Kate Winslet facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Kate Winslet
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Winslet in 2017
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| Born |
Kate Elizabeth Winslet
5 October 1975 |
| Education | Redroofs Theatre School |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1991–present |
| Organization | Golden Hat Foundation |
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Works
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Full list |
| Spouse(s) |
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| Children | 3, including Mia Threapleton |
| Awards | Full list |
Kate Elizabeth Winslet CBE (/ˈwɪnzlət/; born 5 October 1975) is an English actress. Known for her roles as headstrong and complicated women in independent films, particularly period dramas, she has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, five BAFTA Awards and five Golden Globe Awards. Time magazine named Winslet one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009 and 2021. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2012.
Winslet studied drama at the Redroofs Theatre School. Her first screen appearance, at age 15, was in the British television series Dark Season (1991). She made her film debut playing a teenage murderess in Heavenly Creatures (1994), and went on to win a BAFTA Award for playing Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility (1995). Global stardom followed with her leading role in James Cameron's epic romance Titanic (1997), which was the highest-grossing film at the time. Winslet then eschewed parts in blockbusters in favour of critically acclaimed period pieces, including Quills (2000) and Iris (2001).
The science fiction romance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), in which Winslet was cast against type in a contemporary setting, proved to be a turning point in her career, and she gained further recognition for her performances in Finding Neverland (2004), Little Children (2006), Revolutionary Road (2008), and The Reader (2008). For playing a former Nazi camp guard in the latter, she won the BAFTA Award and the Academy Award for Best Actress. Winslet's portrayal of Joanna Hoffman in the biopic Steve Jobs (2015) won her another BAFTA Award, and she received two Primetime Emmy Awards for her performances in the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011) and Mare of Easttown (2021). In 2022, she produced and starred in the single drama "I Am Ruth", winning two BAFTA TV Awards, and played a supporting role through motion capture in Cameron's top-grossing science fiction film Avatar: The Way of Water.
For her narration of a short story in the audiobook Listen to the Storyteller (1999), Winslet won a Grammy Award. She performed the song "What If" for the soundtrack of her film, Christmas Carol: The Movie (2001). A co-founder of the charity Golden Hat Foundation, which aims to create autism awareness, Winslet has also written a book on the topic. Divorced from film directors Jim Threapleton and Sam Mendes, Winslet has been married to businessman Edward Abel Smith since 2012. She has a child from each marriage, including actress Mia Threapleton.
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Early life and background
Kate Elizabeth Winslet was born on 5 October 1975, in Reading, Berkshire, to Sally Anne (née Bridges) and Roger John Winslet. She is of British descent, and also has Irish ancestry on her father's side and Swedish ancestry on her mother's side. Her mother worked as a nanny and waitress, and her father, a struggling actor, took labouring jobs to support the family. Her maternal grandparents were both actors and ran the Reading Repertory Theatre Company. Winslet has two sisters, Anna and Beth, both of whom are actresses, and a younger brother, Joss. The family had limited financial means; they lived on free meal benefits and were supported by a charity named the Actors' Charitable Trust. When Winslet was ten, her father severely injured his foot in a boating accident and found it harder to work, leading to more financial hardships for the family. Winslet has said her parents always made them feel cared for and that they were a supportive family.
Winslet attended St Mary and All Saints' Church of England primary school. Living in a family of actors inspired her to pursue acting from a young age. She and her sisters participated in amateur stage shows at school and at a local youth theatre, named Foundations. When she was five, Winslet made her first stage appearance as Mary in her school's production of the Nativity play. She describes herself as an overweight child, and was called "blubber" by her schoolmates and was bullied for her appearance. She said she did not let this stop her. At eleven, Winslet was accepted into the Redroofs Theatre School in Maidenhead. The school also functioned as an agency and took students to London to audition for acting jobs. She appeared in a Sugar Puffs commercial and dubbed for foreign films. At school, she was made head girl, took part in productions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and played the lead role of Wendy Darling in Peter Pan. She worked simultaneously with the Starmaker Theatre Company in Reading. She participated in over twenty of their stage productions, but was rarely selected as the lead due to her weight. Nonetheless, she played key roles as Miss Agatha Hannigan in Annie, the Mother Wolf in The Jungle Book, and Lena Marelli in Bugsy Malone.
In 1991, within two weeks of finishing her GCSE examinations, Winslet made her screen debut as one of the main cast members of the BBC science fiction television series Dark Season. Her part was that of Reet, a schoolgirl who helps her classmates fight against a sinister man distributing free computers to her school. She did not earn much from the job and, at age sixteen, lack of funds forced Winslet to leave Redroofs. To support herself, she worked at a delicatessen. In 1992, she had a small part in the television film Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, an adaptation of Angus Wilson's satirical novel. Winslet, who weighed 13 stone 3 pounds (84 kg; 185 lb) at the time, played the daughter of an obese woman in it. During filming, an off-hand comment from the director Diarmuid Lawrence about the likeness between her and the actress who played her mother prompted Winslet to lose weight. She next took on the role of the young daughter of a bankrupt self-made man (played by Ray Winstone) in the television sitcom Get Back (1992–1993). She also had a guest role in a 1993 episode of the medical drama series Casualty.
Career
Winslet studied drama at the Redroofs Theatre School. Her first screen appearance, at age 15, was in the British television series Dark Season (1991).
Winslet was among 175 girls to audition for Peter Jackson's psychological drama Heavenly Creatures (1994), and was cast after impressing Jackson with the intensity she brought to her part. The film was a critical breakthrough for Winslet; Desson Thomson, a reviewer for The Washington Post, called her "a bright-eyed ball of fire, lighting up every scene she's in". Winslet recorded "Juliet's Aria" for the film's soundtrack.
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While promoting Heavenly Creatures in Los Angeles, Winslet auditioned for the minor part of Lucy Steele for a 1995 film adaptation of Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility, written by and starring Emma Thompson. Impressed by her reading, Thompson cast her in the much larger part of the recklessly romantic teenager Marianne Dashwood. The director Ang Lee wanted Winslet to play the part with grace and restraint—aspects that he felt were missing from her performance in Heavenly Creatures—and thus asked her to practise tai chi, read gothic literature, and learn to play the piano. David Parkinson of Radio Times considered Winslet to be a standout among the cast, and Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle took note of how well she had portrayed her character's growth and maturity. The film grossed over $134 million worldwide. She won the Screen Actors Guild and British Academy Film Award for Best Supporting Actress, and received nominations for the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award in the same category. Also in 1995, Winslet featured in the poorly received Disney film A Kid in King Arthur's Court.
Global stardom followed with her leading role in the epic romance Titanic (1997), directed by James Cameron. Cameron was initially reluctant to cast her, preferring the likes of Claire Danes and Gwyneth Paltrow, but she pleaded with him, "You don't understand! I am Rose! I don't know why you're even seeing anyone else!" Her persistence led him to give her the part. Leonardo DiCaprio featured as her love interest, Jack. Titanic had a production budget of $200 million, and its arduous principal photography was held at Rosarito Beach where a replica of the ship was created. Filming proved taxing for Winslet; she almost drowned, caught influenza, suffered from hypothermia, and had bruises on her arms and knees. The workload allowed her only four hours of sleep per day and she felt drained by the experience. Writing for Newsweek, David Ansen commended Winslet for capturing her character's zeal with delicacy, and Mike Clark of USA Today considered her to be the film's prime asset. Against expectations, Titanic went on to become the highest-grossing film to that point, earning over $2 billion in box office receipts worldwide, and established Winslet as a global star. The film won eleven Academy Awards—tied for most for a single film—including Best Picture and earned the 22-year-old Winslet a nomination for a Best Actress in a Leading Role, making her the fourth-youngest nominee in the category at that time. She also received Golden Globe and SAG nominations for Best Actress.
Winslet did not view Titanic as a platform for bigger salaries. She avoided parts in blockbuster films in favour of independent productions that were not widely seen, believing that she "still had a lot to learn" and was unprepared to be a star. She later said her decision ensured career longevity.
For her narration of a short story in the audiobook Listen to the Storyteller (1999), Winslet won a Grammy Award. She performed the song "What If" for the soundtrack of her film Christmas Carol: The Movie (2001).
The science fiction romance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), in which Winslet was cast against type in a contemporary setting, proved to be a turning point in her career, and she gained further recognition for her performances in Finding Neverland (2004), Little Children (2006), Revolutionary Road (2008), and The Reader (2008).
Winslet received significant awards attention for her performances in Revolutionary Road and The Reader. She won a Golden Globe Award for each of these films, and for the latter, she was awarded the Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Best Actress. At age 33, she surpassed her own record as the youngest performer to accrue six Oscar nominations. She also became the third actress in history to win two Golden Globe Awards at the same ceremony. Exhausted by the media attention during this period, Winslet took two years off work until she was ready to creatively engage again.
Winslet's portrayal of Joanna Hoffman in the biopic Steve Jobs (2015) won her another BAFTA Award, and she received two Primetime Emmy Awards for her performances in the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011) and Mare of Easttown (2021). In preparation, Winslet spent time with Hoffman, and worked with a dialect coach to speak in Hoffman's accent, a mixture of Armenian and Polish, which she considered to be the most difficult of her career. The cast rehearsed each act like a play and filmed it in sequence. The film earned her some of the best reviews of her career, though it was a box-office flop.
Winslet portrayed palaeontologist Mary Anning in Ammonite (2020). For much of the filming, she lived in isolation in a rented cottage in Dorset, where the film was shot, to get into her character's headspace. Caryn James of the BBC considered her "contained, potent performance" to be one of the best of her career.
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The following year, Winslet executive produced and starred in Mare of Easttown (2021), an HBO miniseries about a troubled police detective solving a murder case. Set in Delaware County, Winslet insisted on using the "Delco accent", a version of Philadelphia English used in the county; she considered it to be the one of the hardest accents she has had to learn. The series and Winslet's performance received critical acclaim; Richard Roeper wrote that she "adds to a long list of magnificent, disappear-into-the-character performances" and Lucy Mangan of The Guardian opined, "If you can have a defining performance this late in a career, this is surely Winslet's." Mare of Easttown proved to be a ratings hit for HBO, and Winslet once again won the Primetime Emmy Award, Golden Globe, and SAG Awards for Best Actress in a miniseries.
Winslet will next portray the model and war photographer Lee Miller in the biopic Lee, which she will also produce. Production in Croatia was suspended for a short period when Winslet slipped and fell while filming. She will star with her daughter Mia Threapleton in an episode of the Channel 4 anthology series I Am..., titled "I Am Ruth". Winslet will also collaborate with HBO on two more limited series: Trust, based on Hernan Diaz's novel, and The Palace, directed by Stephen Frears, which she will also executive produce.
A co-founder of the charity Golden Hat Foundation, which aims to create autism awareness, Winslet has written a book on the topic.
After being attached to a biopic of model and war photographer Lee Miller for eight years, Winslet produced and starred in Lee (2023). She hired cinematographer Ellen Kuras (who had filmed her in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) to make her feature directorial debut with the project. Winslet slipped and fell while filming, leading to three haematomas on her spine; she continued working despite the pain. Reviewers for The Hollywood Reporter and The Daily Beast noted how much Winslet's performance helped elevate a conventional biopic. Winslet next executive produced and starred in the HBO miniseries The Regime (2024), a satire about a fictional authoritarian country. To play a megalomaniac dictator, she consulted a neuroscientist and a psychotherapist to create a backstory for her character. Critics deemed her performance superior to the series. Winslet will next reprise her role in the sequel Avatar: Fire and Ash.
Personal life
While filming Dark Season, fifteen-year-old Winslet began a romantic relationship with actor-writer Stephen Tredre, who was twelve years her senior. She considered him a major influence in her life and they lived together in London from 1991. They broke up in 1995, but remained close until Tredre died of bone cancer two years later. Winslet absented herself from the premiere of Titanic to attend his funeral. In 2008, she admitted to not overcoming his death.
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A year after Tredre's death, Winslet met Jim Threapleton. They married in November 1998 at her primary school in Reading, and their daughter, Mia, was born in 2000. They divorced in 2001. Soon after separating from Threapleton, she met director Sam Mendes when he offered her a part in a play; she turned down the offer but began dating him. Dismayed at how the British tabloids portrayed her personal life, Winslet relocated to New York City. She married Mendes in May 2003 on the island of Anguilla, and their son, Joe, was born later that year. The family divided their time in New York with frequent visits to their estate in the Cotswolds, England. Winslet and Mendes announced their separation in 2010 and were divorced a year later. She admitted to being heartbroken by the split, but affirmed her determination to look after her children in spite of her marital breakups.
While holidaying at Richard Branson's estate on Necker Island in 2011, Winslet met his nephew Edward Abel Smith (legally known as Ned Rocknroll from 2008 to 2019) during a house fire. They married in December 2012 in New York, and their son, Bear, was born the following year. After moving back to her native England, Winslet purchased a property worth £3.25 million by the sea in West Wittering, Sussex, where she lives with Smith and her children as of 2015[update]. In a 2015 interview, she commented on how much she enjoyed living in the countryside.
Winslet has stated that despite three marriages and a family structure that might be perceived by some as "unconventional", she does not consider it to be any "less of a family". She turns down offers of work that otherwise would take her away from her children for too long, and likes to schedule her filming commitments around their school holidays. Discussing her parenting style, she said she enjoys packing lunches and doing the school run.
Other ventures
Winslet has lent her support to several charities and causes, along with financial donations and items for auctions. In 2006, she became a patron of a Gloucester-based charity, the Family Haven, which provides counselling services to vulnerable families. The same year, hand-made envelopes designed by Winslet were auctioned for the "Pushing the Envelope" campaign created by the National Literacy Trust. Winslet was one of the celebrities to participate in a 2007 auction to raise funds for the Afghanistan Relief Organization. In 2009, she contributed to the Butterfly Book, a compilation of doodles made by several celebrities, to raise money for leukaemia research. Also in 2009, Winslet participated in a joint effort with Titanic co-star Leonardo DiCaprio, James Cameron, and Celine Dion, financially to help Millvina Dean, the then last-living survivor of the sinking of the Titanic. The donation amounted to $30,000 which was used to pay the fees of the nursing home in the United Kingdom where Dean was living.
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In 2009, Winslet narrated the English version of an Icelandic documentary named A Mother's Courage: Talking Back to Autism, about Margret Ericsdottir, whose child Keli Thorsteinsson has non-verbal autism. Inspired by the story, she teamed with Ericsdottir in 2010 to form an NGO named the Golden Hat Foundation. The organisation aims to create autism awareness and was named after a poem written by Thorsteinsson. As the ambassador for the luxury brands Lancôme and Longines, Winslet partnered with these companies to raise awareness and funds for the foundation. She created a make-up collection for Lancôme in 2011 and, in 2017, she designed a new watch for Longines.
In 2012, Winslet wrote a book about autism, entitled The Golden Hat: Talking Back to Autism, which was published by Simon & Schuster. It contains correspondence between Winslet and Ericsdottir, personal statements from various celebrities, and contributions from Thorsteinsson. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly praised the book for its "warmth and sincerity". The United Nations featured the book during a ceremony on the World Autism Awareness Day of 2012. For her work with the Golden Hat Foundation, Winslet received Spain's Yo Dona award for Best Humanitarian Work.
Winslet narrated a video for PETA in 2010 that showed animal cruelty in the production of foie gras. She encouraged chefs to remove the item from their menu and urged consumers to boycott it. In 2015, she lent her support to the UNICEF campaign World's Largest Lesson, which creates awareness among children about sustainable development and global citizenship. Teased as a child for her weight, Winslet takes a stand against body-shaming and bullying. She narrated an Australian animated short film named Daisy Chain (2015), about a victim of cyberbullying. In 2017, Winslet teamed with Leonardo DiCaprio's environmental foundation for a fundraiser on global warming. Also that year, she and DiCaprio auctioned a private dinner with themselves to raise money for a British woman's cancer treatment. Winslet teamed with Lancôme and the National Literacy Trust in 2018 to launch a programme that aims to educate underprivileged women in the UK. In 2020, Winslet read a bedtime story as part of Save with Stories to raise funds for Save the Children's Emergency Coronavirus Appeal.
Public image
Winslet was included on People magazine's "Most Beautiful People" listing in 2005. Her beauty and appeal have been picked up by several other publications, including Harper's Bazaar, Who, and Empire magazines. She has said she does not subscribe to the beauty ideal of Hollywood, and uses her celebrity to empower women to accept their appearance with pride. She has spoken against Botox and plastic surgery. In an effort to encourage natural ageing, she formed the British Anti-Cosmetic Surgery League, alongside fellow actresses Emma Thompson and Rachel Weisz. She instructs magazines and brands not to digitally smooth her wrinkles in photographs. She has expressed an aversion to elaborate press junkets and red carpet events, terming them a waste of money.
In 2009, Forbes reported her annual salary to be $2 million, a majority of that stemming from her endorsement deals. Also that year, the UK Film Council calculated that she had earned £20 million from her acting roles since 1995. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2009 and 2021. Madame Tussauds in London unveiled a wax statue of Winslet in 2011. The following year, she received the Honorary César award, and in 2014, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Winslet was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for her services to drama.
Acting credits and awards
Prolific in film since 1994, Winslet's most acclaimed and highest-grossing films, according to the online portal Box Office Mojo and the review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, include Heavenly Creatures (1994), Sense and Sensibility (1995), Hamlet (1996), Titanic (1997), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Finding Neverland (2004), The Holiday (2006), Contagion (2011), Divergent (2014), Insurgent (2015), Steve Jobs (2015), and Avatar: The Way of Water (2022). Her television projects include the miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011) and Mare of Easttown (2021).
Winslet has been recognised by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the following performances:
- 68th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress, nomination, for Sense and Sensibility (1995)
- 70th Academy Awards: Best Actress, nomination, for Titanic (1997)
- 74th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress, nomination, for Iris (2001)
- 77th Academy Awards: Best Actress, nomination, for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
- 79th Academy Awards: Best Actress, nomination, for Little Children (2006)
- 81st Academy Awards: Best Actress, win, for The Reader (2008)
- 88th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress, nomination, for Steve Jobs (2015)
Winslet has won five BAFTA Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role for The Reader (2008); Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Steve Jobs (2016); Best Leading Actress and Best Single Drama for I Am Ruth. She has also won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Actress in a Leading Role in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for Mildred Pierce (2011), and Mare of Easttown (2021) as well as the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for narrating the children's audiobook Listen to the Storyteller (1999). Winslet is the recipient of five Golden Globe Awards from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, winning Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture for The Reader and Steve Jobs, Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for Revolutionary Road, and Best Actress in a Miniseries or Motion Picture – Television for Mildred Pierce and Mare of Easttown. She is among the few actresses to have won three of the four major American entertainment awards.
See also
In Spanish: Kate Winslet para niños
- Agra katewinsletae
- List of youngest Academy Award nominees
- List of EGOT winners – People who have won Emmy, Grammy and Academy Awards
