Kate Winslet interview: Better Kate than never

Published on Friday 6 February 2009 16:29

ONE CLUE to the odd arbitrary nature of awards is the fact that Scarlett Johansson took home a Bafta for Best Actress when she was 18, yet Kate Winslet has yet to win. Not that she has been shy about declaring an interest in a glittering doorstop.

When she appeared in Extras with Ricky Gervais in 2005, Winslet had been nominated for four Academy Awards – the total is now six – without winning. Briskly, her character confided that she had only accepted a role in a Second World War film because of theawards potential.Otherwise, "I don't think we need another film about the Holocaust, do we? It was grim. We get it."

This year, we've had more films set in that period than even the UK History channel should have to handle, including The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, Defiance, Valkyrie, in which Tom Cruise fights the Nazis; and The Reader, in which Winslet is a Nazi.

"It was only midway through the movie that someone said: 'Oh, isn't it funny. It's like that episode of Extras,'" says Winslet. "It hadn't occurred to me, largely because I don't think of it as a Holocaust movie: If anything, it's a love story, a post-Holocaust love story. But yes, the irony, I can see it's amusing.

"I had absolutely nothing of my own experiences in my own life in order to draw upon to play her," says Winslet. "Usually, there's something you can find: 'Oh, yes, I remember that feeling, I know what that felt like. I understand this emotion.' I really had nothing, so it was an enormous challenge."

Up against Meryl Streep for Doubt, Kristin Scott Thomas for I've Loved You So Long and Angelina Jolie for Changeling in tonight's Leading Actress category, Winslet sinks into complicated roles as if they are kapok cushions, so it's interesting that she can be dreadfully unconvincing playing herself. Around the time of Sense And Sensibility she was Bangers And Mash Kate, smoking roll-ups and affecting Emma Thompson's nasal twang. After the birth of her first child, Mia, she enthused wildly about motherhood, and then confessed that actually, giving birth had been a stressful nightmare. And last month at the Golden Globes she was Who Me? Kate, telling reporters that she was an outside shot for best supporting actress for The Reader. Yet less than half an hour later she was tearfully unfurling a lengthy acceptance speech that included her fellow nominees, her agents, her family and her hair stylists on the film ("I'm sorry I was so mental") then did it all again for the best-actress award for Revolutionary Road. If there had been an award for the Most Unlikely Amnesia Attack, she would have collected that too, as uncredited rival Angelina Jolie grinned mirthlessly when Winslet forgot her name.

Ironically, Winslet's biggest competition at tonight's Baftas may not be Streep or Jolie but Winslet herself. Apparently she wasn't best pleased when Harvey Weinstein insisted on rushing The Reader through the editing process so that it would be eligible for the 2009 awards season, bundling Winslet's transformative performance in The Reader into the same month of release as her pet project Revolutionary Road. Winslet had not worked since 2006's The Holiday when she came across the adaptation of Richard Yates' 1961 novel.

No one is sorry to see Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio together again for the first time since Titanic, having a great time tearing into each other as spouses in a sinking relationship onscreen. During filming, Winslet tested the boundaries of her own relationship with the film's director and her husband of five years, Sam Mendes, overwhelming him with so many character queries that eventually he told her to put a lid on it. Typically, she refused to back down: "If you were my director and we weren't married, I would be on the phone to you right now. And I've got to point out to you that you would take that call. I know that Jake Gyllenhaal would call you every night when you were doing Jarhead."

This is how Winslet talks in interviews; a tumbling italicised style she says is part of her family's theatrical tradition. "We're all so bloody romantic," she has said of her dramatic brood. "I don't just see a green tree. It's 'Oh, my God, it's a green tree. Oh, my God, I feel like I've been born again,' you know?" Her parents are actors, as are both her sisters. Her grandfather ran an actors' repertory company when he wasn't practising dentistry, and her uncle Robert was a lead in the original West End version of Oliver!. Winslet's own stage debut was aged 13, followed by some TV commercials and sitcoms. Then, after leaving school at 16, she won her first film role as one of two teenage murderesses in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures.

Her early dramas – Heavenly Creatures, Sense And Sensibility and Jude – taught her how to research. Meeting her for Little Children, director Todd Field remembers her sitting in a nest of notes for All The King's Men. Titanic taught her not to be coy and wait for opportunities. Lobbying for the Titanic part, Winslet phoned director James Cameron: "You don't understand!" she pleaded. "I am Rose!" And a performance never smelled so sweet. But after the film's global success made her a worldwide celebrity at 22, she spent her post-prow decade tackling more chewy roles.

"I was going insane," she says."I was suddenly really famous, and I didn't know how to cope. I didn't know myself well enough as a person, number one, and as an actor, number two. I wanted to escape."

So she hid in the recesses of Jim Carrey's subconscious in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, put Harvey Keitel in a dress in Holy Smoke, surrendered to Joaquin Phoenix's advances in a church after expiring several hours previously in Quills and sneaked a consumptive cough while Johnny Depp charmed her brood of children in Finding Neverland.

Yet who can grudge her the accolades this season? You'll never see Kate Winslet in something as crummy as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, or as flat-out embarrassing as Mamma Mia!. Even her one romantic comedy shifts from the beaten track: in 2006's The Holiday, her Mr Right was Jack Black, a genial presence but nobody's idea of a dreamboat unless your dreamboat has to be the size of an Ark.

At 33, she's also done enough nude scenes almost to take them in her stride. "Nobody likes walking around naked in front of a stranger, let alone a roomful of strangers," she says, but it helps that most of her sex scenes are raw rather than artful, and that she's not required to be anything other than "my naked self having had two kids".

Even if, incredibly, her name isn't called tonight, fans of the Winslet should not fret on her behalf because there's always next year. And the next, and the next after that.

• The Baftas, BBC1, tonight, 9pm.bafta.org

THE BAFTA GOES TO...

BEST FILM

Contenders: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button; Frost/Nixon; Milk; The Reader; Slumdog Millionaire, right

Who will win: Slumdog Millionaire. How could the Bafta panel possibly not recognise the global phenomenon (good and bad), that this has created?

Who should win: Milk or Slumdog Millionaire. Gus Van Sant's film starring Sean Penn as the gay politician Harvey Milk is an exceptional slice of history but it has barely a hope against Slumdog.

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM

Contenders: Hunger; In Bruges; Mamma Mia!; Man On Wire; Slumdog Millionaire

Who will win: Slumdog Millionaire or Man On Wire. James Marsh's documentary about high wire walker Philippe Petit had critics and audiences falling over themselves.

Who should win: In Bruges. There may be lots of shooting and swearing, but Martin McDonagh's tale of two hitmen (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) was a surprise hit last year.

DIRECTOR

Contenders: Clint Eastwood (Changeling); David Fincher (The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button); Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon); Stephen Daldry (The Reader); Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)

Who will win: Danny Boyle. Controversy aside, it is a beautiful and skilfully directed film.

Who should win: Danny Boyle.

FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Contenders: The Baader Meinhof Complex; Gomorrah; I've Loved You So Long; Persepolis; Waltz With Bashir.

Who will win: I've Loved You So Long. An outstanding lead performance from Kristin Scott Thomas (who won't win best actress because Winslet will), in a tale of sisterly forgiveness.

Who should win: Gomorrah. A brave and complex look at Italian mafia life.

LEADING ACTOR

Contenders: Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon, inset); Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire); Sean Penn (Milk); Brad Pitt (The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button); Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

Who will win: Mickey Rourke. A strong contender for the Oscar, and Mr Bafta does like to look as though he's leading the thinking on such key categories.

Who should win: Sean Penn. For once, he underplays it. His controlled depiction of Harvey Milk is a class act.

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Contenders: Robert Downey Jr (Tropic Thunder); Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges); Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt); Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight); Brad Pitt (Burn After Reading)

Who will win: Heath Ledger. Talk of posthumous honours have surrounded this performance since the first screeners were viewed.

Who should win: Brendan Gleeson/Downey Jr. Two great comedy performances. Gleeson rattles through an un-PC script with a hunger, while Downey Jr joins America's comedy elite by 'blacking up'.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Contenders: Amy Adams (Doubt); Penlope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona); Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire); Tilda Swinton (Burn After Reading); Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler)

Who will win: Penelope Cruz. Cruz has openly been campaigning over here for this award.

Who should win: Amy Adams. While Streep brings fire and damnation to Doubt, it is Adams' quieter performance which beats the competition here.

BY FIONA LEITH