By David Raether
Once upon a time, there was an English girl who grew up in a family that was struggling to stay afloat. Her mom worked as a nanny and a waitress, and her dad was an occasional actor, but mainly worked as a day laborer to pay the bills. The family frequently had to rely on free meals from The Actor’s Charitable Trust. In middle school, the girl was mocked for her weight and received the nickname “Blubber.”
Kids are mean, right?
Well, this girl ignored the insults and decided to become an actress. In 1994, when she was just 19, she appeared in her first movie. It was a good one, too: Heavenly Creatures by the young New Zealand director Peter Jackson, who went on to direct the Lord of the Rings movies. And then, just three years after that—and just eight years after she was mercilessly teased about her weight—she starred in the biggest movie of all time, Titanic (1997).
So take that, mean kids from middle school.
That girl, Kate Winslet, has gone on to have a remarkably outstanding and marvelous career. She always makes surprising choices for projects and puts out a sure-handed sense of self-confidence. She’s a bold and sunny person, and her movies are always worth watching. Winslet is a fearless actress. She has taken on such a wide variety of roles that it is difficult to really categorize her style of acting. Oh, wait, there is: she is utterly convincing in whatever role she takes on.
Kate Winslet was born on October 5, 1975, in Reading, England, a commercial center west of London. Her interest in acting was natural and encouraged in a family where her father and his parents were actors. Despite the financial challenges, Winslet said her parents were always loving and supportive, and she remains close to them.
So take that, too, mean kids from middle school. That girl you’re calling Blubber had nice parents who loved her and imbued her with self-confidence and ambition.
At the age of eleven, she was accepted into the Redroots Theatre School in Maidenhead, England, and starred in a number of productions there. When she was 16 years old, she landed her first professional role—a lead cast member of the BBC sci-fi series Dark Season. Her first film performance as a co-lead in Peter Jackson’s much-praised Heavenly Creatures (1994) was widely acclaimed and led to her role in Ang Lee’s adaptation of the Jane Austen novel Sense and Sensibility (1995). She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in this film.
Just 22 years old and firmly established as a highly regarded actress, in 1997, she began to lobby for the role of Rose in James Cameron’s romantic epic Titanic. Cameron reportedly was not interested in her for the role, preferring Claire Danes or Gwyneth Paltrow. Winslet was persistent and said to Cameron: “I don’t know why you’re even considering someone else.” It worked. She got the job and soared in the role.
So what do you do when you’re 22 and just starred in the biggest movie of all time? Well, pretty much whatever movie you want. What’s interesting about Winslet are her choices post-Titanic. Over the next quarter century, Winslet has consistently turned in outstanding performances in a broad range of films that test her talent. She has made nearly 50 films since Titanic. There’s not a bad movie among them. Or at least not a bad performance from her anywhere.
She is consistently one of the best actresses of our time. Her characters are all richly drawn and compelling. Take, for instance, the fairly terrible Woody Allen quasi-gangster film Wonder Wheel (2017). Her fierce and steely performance as Ginny Rannell, a waitress in a clam shack on Coney Island, rises above the largely disjointed and choppy film in which all the actors seem off-balance.
She’s been nominated for five Academy Awards (two for Best Actress and three for Best Supporting Actress) and won one for her performance in 2009’s Holocaust drama The Reader.
Winslet has been married three times. The first marriage was to British director Jim Threapleton, whom she met while he was directing her in Hideous Kinky (1999). They had one daughter together. Her second marriage was to the acclaimed director Sam Mendes in 2003. That union produced a son. Her third and current marriage is to Edward Abel Smith, whom she met during a house fire, of all things.
Just about any Kate Winslet is worth watching, but here are five of my favorites.
Most epic movies are lumbering, ponderous wrecks. Take Ben Hur (1959). Please. The best epic movies are surprisingly intimate ones like Lawrence of Arabia (1962) or this movie. Centering the story on a doomed shipboard romance between Winslet and a young Leonardo Di Caprio made this movie a compelling human drama, not just a disaster story.
Now, I will say this: James Cameron is a great storyteller but not a particularly good screenwriter. The dialogue here—as in most of his pictures—tends toward the ham-fisted. Winslet’s accomplishment here is to turn Rose, a fairly caricatured character on the page, into a real and believable young woman.
Since it seems likely that everyone in the world has already seen this movie, why watch it again? Because it holds up exceptionally well. It really is a marvelous movie, and Cameron was right to have given in to Winslet’s relentless pestering and cast her. She becomes the core of the movie. In this telling, the story of Titanic becomes the story of Rose. And that’s perfect.
One of the strangest and most beautiful love stories ever told. Or a confusing and sorta boring mess. Your pick. I’m going with the former. This is one of those movies that seems to have been made to spark arguments at dinner parties. And we’re talking real throwing-pieces-of-cake-at-each-other arguments. (Generally the best kind of dinner party arguments, in my opinion.)
Jim Carrey plays a man whose girlfriend (Winslet) has had her memories of their troubled relationship erased through a neurological procedure where a device that looks like a prop from a Frankenstein movie is attached to your head. He decides to do the same thing, but in the course of doing that, he recalls the periods of happiness the love affair had. Winslet was seven years removed from her portrayal of teenage Rose to her portrayal here of grown woman Clementine. She’s fantastic. (So is Jim Carrey, by the way.) A completely brilliant and literary screenplay from Charlie Kaufman.
Winslet plays Hanna Schmitz, a settled and successful German lawyer who is hiding a hideous secret about her Nazi past as a concentration camp guard. Now, that’s one character that is virtually impossible to imagine being sympathetic. Winslet somehow pulled it off and won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance here.
The film itself was highly controversial because many critics felt it was a revisionist view of the Holocaust that somewhat whitewashed that crime. I didn’t go there, but I can certainly see how you could draw that conclusion. Regardless, this probably is Winslet’s best performance and is worth watching for that reason alone.
Steve Jobs is a source of endless fascination and inspiration for many Americans. He really rose from nothing to create a company that actually has changed the world. Of the various biopics that have covered his life, this one is the best. For me, Winslet’s decision to take the role of Steve Job’s confidant and top executive, Joanna Hoffman, is fascinating.
Winslet is a huge star. She headlines movies. This role has plenty of meat to it, but it clearly is second fiddle. Lots of “come on, Steve, we have to hurry” moments in it. Winslet’s performance here is dazzling. She makes it so much more than it appears on paper. This is how you take a supporting role and turn it into something magnificent. The film was directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire), and the screenplay was adapted by Aaron Sorkin from Walter Isaacs’ celebrated biography of Jobs.
Normally, I don’t write about TV shows, but not because I don’t like TV. Are you kidding? I love TV. I was a TV writer for many years. But this is a movie blog, so I tend to avoid writing about TV shows. However, I’m making an exception here. This mini-series was one of the best in recent years.
Winslet plays Mare Sheehan, a deputy in exurban Philadelphia with a troubled and complicated personal life. Mare attempts to solve the murder of a young woman who disappears from a party. Winslet’s performance as a dogged and determined—and flawed—investigator and mother is just gripping. She also received wide praise for the accuracy of her eastern Pennsylvania accent. It’s a seven-episode series. Give it a try; I bet you end up binging it over a two-night period (which is what I did).
David Raether is a veteran TV writer and essayist. He worked for 12 years as a television sitcom writer/producer, including a 111-episode run on the ground-breaking ABC comedy “Roseanne.” His essays have been published by Salon.com, The Times of London, and Longforms.org, and have been lauded by The Atlantic Magazine and the BBC World Service. His memoir, Homeless: A Picaresque Memoir from Our Times, is awaiting publication.