Kate Winslet

VOGUE Culture

Photograph by Mario Testino. Published in Vogue, November 2013.

The world may have first met Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater—the fiery Edwardian beauty who finds true love on a sinking ship in the 1997 blockbuster tear-jerker Titanic—but in the years since, the English actress has consistently surprised audiences and critics by playing against that romantic-lead archetype. Indeed, she has gone so far as to make a career out of portraying the antiheroine: conflicted, multifaceted, and morally dubious characters with rich and complex emotional lives.

For any serious Hollywood actress, the ultimate professional grails are: One, an Oscar; two, the title “best actress of her generation”; and, three, lofty comparisons to the formidable Meryl Streep. And Kate Winslet has handily won all three.

Growing up in Reading, England, in a family of performers—her father was what she calls a “jobbing”^[1] actor; her grandparents ran a local theater—Winslet always viewed the craft, first and foremost, as the family trade. At nineteen, she made her big-screen debut as a teenage murderer in the critically acclaimed Heavenly Creatures. Her luminous, almost Pre-Raphaelite beauty soon landed her a series of plum historical roles leading up to the box-office juggernaut that was Titanic, and yet Winslet was determined to become, as she once put it, more than a mere “period babe.”^[2]

Throughout the aughts, she gained widespread acclaim—and a string of Academy Award nominations—for her extraordinary performances in smaller films with literary and art-house cachet: She has played the intellectually and sexually adventurous novelist Iris Murdoch; the memorably kooky Clementine Kruczynski in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; and the despairing 1950s suburban housewife April Wheeler in Revolutionary Road. Along the way, she earned her first Vogue cover, in 2005, and was applauded for her “ ‘real woman’ quality”^[3] within its pages.

A genuinely fearless thespian, Winslet has never chosen roles to flatter her beauty, sex appeal, or star quality. Even her most graphic love scenes—as a bored, neglected mother indulging in an extramarital affair in 2006’s Little Children; or as a gruff former Nazi prison guard who takes on a teenage paramour in the 2008 drama The Reader—have had a raw, distinctly unglamorous quality. “I’ve never understood the notion that actors and actresses should look great on-screen just because they’re on-screen,” she has said. “That doesn’t make sense to me.”^[4]

She has steadfastly lived by her down-to-earth values, railing against the industry’s obsession with plastic surgery (“It goes against my morals,”^[5] she said in 2011) and taking magazine editors to task for slimming down her physique on their covers.

Winslet’s growing maturity in the public eye has, of course, been reflected in her evolving fashion sense. Once a fan of romantic curls and corseted frocks (turning up at the Shrine Auditorium in 1998 in an emerald-green, medieval-maiden dress by Givenchy), she has in recent years chosen more modern looks by the likes of Stella McCartney, Victoria Beckham, and Jenny Packham. For especially big nights, she’s opted for old-school screen-goddess gowns from Yves Saint Laurent and Gucci. As a working mom, she has said, she will always choose comfort first.

Winslet’s complicated on-screen personas have, perhaps, mirrored her own complicated personal life. The near universal adoration she’s received from audiences throughout her career quickly turned to vitriol when, in 2013, tabloids reported that she was expecting her third child by her third husband. Making her second appearance on the cover of Vogue soon afterward, she was, as ever, unshakably confident and unapologetic about her life choices. “I am what I am,” she declared. “This is it, this is what you see.”^[6]

^HISTORY

Kate Elizabeth Winslet born in the town of Reading, a suburb of London, the second child of Roger and Sally Winslet. Her maternal grandparents run the Reading Repertory Theatre. Her father, Kate will later say, “was very much a struggling actor and spent more of his life as a postman, as a member of a Tarmac firm, as a van driver. He’d sell Christmas trees. Anything.”^[7] Her sisters, Anna and Beth, will also become actors.

At eleven, attends a theater school called Redroofs in nearby Maidenhead.

Stars in a Sugar Puffs cereal commercial.

Appears in the BBC sci-fi TV series Dark Season. (While filming on set the previous year, she met and began seeing actor Stephen Tredre.) In later years, she will speak frankly about her weight around this time—around 190 pounds.

Seen in the British TV series Anglo Saxon Attitudes and Get Back.

Appears on the series Casualty.

Her debut feature-film role is in New Zealand director Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures. Vogue praises her talents in its December review. She stars in playwright Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw, at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.

Plays a princess in Disney’s A Kid in King Arthur’s Court. The role of Marianne Dashwood in director Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility earns her her first Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actress.

For her first Academy Awards ceremony, she wears a pink Vivienne Westwood corset gown with a red stole. (The following year, fashion writer Marion Hume will detail for Vogue her adventures in helping Kate select the dress.) Stars in Jude, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel Jude the Obscure, and plays Ophelia in director Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet.

Her star turn in Titanic as Rose DeWitt Bukater—an unhappily betrothed society girl who finds true love with Leonardo DiCaprio’s working-class Jack Dawson—wins her international fame. Titanic mania sweeps the globe, and the film will become the highest-grossing to date. Her former boyfriend, Stephen Tredre, dies of bone cancer; she skips the film’s L.A. premiere to attend his funeral. Becomes romantically involved with Jim Threapleton, an assistant director on the set of Hideous Kinky, an indie about a young English expatriate in Marrakech.

March: Nominated for Titanic, wears a gold-embroidered forest-green dress by Alexander McQueen for Givenchy to the Oscars. November: Marries Jim Threapleton in a white lace Edwardian dress by McQueen’s own label.

Lends her voice to the animated film Faeries. Stars in Jane Campion’s Holy Smoke.

In the 18th-century period piece Quills, plays a laundress who smuggles the Marquis de Sade’s erotic manuscripts out of the asylum where he is locked up. February: Scores a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for Children, with Listen to the Storyteller. October: Daughter Mia Threapleton born.

Her films credits include Enigma and the animated Christmas Carol: The Movie. September: She announces her separation from Jim Threapleton; the two will soon divorce. December: In Iris, plays the writer Iris Murdoch as a young woman, and snags another Oscar nomination. Impressed, director Sam Mendes will soon seek to cast her in two plays he is directing; the two will begin dating.

Her red floor-length gown with floral shoulder strap, by London designer Ben de Lisi, wins her a spot on many Oscars best-dressed lists. Her voice is featured in the animated short War Game.

Appears in Plunge: The Movie and The Life of David Gale. February: Poses on the cover of British GQ—and causes a stir when she subsequently blasts the magazine for retouching her legs to make them longer and slimmer. May: Marries Sam Mendes in Anguilla. December: Son Joe Mendes born.

Plays free-spirited Clementine Kruczynski—who hires a company to erase her memories of her ex-boyfriend (played by Jim Carrey)—in Michel Gondry’s cult sci-fi movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It brings her a fourth Oscar nomination. She stars in Finding Neverland, a biopic about Peter Pan author J. M. Barrie, and lends her voice to the animated TV movie Pride.

Plays opposite James Gandolfini in John Turturro’s Romance & Cigarettes. Appears in the British sitcom Extras. Her July Vogue cover and fashion portfolio are photographed by Mario Testino.

Stars in All the King’s Men and The Holiday (one of her few romantic comedies). Her voice features in the computer-animated Flushed Away. September: “I Need a Nap,” her duet with “Weird Al” Yankovic (recorded for the book Dog Train), debuts. October: She plays a bored stay-at-home mom carried away by an affair in the drama Little Children—and receives her fifth Oscar nomination.

Narrates The Fox & the Child. September: Becomes the new face of Lancôme’s Trésor fragrance; sales will quickly rise 20 percent. November: Wears a silver taffeta Gucci dress to BAFTA’s Britannia Awards ceremony in L.A., where she is named British Artist of the Year. Shines at the Oscars in a pale, floor-length Valentino goddess dress.

Seen in two career-defining roles: as a desperate 1950s housewife in Revolutionary Road (directed by her husband, Sam Mendes), and as an illiterate former Nazi prison guard in The Reader. Makes the cover of December Vanity Fair.

January: Takes home two Golden Globes—for Best Actress, Drama (for Revolutionary Road), and Best Supporting Actress (The Reader). Her gushing acceptance speeches are widely mocked in the press. February: Racks up a Best Actress BAFTA (wearing black halter-neck Zac Posen), followed by an Oscar (in steel-gray, one-shouldered Yves Saint Laurent), for The Reader. April: Vogue names her It-girl of the month in its Flash section. July: She stars in campaigns for Lancôme’s Rénergie skin care and L’Absolu Rouge makeup.

Splits with Sam Mendes. Rumors fly that Mendes had been unfaithful. March: Winslet dons a silver Yves Saint Laurent bustier look for the Oscars. May: Along with veteran actresses Meryl Streep, Gwyneth Paltrow, Penélope Cruz, Naomi Watts, and Julianne Moore, appears on the cover of French Vogue, toasting the work of the charity (Product) RED.

Takes starring roles in Contagion and the Roman Polanski–directed Carnage. With film producer Margret Ericsdottir, starts the Golden Hat Foundation to raise awareness about children with autism. March: Director Todd Haynes’s HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, starring Winslet, airs. She is the face of Lancôme’s Absolut Nu lipstick. August: Expresses her disdain for cosmetic surgery to Britain’s Telegraph newspaper. “It goes against . . . what I consider to be natural beauty,” she says. “I will never give in.”^[8] While vacationing at the Necker Island home of mogul Richard Branson, saves Branson’s 90-year-old mother from his burning house by physically carrying her to safety. Soon begins seeing Branson’s nephew, Ned RocknRoll. September: Wears red Elie Saab to the Emmys, and chooses looks from Victoria Beckham and Stella McCartney for the Venice Film Festival.

January: Wears Jenny Packham to the Golden Globes, where she wins for Mildred Pierce. April: Vogue’s Flash section fetes the release of The Golden Hat book—which features candid self-snaps of celebrities (including Meryl Streep, Justin Timberlake, and Anne Hathaway) wearing a favorite fedora belonging to Winslet; proceeds go to the foundation. June: She is named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her services to drama. November: Chooses a black Alexander McQueen skirt suit for the investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace. December: Weds Ned RocknRoll in a secret ceremony in New York. The couple reportedly receive as a wedding gift tickets to outer space from his uncle Richard Branson, who co-owns the space tourism company Virgin Galactic.

June: Tabloids report that she is expecting a child with Ned RocknRoll. November: Her second Vogue cover profile celebrates her success, her upcoming releases (Labor Day, Divergent, and A Little Chaos), and her domestic bliss.

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