CNN.com - Entertainment - The adventures of Kate Winslet

'Titanic' star gets down and dirty in the desert


Winslet says she tries to live an adventurous life through her films

By Donna Freydkin
Reporting for CNN Interactive

March 1, 2000
Web posted at: 2:38 p.m. EST (1938 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Her "Titanic" character barely escaped a cold, underwater fate. In real life, Kate Winslet says, she tries to be just as adventurous as that young woman who risked all for love in the 1997 blockbuster.

"I've always wanted to kind of adventure around the world," she says, "but with my work, I haven't had the opportunity to do that."

So, says Winslet, she goes adventuring on film, portraying lives on the edge, characters in turmoil.

Her "Titanic" co-star, Leonardo DiCaprio, chose a different tactic. He secluded himself professionally, meticulously reviewing an ideal return vehicle. DiCaprio finally settled on the critically and commercially disappointing thriller "The Beach."

Winslet, meanwhile, threw herself into oddball, shadowy projects not normally associated with an actress nominated for two Academy Awards. For example, who remembers 1998's "Hideous Kinky," in which Winslet played a mother dragging her two children through Morocco?

In her latest film, "Holy Smoke," Winslet bares all, physically and emotionally. She plays Ruth, a young Aussie lass who falls under the spell of an Indian cult leader and whose family sends her to an American cult deprogrammer played by Harvey Keitel. She manages to out-act him, in spite of a scene where Keitel slogs through the barren desert in a tight red dress, wearing lipstick and one cowboy boot.


In "Holy Smoke," Winslet plays a woman whose family retrieves her from a cult, then hooks her up with a "deprogrammer."

Such adventuring has paid off handsomely for Winslet. She met her husband, film director Jim Threapleton, on the set of "Hideous Kinky," and they married in 1998. They are expecting their first child, according to Winslet's spokeswoman.

Perhaps in preparation for motherhood, Winslet last week took home a Grammy for "Listen to the Storyteller," judged the year's best spoken-word childrens' album.

No regrets

In person, Winslet is every bit as sanguine and assured as she is on the screen, and why not? She's had plenty of opportunity to perfect her poise.

At 24, Winslet has already starred in the top-grossing film ever -- "Titanic," for those who have not been near a marquee in the past three years. She's flaunted her nude body three times ("Titanic," 1996's "Jude" and "Holy Smoke," released last year).

Off-screen, she hosted her 1998 wedding reception, not in a chi-chi hotel, but in her favorite local English pub. Winslet's also said to have passed on the Oscar-winning role in "Shakespeare in Love" that ultimately went to Gwyneth Paltrow, a rumor that she refuses to confirm outright.

"I have no regrets," says Winslet. "(I)f you regret things, (then) you're sort of stepping backwards. I'm a believer in going forwards."

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That meant pursuing acting, which was hardly a surprise: Her grandparents ran a local theater in England, and her uncle and father were actors. Performing, she decided, was in her blood.

Winslet started building her resume at an early age, appearing in a cereal commercial at age 11, snagging bit parts in various British sitcoms as a teenager, and, at 17, starring in "Heavenly Creatures." It was her first feature film.

Then, in 1995, Winslet depicted the romantic Marianne Dashwood in "Sense and Sensibility." Suddenly, she was on Hollywood's A-list.

Like most successful actresses, Winslet insists she never set out with a career plan and professes to be stunned at her success. But for some reason -- her obvious joi de vivre, perhaps, or her willingness even now to appear in small films usually shown in half-full movie houses -- Winslet's cliched statements ring true.

"I don't know what major ambitions I ever had," she says.

"I never even thought about doing films. I come from a family of actors, but they rarely did films and if they did, it was small roles. When I was sent the script for 'Heavenly Creatures,' I was 16 at the time ... and I remember saying to my dad, 'This is for a film. I have a meeting for a film and I can't believe it.' And he says to me, 'You go for it, girl.'

"And I just went for it. Suddenly, I was doing film and I couldn't believe it," she says. "Still, to this day, I can't believe it."

Naked eye

Dressed in a sleek black suit and tight burgundy top, Winslett appears at home in her skin -- an accomplishment for someone known as "Blubber" in high school because of her weight, and who later dropped some 50 pounds.

But even "Corset Kate," a nickname she earned in period dramas, admits some trepidation the first time she shed her clothes on the screen.

"The only time I felt really liberated about being naked was the first time I had to do it, which was in 'Jude' because I was so petrified," she says. "But ever since then, nude scenes are (still) hard to do, but at the end of the day, they're sort of no different from any other scenes because you have to forget about yourself and concentrate on the work involved."

Her husband, says the actress, handles her screen nudity with aplomb -- a point he made clear in "Holy Smoke."

"Jim's opinion is the most important to me of anyone when it comes to deciding about the role, so he knew all those things (the movie's nudity requirements) were there," she says. "But when we both saw the film, we were both really sort of taken aback. ... He's pretty proud."

He's also an equal partner in the household, says Winslet.

"One question that's asked to celebrities a lot in London is, 'Who wears the trousers in your relationship?' and I say, 'We both wear one leg each.'"

Winslet's next planned role is in "Quills," a drama about the notorious French writer Marquis de Sade (played by Geoffrey Rush). Winslet is to portray his laundress. She also is to be the star and executive producer of "Therese Raquin," the film adaptation of Emile Zola's 1867 tale of love, murder and betrayal.

"I love the novel," she says. "I read it when I was 17 years old, read it twice and told all my friends to read it."

In the novel, the character Winslet is to portray kills her husband and marries her lover. Their love, in time, turns into something deadly.

If that's not portraying a life lived on the edge, what is?