My Children Don’t Know I’m Famous
December 3, 2006
Kate Winslet Exclusive: I’m Mum First
By Adam Lee-Potter & Suzanne Kerins
KATE Winslet looks every inch the Hollywood superstar as she pouts sexily for the camera.
The A-list actress became an international sensation when she starred in Titanic - and her new movie The Holiday is set to be yet another enormous worldwide hit.
But the English beauty - who is regularly seen by millions on screen, in magazines and dressed to the nines on the red carpet - says her two children have no clue she is famous.
And the only role six-year-old daughter Mia, and son Joe, two, really know about is in the children’s animation movie Flushed Away, where she provides the voice for a feisty girl rat.
Family life is so important to the 31-year-old that she’s decided to take a year out to devote time to her kids and her husband, American Beauty director Sam Mendes, 41.
“My son is three next month,” Kate says. “I want to stand still and just be a mum. My kids don’t understand the reality of Hollywood life. I want them to come to understand it in their own way, when I feel they’re ready.
“They just think Mummy’s job is making the voice of a rat in a film and that’s perfect. They don’t watch me on TV. If I’m on a talk show I’ll tell Sam to turn the telly off.
“We don’t even have magazines in the house. If we’re walking down the street and I see myself on a movie poster, I’ll turn round and walk the other way.
But with The Holiday it’s going to be hard to avoid - my face is plastered all over the sides of buses.” However, Kate -youngest actress ever to receive four Oscar nominations - is determined Mia and Joe enjoy as normal a life as possible.
“Children don’t even know what the word famous means. One of my daughter’s friends said to her mum, ‘When I grow up, I want to be famous.’ Her mum asked her, ‘Well, what do you think that means?’
“She said, ‘It means I get to wear beautiful dresses.’ I don’t want Mia or Joe to grow up thinking that’s what fame is all about. Because it’s not. It takes years of hard graft.”
Despite the long hours, Kate insists on taking her family with her on shoots. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s probably easier for me than for women who have to work 50 weeks of the year. I get big chunks of time where I’m not working at all,” she says.
“I’ve never felt I’m juggling my children over my work or my work over my children. The two merge. I don’t find it that hard. Mia came a few times to The Holiday set, which was a real treat for her. I told her, ‘Here’s a little pair of headphones to listen to Mummy. Do you want anything to eat?’ She went, ‘No, no’ and seemed really embarrassed. She pulled me down and whispered, ‘I don’t think you should be allowed to bring food on the set’.
“I am not strict, not at all. But we do have a structure. Otherwise, there’d be chaos. I’m not one of those parents who lets their kids stay up until 10pm. They know the difference between right and wrong. They know that jumping on the bed isn’t allowed. I was never allowed and neither are they.”
The Holiday, a romantic comedy where Kate plays a love-lorn journalist, also stars Cameron Diaz, Kate’s pal Jude Law - “I love him to bits” - and Jack Black. “This movie was really hard work,” Kate says. “I play a contemporary English woman, which I’ve never done before, so that was terrifying. I’m used to having a wig, a dialect or a bizarre costume.
“And I’ve never done a comedy. But Jack is wonderful. Hilarious. I’d turn to him and go, ‘Was that funny?’ He’d just say, ‘Um, kinda’. I’d say, ‘Well thanks for nothing,’ and then beg him, ‘How can I make this funnier? Tell me, tell me.’
“Cameron and I have become good friends. Life for her is about having the most possible fun every day and that’s a wonderful quality.
“But for now, I want to be a mum and just a mum. I’m blissed out.”
Source: The Mirror
Posed in: News > Interviews > The Holiday
