Heat (UK) February 6, 1999

Britain's Leading Lady

One minute you're a jobbing actress quietly on the ascent. The next, legions of people are following you in the street to “thank you” for Titanic. And does this concern Kate Winslet? Does it hell...

Interview: Demetrios Matheou

A little over a year ago, Kate Winslet was a mildly famous British actress known for her corseted turns in worthy period movies Jude, Hamlet and Sense and Sensibility. Not any more. Since Titanic's unprecedented $1.8 billion-earning trawl through the world's cinemas, she's now a major Hollywood brand name.

This month she stars in Hideous Kinky -a massive step-down in scale from Titanic, the most expensive film ever made - playing the young hippy mother of two girls looking for love and spiritual succour in early-70s Morocco. She had accepted the role on the advice of ex-boyfriend Stephen Tredre, who she'd stayed friends with after their four-year relationship ended, and who died of bone cancer while Kate was filming in Marrakesh. It was also on the set of this movie that she met assistant director Jim Threapleton, who she married in November.

How do you feel about the success of Titanic
It's amazing. Now the video's out, the craze is continuing. It doesn't stop. I really care about Titanic. I wouldn't work on something that I didn't passionately want to be a part of. It wasn't some clever kind of career move, it wasn't a thing to try and move into the American market, and it wasn't about being in a great big huge film that was going to catapult me on to another level. I don't care about all that, I really don't.

Is It a burden to have had such a big commercial success so young?
I could have found myself getting into trouble if I'd continued to do more big films like Titanic because, to be honest with you, I got a bit sick of seeing my face everywhere. But now I'm in a position where I can choose what I do. A lot of my acting friends are out of work and they'd give anything to be in the position I'm in. I am very aware of how lucky I am.

Do you feel any different after the Titanic experience?
No. I'm me, myself, Kate. People have said to me, "Don't change." And I've said, "Of course I'm not going to bloody change!" Why would I? Just because I'm suddenly very famous? That's something I only think about when I'm attending a premiere and there's maybe 20 times more people hanging round to take my photograph than there were three years ago. When I went to India to shoot [next film] Holy Smoke it was overwhelming. People kept following me in the streets, thanking me for what I had given them through Titanic.

Have the paparazzi made you change your daily routines?
I refuse to do that. If I want to buy a pint of milk I'll just go over the road, even if I've only been up for half an hour. I'm not going to spend an hour putting on make-up just in case the press are outside.

Did you take your new film Hideous Kinky because it was so different to Titanic?
Yeah I did, I absolutely did. Titanic was so big and so exhausting and so demanding. I think I was looking for something where I didn't have to agonise over everything every day. In Titanic there was so much action, so much going on, so many people, lots of special effects, so huge. I did kind of go into suicidal overdrive when I didn't feel I was getting something right. I wanted to get, not necessarily back to basics, but back to something that was more me. And I don't want that to be interpreted as I didn't have a good time on Titanic, because I did. That is happening lot and it distresses me.

But is that still happening?
Yes. It is still happening and it upsets me. That comment which I can't even fucking remember because it was so taken out of context at a time when people were looking for bad things to say about the film because it wasn't coming out on time, it was going over budget and over budget and over budget. It did some damage, but that's all been righted now because it is a fabulous film. [For the record, the Los Angeles Times reported in May 97 that Kate felt she wasn't safe on set, that her injuries had left her looking "like a battered wife", and that: "Some days I would wake up and think, 'Please God, let me die."']

Do you keep in touch with Leonardo?
We were very close during the shoot and we still are. We talk about work and about personal decisions. It's like talking with my girlfriends. He's a wonderful person. He's very funny, which not many people know about -stick him in a comedy and you'll see something. The last conversation I had with him he wanted to talk over his decision about doing The Beach with Danny Boyle. And I told him I really thought he should do it.

Had you already read Hideous Kinky as a novel?
I read the book when I was 17. Someone gave it to me for a Christmas present and I promptly read it and gave it to my mum and then my sisters. I just related to it so much. She just lets the kids be who they are, she really wants them to be their own little bosses, little individuals, very free-spirited. And it's exactly the way my mum and dad brought us up.

Go on...
They were old hippies and we used to go to the Reading Rock Festival and run around with no shoes on. Holidays were always throw everything in the back of the car, go camping, driving through France, really last minute, but we always had a fabulous time. We never had any money and it was just such a laugh. In Hideous Kinky, when all the odds are stacked against Julia, she's still able to be strong and still able to give her kids a good time. I understand all that.

What’s it like playing a mother in Hideous Kinky?
I really like it. It's a role so full of joy and adventure. Also I do have very, very strong maternal instincts.

Really? How old are you?
Twenty-three. Yeah, but I always have had and I've tried to fight against them but it's no good. It's a part of me and so the whole maternal side of Julia comes quite naturally to me.

You met Jim Threapleton on the set of Hideous Kinky
Jim is an assistant director. It was a question of falling in love pretty instantly. He arrived on the shoot later than the rest of us - he was a new addition. We met one day and fell in love directly. We haven't really been apart since. He's the best thing that's happened in my life. I'm really very lucky.

Why marry now?
When you know, you know. He asked me and I said yes. We'll take turns working, so we can be together. It was horrible last summer when we had to be separated for some time. I don't want to put us through that again.

How would you describe Jim? How does his personality combine with yours?
It just works. You can't put a reason on why or how. He's a very honest, very real person.

After seven films in five years are you going to take a proper break?
I've got nothing lined up right now, and that's deliberate. I want some time out to live a normal life. I'll do nothing before the summer. Life is important - this is my job, it's not my life. And as much as I can I want it to stay that way. Life experience is what you need as an actor; you need that substance. If you're a hat maker you need your material, if you're a make-up artist you need your brushes, if you're an actor you need your life experience.

You've been acting since you were 12. Have you missed out on “life"?
No, bloody no! I haven't at all. I'm having such a good time. But I do know what you mean. university, going out clubbing, sitting in the pubs, having no strings attached. I do feel I've missed out on a lot of it-doesn't-matter teenage stuff. I was very anxious about a lot of things, when I was 19 and 21.AndIhad a bit of an eating disorder then as well. I think really this year I've sorted that out, thank God.

What was that?
It's honestly no big deal. But when I was 16, I was 13 stone. I never really thought, oh I should lose some weight. Then I thought, well I'm leaving school and I want to work and yep, I know that you do really have to be slim to work as an actress. And so I lost the weight. But then it went a bit further and I got very, very thin and didn't really eat and was anorexic. It wasn't a big deal, I never went into hospital, I just dealt with it myself. You know, since then it's been a kind of constant fear of gaining weight. And I come from a family of fatties so it is a problem. But I'm really happy with the way that I am now. This is me, like it or lump it.

You're waving a flag for the fuller figure...
It seems I'm becoming a role-model and it's great. I feel I can do something. But it's very sad when a lot has been written about my weight. I've been hurt by what's been written. Look at me. Do I look fat to you? I think I look healthy and normal. And if I'm seen as fat, what are kids who are the same size gonna think? They'll start starving themselves. I'm healthy and I'm proud of how I look.

Are you believable as a 70s hippy?
I think probably the outside opinion of what Kate Winslet is, is probably theatrically brought up, Shakespearean trained, corset--clad, stiff upper lip... What a load of twaddle. I think I was a biker's chick in a past life. Failing that I was a Cornish farm girl who made cakes and walked the dogs and milked the cows. I really like the Moroccan clothes: I wanted to do something that meant I could run around with no shoes on and wear flippy floppy dresses.

Where do you live?
In London.

Like it?
I love London. I never intended to live there, you know. I'm not a city girl, I'm a country bumpkin. And as soon as I can I'd like to he able to get somewhere in Cornwall. And still keep my flat in London.

What’s with the Cornwall fixation?
I have a huge thing about Cornwall. I love it there, I feel completely alive. My family and I have annual holidays there. We've been going to Cornwall since I was born, every year, but since I was about six or seven there's been one particular house, beautiful, beautiful house on the south coast, owned by friends of friends, which we rent. Huge great place that sleeps 25 people, we have a complete riot. Walks along the cliff-tops, get the wind in your hair and the wind in your cheeks, wear no make-up. Just brilliant, completely escape. F

Additional text: Stephanie Bunbury and Gunnar Rehlin