Full name: Kate Elizabeth Winslet
Born: Oct., 5, 1975, in Reading, Berkshire, England
Family: Parents, Sally and Roger; sisters Anna and Beth, and brother Joss. Husband is director Sam Mendes, with whom she has a son, Joe. Winslet also has a daughter, Mia, with her ex-husband Jim Threapleton.
Kate Winslet's Career
Winslet kicked off her acting career on television, appearing on the BBC series "Dark Season" in 1991. More TV stints followed: A part in the TV movie "Anglo-Saxon Attitudes" the following year, and a role in the medical drama "Casualty" a year later.
Then "Heavenly Creatures" came calling, her first big movie break. After audition for director Peter Jackson for the role of Juliet Hulme, a teenager who helps her best friend kill her mother, she won the part over 175 other girls. Her work in the the movie earned her an Empire Award and a London Critics Circle Film Award.
Winslet's next role, as Marianne Dashwood in "Sense and Sensibility," resulted in her first Oscar nomination, a Golden Globe nomination, and her first awards from BAFTA and the Screen Actors Guild Award.
In 1997, the rest of the world soon knew Winslet's name, with the release of the hugely succesful "Titanic." The ship may have sunk, but Winslet's career didn't: She earned another Oscar nomination for her role as Rose DeWitt Bukater.
Winslet turned it down a knotch with her next roles: One was as a hippie mother in the lower-buget and independent film "Hideous Kinky," the other as a young woman drawn into a cult in "Holy Smoke!" Parts in the movies "Quills," "Finding Neverland, "Romance and Cigarettes" and "Little Children" followed.
More recently, Winslet is back on the big screen in two movies: As a former concentration camp guard in The Reader, and dissastified wife in Revolutionary Road.
Winslet has cemented her reputation as a good actress. Award nominations aside, she has had the luxury of choosing her roles. She reportedly turned down the lead role in "Shakespeare in Love" to make "Hideous Kinky" and passed on the lead part in "Anna and the King."
Kate Winslet’s Personal Life
Winslet met actor and writer Stephen Tredre on the set of Dark S. The two embarked on a five-year relationship. She was 16, he was 27. They moved in together in London, and remained close friends after their relationship ended. After Tredre died of bone cancer, Winslet skipped the premiere of "Titanic" in December 2007 to attend his funeral in London.
While shooting "Hamlet," Winslet hooked up with actor Rufus Sewell, and rumour has it their relationship only lasted a matter of months.
Things worked out differently for Winslet on the set of "Hideous Kinky." It was her she met assistant director Jim Threapleton, whom she married in November 1998. The two divorced in 2001, and soon afterwards Winslet became involved with director Sam Mendes, to whom she has been married since 2003.
Kate Winslet Trivia
- Winslet's first-ever acting job was in a "Sugar Puffs" cereal commercial.
- Her peers bullied Winslet for being overweight when she was a teenager.
- She was the youngest actress ever to be nominated for two Academy Awards (for "Sense and Sensibility" (1995) and "Titanic" (1997)) when she was 20 and 22 respectively.
- She recorded a song titled "What If?" for the soundtrack to "Christmas Carol: The Movie," that was released as a single.
- Her husband, Sam Mendes, directed her in the movie "Revolutionary Road."
Kate Winslet’s Oscar Nominations
- Actress in a Leading Role for "The Reader" (2009)
- Actress in a Leading Role for "Little Children" (2006)
- Actress in a Leading Role for "Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind" (2004)
- Actress in a Supporting Role for "Iris" (2001)
- Actress in a Leading Role for "Titanic" (1997)
- Actress in a Supporting Role for "Sense and Sensibility" (1995)
Kate Winslet Quotes
To News Shopper Online:
"I really come to love and understand the characters that I play and you go through a weird period of feeling sad and letting them go.”
To the U.K.’s The Sun newspaper:
"I was the fat kid at the back of the line who often didn’t even get seen for the audition because her name began with a W. They would run out of time when they got to R. I often wouldn’t even get in the door.”
To the Daily Mail newspaper:
"At a certain point, when you achieve a lot of your goals and you can be proud of your work, you start to relax more about who you are. And that includes your appearance and self-image.”
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