This fearless talent faced down a guru, peed in public and discovered the truth about faith-healing. All in a day's work for Ms. Winslet.

"A COMPLETE LOAD OF SHIT!" SPLUTTERS KATE WINSLET. She's debunking a rumor, one of many that has surfaced since her fame has grown to titanic proportions."Bloody hell!" It seems that an item printed in Liz Smith's gossip column-about the curvy actress subsisting on brussels sprouts to slim down for a nude scene in this month's Holy Smoke-is, well, a crock.

I can tell you how that happened," offers Winslet, and if you've ever wondered how celebrity rumors are born, you'd better pull up a chair. Because when Winslet launches into a story, it can take a while: "While we were filming in Australia, we moved to a location that was a long, long way-about a five-hour drive-from any city. A group of us decided to do this drive, and on the way we saw this huge supermarket. We had to stop-we were in the outback and there was nothing. I went in, I saw brussels sprouts-they were massive-and I just really wanted them. I was far from home, I wanted some comforts. So I bought them. We arrived at our final destination,and there was a cafe. We went in to have lunch, and I said, 'Do you mind cooking these up?' And they did. A month later, a local radio station went in asking questions: 'What's Kate like? "What's Harvey [Keitel, her costar in Smoke] like? 'The owner of the cafe said, 'Oh,yeah, Kate's a great girl, she really loves her veggies, we cooked some brussels sprouts once. 'That was it. All around the world went this brussels-sprouts-diet story. And I don't even go on diets! I don't believe in them!"

All this said on no more breath than Winslet can inhale from several drags of a hand-rolled Golden Virginia cigarette. Winslet is a true chatterbox. No mincing sound bites here. Any remark I manage to interject gets instantly engulfed by a stream of anecdotes: How Winslet felt overjoyed at celebrating her one-year anniversary with her husband, 25-year-old director Jim Threapleton (she made him a lamb-and-vegetable stew from her mum's recipe). How extraordinary it was to film in India (where Jane Campion directed part of Holy Smoke, in which Winslet plays a teenage Australian cult follower). How difficult it can be to play a 19-year-old when she'd just turned 24 (on October 5).

BIGGER (AND BETTER) THAN LIFE

Sitting in Patisserie Valerie, one of her favorite breakfast nooks in London, she eats buttery croissants for breakfast without a moment of caloric consideration. We down three cups of coffee each in 90 minutes while Winslet chain-smokes. She tells me that even though it's eyewateringly cold in London, she sleeps with the windows open. Dan - her hairstylist, who stayed over at her house wearing thermals, a sweater and a blanket - thought she was "absolutely mad." And in a very wonderful way, she is. She's generous, not a little manic, expansive, lush. And I'm not just talking about her healthy, size-8 figure, which is one of two basic reasons, I'm sure, that women everywhere pray for more Kate Winslets to descend upon Hollywood.

The other reason? She's grit and guts, wrapped in a gorgeous package. Pure girl-TNT. Not only does Winslet bring blood and rebellion to the cheeks of her socially constrained characters in Sense and Sensibility, Jude and Hamlet, she makes anachronisms look cool. Giving the finger and hocking loogies? Not done in 1912, not even on the world's most luxurious ocean liner.Winslet herself may not be fully aware of how powerful her screen presence is. When queried, she vaguely theorizes that .when a relationship is the focus of a story, you can't have the woman be weaker than the man, otherwise the dynamic will suffer." Whatever - her fans get the message: Be fearless. Just do it. Ask questions later.

"Sometimes I don't think. I just do stuff and say, 'Oh, I shouldn't have done that,' "says Winslet, not the least bit ruefully. 'My dad said in the speech he gave at our wedding, 'Anybody who's known Kate for a long time, like I have, knows she doesn't stand back from things. If she sees something she wants to do,she just goes and does it." 'And how. Exhibit A: Winslet's full-frontal birthing scene in Jude. (Yes, there was a prosthetic involved.) Exhibits B through F: her naturalistic love scenes in Heavenly Creatures, Titanic, Jude, Hamlet and Hideous Kinky, at a time when many actresses insist on I'm-a-serious-thespian-now, no-nudity clauses in movie contracts. And finally, Exhibit G: the taboo-breaking golden-showers scene in Holy Smoke, in which her character, Ruth, stands naked in the Australian desert and loses control of her bladder (semiotics majors know that this symbolizes losing control of the soul) in front of a domineering cult deprogrammer (Keitel), whom she later outwits and twists to her will. "I laughed out loud when I first read that scene. I thought, God, how much further is Jane going to go?" (Seems Winslet will go even further: Next she stars in Quills as a maid who won't do the Marquis de Sade's unspeakably dirty laundry.)

Winslet's fearlessness has served her well in her career. It has saved her from the fate of such chronically corseted actresses as Helena Bonham Carter, whose contemporary characters 'drugging and screwing fails to sully a Merchant Ivory image. (Not that Winslet isn't afraid of being pigeonholed: "I'd love to play a single mother in a Ken Loach [an English director] movie, but I worry that those really raw directors think I'm just this classical period-film babe.") It's a known industry fact that before the Big Boat Movie, Winslet relentlessly lobbied directors for roles. She could easily teach a course on How to Ask for What You Want: "Ultimately, you just have one life. You never know unless you try. And you never get anywhere unless you ask." Even as Winslet rolls out the cliches, her fervor and flashing blue eyes are irresistible, and I actually find myself inspired.

KATE, ON THIN ICE?

"You mad English bitch." Winslet is gaily recounting Titanic costar DiCaprio's reaction to her request not to heat the water in which they floundered for many months of filming. "He used to make me laugh so much. I wanted it to be cold, because I needed to have that sensation of fear for my character. Leo couldn't stand the water." Winslet smiles at me wickedly. "He was more of a girl about that water than I was."

But who's more of a man in the coping-with-fame department? Let's do a tally, shall we? Resisting fame's pleasure perks: one for Kate, zero for Leo, whose compulsive model-scamming has been obsessively chronicled in gossip columns. Coping without the crutch of excessive food or drink consumption: Winslet, one, DiCaprio zip, as in: Can he still zip up those skinny pants over that beer paunch? Living pretension-free: While Leo may not have seen anything other than the inside of a VIP room for months, "I just do whatever and don't really give a shit," says Winslet, who comes and goes in the regular world like anybody else. "I'm sure part of the time I look like a complete bag lady, but I just put on sweatpants and go to the grocery store." And to the ATM. Without sunglasses. Okay, so Winslet passes the Civilian Life test. Yet she must find it strange that most people know what she wore on her wedding day (a cream-colored Givenchy gown) and what she ate at her reception (bangers and mash). "Yes, that is strange," says Winslet. "But actually, no one really knows how Jim and I are together, no one really knows my family. And those are the things that are true about my life."

While living small does wonders for Winslet's sanity, it doesn't protect her against tabloids lobbing cheap shots. Like calling her fat. What can they be thinking? "I have absolutely no idea," says Winslet, dismissively. "Maybe they want to sell newspapers-people get sick of saying only nice things. It becomes boring. If after Titanic I had done another huge movie, it would have been a flop, I'm sure of it." Winslet seems unperturbed by personal attacks, but very much disturbed by society's obsession with thinness: "Look, I have the same paranoias as any other woman. But they're not obsessions. I've seen too many people become ill, mentally depressed, just terrible things, because of not eating properly. This whole weight thing shouldn't be up for discussion. I just feel it's wrong that society thinks that way. I feel it's wrong that so many young girls think that to be beautiful, successful and loved, they have to be thin. That is just morally wrong."

NORMAL IS AS NORMAL DOES

There's this idea that being brought up by a family of working actors is like being raised by a tribe of wild chimps. But the Winslets - from the dentist/actor grandfather to Kate's sister, who does theater for disabled children - are a practical kind of acting family. Raised in Reading, England, "a large town surrounded by stunning countryside," Winslet carried on the family tradition in a low-key way-at first. She attended Redroofs Theatre School in nearby Maidenhead, then dropped out: "I started working when I was 16, and I was exactly like every other jobbing actor. Before Heavenly Creatures, I had 15 months when I did not get one single job. I worked in a delicatessen. I had absolutely no bloody money."

But since her career-making performance as a real life teenage murderess in Creatures, Winslet has been working nonstop. Most actresses would be dropping big bucks at Prada without a second thought, but Winslet says she always feels "really guilty, I don't know why. I give to charities and stuff like that, but I feel like that isn't enough. I should be giving something back for all this luck and joy I'm having, for all this success. I mean, why is this all happening to me?"

Modesty is a middle-class virtue. And Winslet, for all her costumed characters' upper-crusty airs, is the kind of girl your mother would like - she values family, she loves love, she seems as if she'd make a ballsy yet loyal friend. To wit, her just-say-no attitude toward drugs: "I would be in bars in Mexico [during the filming of Titanic] and people would come up to me, grab my hands and examine what I was smoking. I'd get really offended because I don't smoke any pot or take any drugs. Never have," says Winslet, as she takes a long drag off her cig. On the virtues of marriage: "People always say marriage doesn't change anything, but it does. Jim is away at the moment, and we were just speaking yesterday. I said, 'It's horrible being away from you, but I feel secure and safe knowing that you're happy and that we're communicating even though we're miles apart .'I really think there's something about marriage that just seals all of that."

According to Winslet, it is a truth universally acknowledged that "any girl past the age of 15 is looking for her life partner. I honestly defy any woman to disagree. This is just the truth. And I was just that person," proclaims Winslet, fixing me with an earnest expression, "I was the girl who sat in a cafe and watched people come and go, and I'd think, 'Maybe that's him. Maybe that's the one I'm going to marry.' Once she found him - Winslet met Threapleton on the set of Hideous Kinky - no one could convince her that she wasn't happy. Winslet researched Holy Smoke by spending time - and locking horns - with a guru in an ashram near the Ganges River. "I was completely freaked out by the whole experience. At that point, I felt so together, I knew I was marrying Jim and everything was so great. I thought, 'No, I'm not going to be judged, I'm not going to be questioned. Stop trying to find something wrong with me.'

Not that Winslet's above divine intervention, should a little come her way."This is going to sound like I'm a total I wack, but when I was in India, one of my ankles was extremely swollen-full of fluid because it had been bitten by some bug. You know those stories about how Ganges water can cure all, because it's sacred? Well, I was standing in the water, watching this festival that celebrates the god Shiva. Five minutes later, my ankle wasn't swollen anymore. I'm absolutely serious - I put my shoes back on and the one that had been incredibly tight now fit me. Can you believe it?" Why not? It seems miracles can happen, even to those who don't need it. Even for gorgeous, go-for-it, movie-star girls.

Written by Jeanie Pyun

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