kate winslet Biography

NAME: Kate Winslet

Birth Name: Kate Elizabeth Winslet

Nickname:English Rose, Corset Kate

Height: 5' 6½" (1.69 m)

OCCUPATION: Film Actress

BIRTH DATE: October 05, 1975 (Age: 36)

PLACE OF BIRTH: Reading, United Kingdom

ZODIAC SIGN: Libra

Actress. Born October 5, 1975, in Reading, England. The grandaughter of two theater managers (her maternal grandparents founded Reading Repertory Theatre) and the daughter of two actors, Winslet began acting as a child, making her first appearance on British television at age seven in a cereal commercial. In 1988, she appeared in the TV series Shrinks; three years later, she left school to pursue her fledgling acting career.

Kate also played on stage in Adrian Mole, Peter Pan, A Game of Soldier, and What the Butler Saw. In 1991, Kate secured her first role in a British television show. She played in Shrinks, Casualty, Dark Season, Get Back, and Anglo-Saxon Attitudes. It was while she was acting on Dark Season that she met screenwriter/actor Stephen Tredre. Besides the men of her own family, Kate said, "He was the most important thing in my life after my family." At age 15, she and Stephen began a serious romantic relationship that lasted five years.

From the time Kate made her Sugar Puffs commercial she prided herself on being economically independent from her family. But don't misinterpret Kate's moving out of her parents' home at an early age as a sign of rebellion. Kate Winslet is very close to her parents and siblings, but says for some time she has felt much more mature than her age. Needing money, she secured a job working in a north London deli where she tried her hand at slicing meats and cheeses for sandwiches.

One day while working at the deli, Kate received a phone call. The message? Kate had been selected out of a group of 175 aspiring actresses for a co-starring role as Juliet Hulme, one of a pair of obsessive, matricidal schoolgirls in the 1950s in director Peter Jackson's movie, Heavenly Creatures along with Melanie Lynskey. When Kate found out she had the role, "I just couldn't believe it. I was so happy, I cried...I was in the middle of making a sandwich when they phoned and said I'd got the job. I burst into tears and had to leave work because I couldn't control myself. It was absolutely brilliant."

In 1995, English actress/screenwriter Emma Thompson and producer Lindsay Doran worked together to make a film version of Jane Austen's novel, Sense and Sensibility. Kate was originally to be considered for a minor role such as Lucy Steele, but Kate recalls, "I wanted to be Marianne, so she was the only character I would even talk to Lindsay about." Thompson and Doran both said that Kate's selection to act as Marianne Dashwood was "cast at first sight." Taiwanese film director Ang Lee apparently realized he faced a real challenge making this movie. For Kate he prescribed tai-chi and a readling list of Jane Austen-era materials to help her acting. Even with that sort of director's close work, Kate brought her own unique vivacity and intensity to her performance.

British actor and director Kenneth Branagh had seen Kate audition for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and he determined that he wanted her for the role of Ophelia in his film based on Shakespeare's Hamlet. Kate was initially reluctant to perform in a Shakespearian role but Branagh prevailed on her to do it and won the argument. Kate had done some Shakespeare at the Redroofs school and Branagh recognized her tremendous potential. A source on the set of Hamlet later said, "Kate is one of the hardest working actors you'll ever meet. She spends a long time working herself up to a scene, and she's very prepared. She's sincere, eager to please, openly delighted when she does a scene well. She'll have an extraordinary future."

There is no question that one of the watershed experiences of Kate's acting career has been her role as Rose DeWitt Bukater in Titanic. Both Kate and Emma Thompson were moved to copious tears as they read the Titanic script on a flight back to England. Kate said of the script, "It's terribly moving. I was in floods of tears even when I read the treatment and accepted the role there and then."

In 2001, Winslet lent her voice to the animated British feature, A Christmas Carol. A song from the movie, "What If," featured Winslet as the lead vocalist and became a top ten single in Britain. Her most notable film that year was Iris, a screenplay based on John Bailey's book, Elegy for Iris. Winslet played the young Iris Murdoch, an unconventional student. Judi Dench played the older Iris, whose husband (Jim Broadbent) tries to help her as she struggles with the growing effects of her Alzheimer's disease. All three Iris stars earned Academy Award nominations, making it the second time Winslet and a co-star both earned nominations for playing different versions of the same character.

That same year, Winslet co-starred as a code-breaker in the World War II-era spy drama Enigma (2002). She also appeared as a reporter interviewing a death-row inmate in The Life of David Gale, costarring Kevin Spacey and Laura Linney. In 2004, Winslet starred opposite Jim Carrey in Charlie Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for her performance. She also starred across from Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland (2004), which explored J.M. Barrie's inspiration for his best-known work, Peter Pan. In the film, Winslet played the widowed mother of four boys whom Barrie befriended.