Kate Winslet – English actress and singer

Kate Elizabeth Winslet (born 5 October 1975) is an English actress and singer. She is noted for having played diverse characters over her career, but probably best-known for her critically acclaimed performances as Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, Rose DeWitt Bukater in Titanic, Clementine Kruczynski in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Hanna Schmitz in The Reader.

She has won awards from the Screen Actors Guild, BAFTA Awards, and the Golden Globe Awards. Winslet has also won a Grammy Award and has been nominated for six Academy Awards as well as an Emmy. At the age of 22, she became the youngest person to receive two Oscar nominations, a milestone she would maintain through her sixth nomination. David Edelstein of New York Magazine hails her as “the best English-speaking film actress of her generation.

Early life

Winslet was born in Reading, England, U.K., the daughter of Sally Anne (née Bridges), a barmaid, and Roger John Winslet, a swimming-pool contractor. Her maternal grandparents, Linda (Plumb) and Archibald Oliver Bridges, founded and operated the Reading Repertory Theatre, and her uncle, Robert Bridges, appeared in the original West End production of Oliver!. Her sisters, Beth Winslet and Anna Winslet, are also actresses.

Winslet, raised as an Anglican, began studying drama at the age of eleven at the Redroofs Theatre School,[4] a co-educational independent school in Maidenhead, Berkshire, where she was head girl and appeared in a television commercial for Sugar Puffs cereal, directed by Tim Pope. Throughout her adolescence, she was severely bullied for being overweight and having large feet (which she inherited from her mother).

Music

Winslet has enjoyed a brief taste of success as a singer, with her single What If from the soundtrack of Christmas Carol: The Movie, which reached #1 in Ireland and #6 in the UK (she also filmed a music video for the song). She participated in a duet with “Weird Al” Yankovic on the Sandra Boynton CD Dog Train, and sang in the 2006 film Romance and Cigarettes. She also sang an aria from La Boheme, called “Sono andati”, in her film Heavenly Creatures, which is featured on the film’s soundtrack. She was considered for the lead in Moulin Rouge! (which eventually went to Nicole Kidman); had she taken the part, she would have sung the full soundtrack.

Personal life

While on the set of Dark Season, Winslet met actor-writer Stephen Tredre, with whom she had a five-year relationship. He died of bone cancer soon after Winslet completed filming Titanic, so she missed the premiere because she was attending his funeral in London. She and Titanic co-star Leonardo DiCaprio have remained good friends since the filming.

Winslet was later in a relationship with Rufus Sewell, but on 22 November 1998 she married director Jim Threapleton. They have a daughter, Mia Honey, who was born on 12 October 2000 in London. After a divorce in 2001, Winslet was in a relationship with Sam Mendes, whom she married on 24 May 2003 on the island of Anguilla in the Caribbean. Their son, Joe Alfie Winslet Mendes, was born on 22 December 2003 in New York City.

Mendes and his production company, Neal Street Productions, purchased the film rights to the long-delayed biography of circus tiger tamer Mabel Stark. The couple’s spokesperson said, “It’s a great story, they have had their eyes on it for a while. If they can get the script right, it would make a great film.”

The media have documented her weight fluctuations over the years. Winslet has been outspoken about her refusal to allow Hollywood to dictate her weight. In February 2003, the British edition of Gentlemen’s Quarterly magazine published photographs of Winslet which had been digitally enhanced to make her look dramatically thinner than she really was; Winslet issued a statement saying that the alterations were made without her consent. GQ issued an apology in the subsequent issue.

Winslet and Mendes currently reside in New York City. They own a manor house in the tiny village of Church Westcote in Gloucestershire, England. They spent £3 million on the secluded Westcote Manor, a rambling Grade II-listed house with eight bedrooms, set in 22 acres. They have reportedly spent more than £1 million on interior renovations, as well as restoring the original water garden, mulberry garden and orchard, all of which fell into disrepair when the former owner, equestrian artist Raoul Millais, died in 1999.

As a result of both being involved in aircraft incidents, and fearing leaving their children parentless, Winslet and Mendes never fly on the same aircraft. He was scheduled to fly on the American Airlines Flight 77 hijacked on 11 September 2001 and crashed into the Pentagon. In October 2001, Winslet was seven hours into a London-Dallas flight with daughter Mia when a passenger who claimed to be an Islamic terrorist, later charged with creating mischief, stood up and shouted “We are all going to die.”

Other Information

• Born  Kate Elizabeth Winslet
• 5 October 1975 (1975-10-05)
• Reading, Berkshire, England
• Occupation  Actress, singer
• Years active  1991—present
• Spouse(s)  James Threapleton (1998—2001), Sam Mendes (2003—present)

Links

• Kate Winslet – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• IMDb: Kate Winslet Filmography
• Kate Winslet – Cool Chicks

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Tags: Actress, American, British, golden globe award