yourself someone who looks at you the way Leo looks at Kate’. She snorts with laughter. No. “[He’s looking at me like that because] he just knows I can see right through it all.” A pause. “I think when you experience something so seismic, so young… we really went through that together.”
Unsurprisingly, Winslet doesn’t do regret or competition in her career – she says there’s nothing she wishes she had done. “I have been so thrilled for the person [who has] done it. ‘Yes! You’ve done that.’ No regrets. None at all. I just don’t think like that.” And as she sweeps another young woman who wants to tell her how much I Am Ruth meant to her into a hug, I believe her.
The Regime will be screened on HBO from March 3, and all six episodes will debut exclusively in the UK on Sky Atlantic and Now TV in April. Lee is in movie theaters and on Sky Cinema later this year
SHOP THE SHOOT
28 items