Kate Elizabeth Winslet, CBE (born October 5, 1975 in Reading, England) is a British actress. Defined by her versatile and immaculate performances, she is considered as one of the finest actors to ever grace the screen.
Winslet is best known for being naked in almost every role she's done, her chameleon acting style, and being perpetually snubbed at the Oscars (until 2009).
She first appeared in Heavenly Creatures (directed by Peter Jackson), at age 17, which awarded her the British Actress of the Year. She then starred in the 1995 version of Sense and Sensibility. Her performance as Marianne Dashwood, the sister of Emma Thompson's Elinor Dashwood, brought her universal acclaim, with nominations for the Academy Award and Golden Globe, and wins in SAG, BAFTA and British Film Awards at the age of 19.
She performed in the period dramas Jude and Hamlet, winning a British Film Award for the former, and an Empire Award for Best British Actress for the latter.
In 1997, Winslet starred in the cultural-phenomenon Titanic (1997) launching her into mega-stardom overnight. She received her second Academy Award nomination at age 22 for her role as Rose DeWitt Bukater, as well as being nominated for practically every award possible.
In an effort to escape the insane pressure, Winslet made a conscious decision to act in independent movies that she loved and challenged her, including Holy Smoke!, Quills and Iris; the latter scoring her another Oscar nomination.
In 2004, she played against type in the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The deconstruction of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope in Clementine scored her 4th Oscar nomination.
In 2006, Winslet starred as Sarah Pierce in Little Children, a haunting portrayal of a dissatisfied wife. Her two roles in the 2008 films-The Reader and Revolutionary Road- awarded her two Golden Globes on the same night. Her portrayal as a German Nazi guard in The Reader awarded her the Oscar in 2009.
Demonstrating her great versatility, Winslet acted in English Rose type roles in Finding Neverland, The Holiday and A Little Chaos, dramas that relied primarily on her facial expressions (Labor Day, Wonder Wheel and Ammonite), villain roles (Divergent, Triple 9) a thriller (Contagion) and a comedy-drama (The Dressmaker), earning universal acclaim and a slew of awards, including an AACTA, Hollywood Film Award, TIFF Award and a Honorary César.
In 2012, for playing the title role in the period drama Mildred Pierce, Winslet won a Golden Globe, SAG award and an Emmy.
In 2016, she won a Golden Globe and BAFTA and scored nominations for the SAG award and her 7th Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of Joanna Hoffman in Steve Jobs.
Winslet has mastered a wide range of accents which allows her to pull almost any Fake Nationality convincingly: Australian, Moroccan, American, Russian, German, Polish-Armenian-American, Dorset and Delco.
She is almost an EGOT winner, after winning a Grammy Award in 2000 for Best Spoken Word Album.
Filmography:
- Heavenly Creatures (1994)
- A Kid in King Arthur's Court (1995)
- Sense and Sensibility (1995)
- Jude (1996)
- Hamlet (1996)
- Titanic (1997)
- Hideous Kinky (1998)
- Holy Smoke! (1999)
- Quills (2000)
- Enigma (2001)
- Iris (2001)
- The Life of David Gale (2003)
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
- Finding Neverland (2004)
- Romance And Cigarettes (2005)
- Little Children (2006)
- Flushed Away (2006) (voice)
- All the King's Men (2006)
- The Holiday (2006)
- The Reader (2008)
- Revolutionary Road (2008)
- Mildred Pierce (2011) (TV miniseries)
- Contagion (2011)
- Carnage (2011)
- Movie 43 (2013)
- Labor Day (2013)
- Divergent (2014)
- A Little Chaos (2014)
- The Divergent Series: Insurgent (2015)
- Steve Jobs (2015)
- The Dressmaker (2015)
- Triple 9 (2016)
- Collateral Beauty (2016)
- The Mountain Between Us (2017)
- Wonder Wheel (2017)
- Blackbird (2019)
- Ammonite (2020)
- Mare Of Easttown (2021) (TV miniseries)
- Avatar 2 (2022)
Associated Tropes:
-
Actor Shipping: After acting together in the greatest love story of all time, everyone shipped Winslet with her Titanic co-star Leonardo DiCaprio. - And Starring:
- She's credited this way in the opening credits of Divergent.
- Was And Introducing in Heavenly Creatures.
- Aroused by Their Voice: Winslet’s natural English accent is very proper and sounds classically posh, making it very attractive to foreign audiences.
- Award Snub: The failure by The Academy in awarding her an Oscar in Titanic is famously known as one of the biggest snubs in history. Likewise with Eternal Sunshine and Steve Jobs.
- Break the Cutie: A lot. Her characters are often heartbroken, surrounded by dire circumstances, dealing with trauma. Overlaps with Heal the Cutie and Determinator, as a lot of her characters possess an inner strength and determination to keep going.
- Dyeing for Your Art:
- Dyed her hair red for Titanic.
- Contrary to popular belief, Clementine’s hair colours in Eternal Sunshine were achieved through multiple wigs.
- Enforced Method Acting: She and Emma Thompson lived together while filming Sense and Sensibility in order to develop a natural sisterly chemistry.
- English Rose: She plays these a lot because she has the classic naturally beautiful looks of the archetype and the right accent.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: While she sometimes wear wigs/dyes her hair, she’s most known for playing blondes. Thanks to her looks, she’s classified as a blonde bombshell.
- Fake American: She's English but many of her most famous roles are American characters.
- Fake Australian: Her accent in both Holy Smoke and The Dressmaker is highly considered to be the most accurate Australian accent by a non-Australian in film history. Simply put, Winslet articulated one of the world’s most difficult accents to imitate TWICE in films, as perfectly as a native Australian.
- The Fashionista: As well as in real-life, numerous characters of Kate’s are incredibly stylish: Rose in Titanic, April in Revolutionary Road, Tilly in The Dressmaker and Irina in Triple 9.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Because of her beautiful blonde locks, she often plays elegant, kind women. Strongly averted in Divergent and Triple 9 where she’s playing villains and is blonde.
- Irony as She Is Cast: Her role in Revolutionary Road involved yelling and screaming at Leonardo DiCaprio, one of her closest friends in the showbusiness. They stated that it made it so much easier having that relationship, as their trust for each other was so strong.
- LGBT Fanbase: Many lesbians credit her role as Rose in Titanic, especially that scene, with sparking their sexual awakening.
- In addition to playing two lesbian characters- in Heavenly Creatures and Ammonite- and portraying strong, confident women, she’s got quite a big gay following.
- Life Imitates Art: For Mildred Pierce, she plays a character who divorces her husband after he cheats, and raises her two children by herself. As she was filming, Winslet was in the middle of her divorce, after her husband allegelly cheated on her, looking after her two children.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Juliet in Heavenly Creatures
- Ms. Fanservice: She's often naked or in revealing outfits in her roles. The famous scene in Titanic in Reclining Venus made her one of the most popular sex symbols in history. She also often has a Sexy Soaked Shirt scene, as she was in a thin and tight wet dress in Titanic, and in Sense and Sensibility, romantic Marianne is rain-soaked quite a bit.
- In The Dressmaker, she embodies a walking sex-symbol. She wears a lot of tight, form-fitting, sensual costumes that accentuate her curves, with bright red lipstick that features her plump lips.
- Oscar Bait: Amassed seven nominations and one win. She is currently tied as the most Oscar-nominated British actress of all time.
- Period Piece: She has starred in loads of period films and miniseries. Because of her affinity of doing these early in her career, her nickname became 'Corset Kate'.
- Playing Against Type:
- Her performance in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was such an immense change that it truly altered her course as an actor. It showed to the world how adept she is in a contemporary piece, playing an American. Subsequently, she received an Oscar nomination and her portrayal is considered one of the best of the decade.
- Done completely intentionally with Revolutionary Road. DiCaprio and Winslet knew that their next film collaboration couldn’t bear any resemblance with Titanic so they did the exact opposite; star-crossed lovers contrasted against a couple in a marriage going nowhere.
- Rapunzel Hair: As Ophelia in Hamlet and Sabine in A Little Chaos, she has long, wavy, flowing, blonde hair.
- Shakespearian Actors: Completely Averted. Because she’s British and possesses a classic English accent, a lot of people assume she trained at a drama school for years. In actuality, when she found out she received the part of Ophelia in Hamlet, she was completely terrified to speak the dialogue.
- So My Kids Can Watch: Took the part of Jeanne in Divergent after her kids loved the books.
- Those Two Actors:
- Acted with Alan Rickman in Sense and Sensibility and A Little Chaos.
- Played lovers with Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic (1997) and Revolutionary Road.
- Acted with Jude Law in three films: All The King's Men, The Holiday and Contagion.
- Played love interests with Guy Pearce in two HBO miniseries: Mildred Pierce and Mare Of Easttown.
- What Beautiful Eyes!: Has incredibly expressive eyes. She’s known to go to directors and request lines to be cut out, knowing that she can simply convey the emotion through her eyes.Peter Travers: With a throwaway line or in the space between words, Winslet can nail nuances it would take lesser talents pages of dialogue to convey.
- What Could Have Been:
- She was the first choice to play Helena Ravenclaw in the last Harry Potter movie but the producers couldn't get a hold of her agent so they went elsewhere (specifically to Kelly Mac Donald).
- She was considered for the part of Miranda Tate/Talia in The Dark Knight Rises before Marion Cotillard was cast.
