Kate Winslet - Interview

Lynda Obst

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?

LO: No, you're not. This is what love is.

KW: Well, it's also a testament to the fact that what men want is not a stick.

LO: I'm sitting here holding a [magazine] quote from Mr. DiCaprio himself, who said to you. "Honey, you're always going to have that I'm-a-fat-girl thing; forget it, you're gorgeous." And it's so true, even from the model-hound himself. [laughs]

KW: I was at the Venice Film Festival with Holy Smoke, and rather than just report what I was wearing, some commentators had to add, "Kate was looking a little bit weighty." I'm constantly under a microscope. I can't imagine how Kirstie Alley must feel!

LO: And do you think that they do this to Sean Cannery or Harrison Ford?

EW: It's a joke. I was just watching The Green Mile, which was great. But you know Tom Hanks, he goes up and down [in size]...

LO: Um-hmm, all the time...

KW:... and people never have a go at him for it.

LO: Never. They can view him just through the lens of his acting--not through the lens of some unreachable, unhealthy gender prototype.

EW: Back when I was nineteen, there were times when I was so thin I would literally faint. And I would think, Why am I doing this? Why is it that I'm not eating? And I realized that it was because not eating made me feel as though I was inflicting such phenomenal discipline on myself.

LO: As you take on the role of producer, you will see some terrible things from the other side of the desk. I've sat in all-guy [casting] meetings, where women who are at a perfectly reasonable age for the part are dismissed as "too old." It's interesting being in that position. On one hand, you are suddenly vulnerable to information that you might be better off without. On the other hand, there's a way in which you can make a difference. Are you interested in producing as a way of controlling the material, or more in terms of your own life and schedule?

EW: I've always said one day it would be great to produce something, never thinking that I would be able to do it by myself. But the reason I got involved with Therese Raquin was, it was a book that I read at seventeen, and I sort of developed this kind of very heady sort of sweaty obsession with it.

LO: [laughs] Sounds great.

KW: I just became really addicted to it, in the way that you become addicted to, I don't know, cigarettes or chocolate. It just fed me in some way, and I read it over and over again. And a few years ago, having gained a little bit more knowledge, I thought, God, that book would make a brilliant film. And it just so happened somebody then said "Well, there's a script of it already." And because I had such an attachment to this story, I wanted to be involved with seeing the film made in the best possible way.

LO: And it's a wonderful thing to do with the leverage that you won from your hard work. It's interesting to watch the choices you've made in not, pardon the metaphor, being drowned by Titanic....

KW: Yeah. After Titanic, the temptation was to just do everything, 'cause it was all being handed to me on a plate. And I just couldn't believe that it was happening. I did Titanic because I absolutely loved the story, I loved the script, and I wanted to work with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jim Cameron. And those were the rules I would apply to anything, and I still do, not what profile the film is gonna have. In the wake of Titanic, it was so important to me to remember that I was (A) still young, (B) had so much still to learn, and (C), still have so much to learn.

LO: People tend to grab this opportunity as if it's the last they'll ever have.

KW: I think that's just crazy, because apart from anything else, if you're not still learning and growing as an actor, then you have no backbone and no career. So that was why I decided to go and do Hideous Kinky--I'd read the book and it was full of imagery and not so strong on the story, and I just thought it was so brave that someone had done this adaptation.

LO: And a brave choice for you, because it was about the least commercial decision that you could have made.

KW: I do like to do things that people don't expect me to do.

LO: Have you seen your new movie, Quills? I've heard great things about it.

EW: I love it. I love it because it is outrageous, because it is so bold, and it's full of a lot of things that studios would be afraid to put into movies these days. I really wanted to be a part of it because it was so daring and diabolical and disgusting and outrageous and hilarious at the same time. It's really a testament to how brave we need to remember to be when making movies. It's important to keep taking risks.

LO: And I've heard that love scene with Joaquin is was way out there!

KW: It was! And it was shocking to watch it, even though I acted in that scene. When I came to see the final cut of the film, I just couldn't believe it! My heart was in my mouth.

LO: I wanted to ask you one other question. How does a director go about making you feel safe?

KW: [pauses] I think the directors that have made me feel the safest are the ones that have said to me, "What do you need? Tell me if I'm confusing you; or tell me if I'm bugging you, or tell me if you'd just like me to go away." I think when directors do have a specific idea of what they want, they're not making the best use of their actors, quite frankly, because sometimes actors will have an entirely different idea, a different understanding of the character, than the director.

LO: Because they're inside it.

KW: You both have to be willing to try things three or four ways, so that the director will have choices when it gets into culling the thing together.

LO: That's right; that's right.

KW: That's one thing I will always admire about Jim Cameron--if something on Titanic just didn't work, he would say, "Well, let's move on and find a different way of doing it." And to be able to admit that your ideas haven't worked in front of a crew of sometimes two hundred people--how brave is that?

LO: Extremely brave.

KW: I do think you have to remain as open and relaxed as you possibly can, because if you put too much pressure on yourself and on everybody else, at the end of the day, if you're not having fun then there's just no point.

LO: And if you can't relax, you can't do your best work.

KW: You know, if you see a mountain, and you think, My God, I'm never gonna climb over that mountain, that's all the more reason to climb over that mountain.

LO: That's a wonderful metaphor for making movies and for living a life. Break it down into the steps and climb, piece by piece, with a big smile on your face [laughs).

KW: And then go and eat a cream cake.

LO: I'm gonna call you in England for a cream cake.

KW: Oh yeah! I know all the best places, I really do.

Lynda Obst has produced such films as Sleepless in Seattle. Contact, and the forthcoming Animal Husbandry.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group