Hey Jude
November 1996

By James Eliot

Kate Winslet opines on history, nudity and James Cameron.
James Eliot listens, nodding wistfully

Despite suffering from a stomach bug, Kate Winslet is remarkably upbeat as she does interview duty at the Cannes film Festival, where her latest outing Jude--a Truffaut-esque adaptation of Thomas Hardy's dark novel Jude the Obscure--has just been screened to rapturous applause in the Director's Fortnight section. "It's amazing what's happened to me in terms of my career at the moment" Kate enthuses. The past two years have indeed been fantastic for the luminous blonde beauty from Reading. Her acclaimed performance as a troubled schoolgirl in Peter Jackson's 1994 breakthrough movie Heavenly Creatures, put a rocket under her career, but it was her endearing, Academy Award-nominated portrayal of Marianne Dashwood in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, which took her into the atmosphere and opened the door to a leading role in James Cameron's next blockbuster Titanic.

"I don't know another actor of my age who is in the position I am in, and I don't take a second of it for granted", she confides. "To be in work as an actor is a great thing; to be in work as much as I am, and to do the things I've been able to do, is really larger than life, and out of this world. I have to pinch myself and ask if this really is happening to me". Her captivating performance in Jude, Michael Winterbottom's follow-up feature to last years Butterfly Kiss, could well earn her another Oscar nomination. Set in late 19th century England, it casts Winslet as Sue Bridehead, a thoroughly modern miss whose relationship with her cousin, Jude Fawley (Christopher Eccleston), flouts society's conventions with tragic consequences.

Although some people might question Winslet's decision to do another period piece so soon after Sense and Sensibility, Jude is as different from, say Merchant-Ivory school of filmmaking as French new Wave is from Disney. The clothes and mise-en-scene style are 19th century, but Winterbottom and writer Hossein Amini have invested their film with a modern sensibility that brings the story to life for contemporary audiences.

"There's a great danger that people will see a period film as just something that's quite nice to look at but has no relevance to their lives", says Winslet. "But people haven't actually changed; only time and daily routine have changed. We still have class differences, people still have problems in love and property, all those things. It makes no difference that these characters are wearing a corset, quite frankly. The one thing that this film will hopefully do is make audiences think period films are great. More over, Michael's approach accurately reflects Hardy as a writer: He was very contemporary; he was very strong-minded and no-holds-barren; he saw what was going on and he talked about it. And he was so heavily criticized for doing so that he never wrote another novel again after Jude the Obscure. I realized early on that Michael was intending to make this film as I believe Hardy, if he were alive now, would have wanted it to be made".

Boldly resisting sentimentality, Winterbottom spares the audience nothing of Winslet giving birth, or Rachel Griffith disemboweling a pig--and in a scene which is likely to be discussed as much in the UK as it was in Cannes, Kate Winslet appears nude on screen for the first time. The scene was filmed some ten weeks into the shoot, by which time Winslet and Christopher Eccleston had built up a close relationship that made the nudity a little easier. "Chris was really sweet, but I still found getting my kit off quite hard. No one was bullying me into it or anything like that, though. I was willing to do it because it is such a turning point for Sue. She fought so against falling in love because she believed that she would be giving up part of herself, part of her independence, in loving Jude. And then when she finally does say,'Well actually I do want you' it's a very brave thing to do and a tremendous turning point. "When the time arrives to take my clothes off, I just thought 'well get on with it girl' and once I'd done it I was fine. I now know how technical those scenes are--most of the time I was thinking about making sure I didn't mask Chris's face or reveal his bits and pieces".

Winslet didn't find appearing naked for Kenneth Branagh in his upcoming version of Hamlet any easier, though the film did furnish her with one of the most memorable experiences of her career so far. "I will never forget the first time I rehearsed the 'get thee to a nunnery' scene with Ken Branagh," she says with obvious glee. "He's known as Mr. Shakespeare, and there I was playing his Ophelia. I sat there in my jeans and my T-shirt and my caterpillar boots and there's Ken in the corner doing 'To be or not to be', and I just went f*ck I can't believe this, I'll never forget that moment".

Winslet's next role find her romantically involved with Leonardo DiCaprio onboard the ill-fated Titanic. She's thrilled to be starring in the latest James Cameron movie, though she admits that the prospect is 'goddamn scary'. Her character was originally written as an upperclass English woman, but Winslet convinced Cameron to make her American. "It would have been too familiar", she explains. "it's such an obvious class difference. The English are renowned for being toffee-nosed or cockney, and it's boring, so I told James that if he didn't make her American he'd lose the audience in the first five minutes".

It's incredible to think that in the space of ten years, Kate Winslet has gone from appearing in commercials with Honey Monster to advising James Cameron on characterization. She is unlikely to relocate to LA, however, preferring London to all that "weird spread out city" where "everybody's just on a total power trip".

Source: Film Review