Kate Winslet - Interview

A HEAVENLY CREATURE WHO BREAKS ALL THE FORMULAS

She might have been a true Hollywood diva. Talent, beauty, luck, critical acclaim, even diction--English actress Kate Winslet has it all. And from the moment she appeared opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic in 1997, she's had the international fame, too--and the opportunity to make more multimillion-dollar films. But, she says, "For me, it's never been about being a famous movie star." And Winslet's proven that by subsequently choosing smaller, independent films such as Hideous Kinky and Holy Smoke, which were more akin to movies in which she appeared earlier in her career, such as Heavenly Creatures (1994), Sense and Sensibility (1995), and Jude and Hamlet (both 1996). Now, the twenty-five-year-old is appearing with Geoffrey Rush, Michael Caine, and Joaquin Phoenix in Quills, a sweepingly dark, funny, outlandish, and sexy film about the final days of the Marquis de Sade. If the budget and production values are greater this time than in recent Winslet films (save Titanic) the content of Quills is certainly as edgy as any indie she's done. Recently Winslet spoke with producer Lynda Obst about the actress's film, career, body, husband James Threapleton, and her next projects--motherhood and a film version of Emile Zola's Therese Raquin, which she will also produce.

LYNDA OBST: Let's talk about you!

KATE WINSLET: [laughs] My least favorite subject.

LO: So, by the time this story comes out, you'll be a mother. And soon you will also be a film producer. How are you going to balance your life between career and child?

KW: I'm glad you're asking me about that, because I'm so bored of all the other questions, like, "How was working with Leonardo DiCaprio?" Everybody knows all that stuff.... At the moment, with the baby coming, I'm so excited that I'm finding it quite difficult to think about how I am going to work and have the baby. We're hoping to not have child care, certainly in the early months. I know some actors that do three movies a year, and I've just never done that. So I'm not concerned that the workload will have to lessen because I'm suddenly a mother; it'll probably remain about the same. When I'm doing Therese Raquin next year, Jim is not going to work, so he'll be with the baby--which is very important to him.

LO: You were an actor's child. Will you take your child to the set and integrate him into your circus life?

KW: I'd hate to influence my children by having them around on set a lot. Children have so much growing up to do before they can really decide what they want to be.

LO: And yet you knew you wanted to be an actress from when you were very young and you got the parts you tried out for right away.

KW: It did start to happen when I was around sixteen or seventeen. It was just an inner confidence that I was very quiet about, because I was actually quite shy back then. I was always quite chubby and the other girls around me at auditions were always so outwardly confident--and they were so super, super skinny with their white-blonde hair and pink cheeks. I was always sweating a little bit, and my hair wasn't ever quite right.

LO: That's why we root for you.

KW: Yeah. [both laugh] It took me a long time to realize that what was actually important was that I just be myself--and that's very hard to do, particularly when you're a young actress.

LO: Yet at the same time you just let go of yourself and became this astonishing and heavenly creature.

KW: Sometimes I think about Heavenly Creatures and I think, Damn, if only I still had that same fearlessness. In a way it was quite nice doing Heavenly Creatures and not knowing a bloody thing. Now, when certain camera angles are being used, I understand why, and I can see how the scene is going to cut together; whereas, with Heavenly Creatures, all I knew I had to do was completely become that person. Over the years, the stakes have become higher for me. Sometimes I wake up in the morning before going oft to a shoot, and I think, I can't do this; I'm a fraud. They're going to fire me--all these things. I'm fat; I'm ugly; I look like a whore! [laughs]

LO: Do you know how important it is for women that you look real and not like an emaciated, waifish, unhealthy creature, and that you represent a kind of womanly beauty others can actually aspire to?

KW: But is that really recognized [by the public]?

LO: I know it's recognized--you are so important to my little nieces, for instance.

KW: Really? Well, that's more important than anything else--any award nomination, any box office totals. Because I think films these days can be quite misleading about life. There are some movies out there that are pure entertainment, which is great, but I think that young people do get caught up in them--otherwise, why do we have these teenagers shooting each other in schools?

LO:... and starving themselves.

KW: And starving themselves, yeah! Throughout this pregnancy, there have been times when I've felt like the size of a bus. I'm holding so much water, and I have a backside that looks like a cauliflower. And other parts of my body resemble strange vegetables like squashes and things like that. Honestly, it's quite scary. But there are certainly moments when I think, Poor Jim must think I'm the most unsexy thing he's ever seen. But he constantly says, "You are the most beautiful I have ever seen you. You're pregnant and you just look so full and amazing." To be told that is truly a testament to the strength of our marriage and why we love each other. God, I'm sounding really sickly now, aren't I?