Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet was born October 5, 1975 in Reading, England. She was born into an family of people in the theatre, and it seemed to Kate that it was the natural thing to do to go into it. Her first role ever was a the Virgin Mary, at age 5. From that point on, she had caught the acting bug.She attended Redroofs, a performing arts school in Maidenhead, until age 16. Kate’s first job was in a Sugar Puffs cereal commercial. After that, she appeared in a few television series. On one of them, Dark Season, she met Stephan Tredre, many years her senior, who became Kate’s first real love interest. They were together for quite some time, and continued to be extremely close. Stephan passed away in December, of cancer, causing Kate to miss the Hollywood premier of Titanic.
During her childhood, and into her teen years, Kate’s 5’6” frame weighed as much as 185 pounds, which led to her to acquire the nickname ”Blubber” in school. Her weight has since become a non issue in my opinion, but one that still causes her to get press about. Personally, one of the reasons why I like Kate is that she looks like a normal person, not someone who looks like they have been stranded on a desert island for five months eating nothing but berries and moss.Anyway, Kate’s first movie role was in Heavenly Creatures, the much acclaimed New Zealand film about the true story of two girls whose relationship becomes so close that it causes them to do a drastic thing to be together. Kate plays one of those girls, Juliet Hulme. After Heavenly Creatures in 1994, Kate had a role in Disney’s A Kid in King Arthurs Court, as Princess Sarah and her Oscar nominated role a Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, both movies released in 1995. She followed up with the part of Sue Bridehead in Jude and Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh’s wonderous Hamlet
Currently, Kate has the starring role (she beats out Leonardo in my mind) in James Cameron’s amazing, heart wrenching, wonderful Titanic, as Rose Dewitt Bukater, the 17 year old wild beauty trapped in the heart of Philadelphia high society. Kate got a second Oscar nomination for her part as Rose (also a Golden Globe nomination, which, unfortunately, went to Judi Densch, who is also an incredible actress, but still…) Kate also received a nomination for best actress from the Screen Actors Guild Awards. If you haven’t yet seen Titanic, run, don’t walk, to you’re nearest movie theater. You won’t be sorry!Kate’s future projects include a movie called Hideous Kinky, which is set to be released in June, 1998. The film has yet to be picked up by a North American production company, but hopefully that will change! It is based on the novel of the same title by Anna Freud (granddaughter of the famous Sigmund). Kate stars as a young British mother of two in the 1960’s who is traveling around Morocco with her two young daughters. She also slated to do a new film with director Jane Campion called Holy Smoke.
