Cover Girl

KATE WINSLET WENT THROUGH A BRUISING DIVORCE AND SUFFERED ENDLESS NEGATIVE REPORTS ABOUT THE BREAK-UP AND HER WEIGHT INTHE PRESS. BUT (AS SHE TELLS POLLY VERNON, SINCE MEETING AND MARRYING SAM MENDES, SHE'S NEVER BEEN HAPPIER

PHOTOGRAPHS BY SANTE D'ORAZIO

Kate Winslet - international superstar, double Oscar nominee and card-carrying English rose - has put her neck out loadng the washing machine. 'Oh yes.' she says. 'Ha, ha! I wish I could tell you it was something like, "I was throwing my children up in the air!".' She pronounces that last bit with overblown dramatic cadence, so you know she's not being too earnest 'But no I was loading the washing machine Again. And I stood up and I thought, wowr That's not right. Then it got worse. Actualty, I had that cupping thing for it. "you know. Like Gwyneth. Because Sam and I know this wonderful Chinese herbalist and I like trying alternative stuff. I think ii's a bit of a laugh. Before I had it, the herbalist said," You're not going to be wearing anything with a low back any time soon, are you? Because there will be some marks Not the same kinds of marks [as Paltrow] but there will be some". And l said, "Ummm, dunno". But we did it anyway and do you know what? It definitely has helped. Marvellous.'

This is absolutely the kind of thing you'd expect from Winslet, who turns 29 on 5 October. She has built herself a public persona that is professionally human. Professionally real. Washing machines and experimenting with acupuncture techniques is all very ceiebnty-in-the-style-of-Kate, isn't it? Winslet, whose beautiful but determinedly un-Hollvwood body always set her apart from her super-skinny celeb contemporaries. Winslet. whose signature look revolved around a pair of battered bfker boots. Winslet, who repeatedly hit the red carpets with slightly mussy hair and cheeks visibly flushed with excitement and nerves, and Then bantered irreverently with the paparazzi. Winslet, who celebrated her first wedding to her 'glorious-looking boy'. the extremely real second assistant director, Jim Threapleton, in a pub in Reading with sausages and mash.

But you have to wonder, have the last three years changed our homegrown superstar? Made her a little less human, perhaps? She's been tnrough a great deal. She's done some unpredictable stuff. A divorce from Threapleton in December 2001, just over a year after their daughter Mia was born A second marriage to the Oscar-winning, theatrical power-broking Sam Mendes. with whom she now has a nine-month-old son, Joe. And a few very unpleasant spats with the press, who had adored and defended her so strongly in the past

We meet in the restaurant of a grand hoteI in Oxford. Bang on tim e ('How incredible! I'm usualy at least 20 minutes late!'), she wanders into the room, dressed in a jersey vest top (whch she had to check for carrot stains before she left the house, she explains, as you do after breakfasting with Joe) and jeans that are almost certainty nothing more extravagant than Gap. She's fan tast ically pretty, of course - she has the incredible radance that lights up entire multiplexes - but she's so ungroomed, so unglossed, she certainty doesn't emanate movie-star quality

Her voice is moderate, home counties mixed with thespian-posh. Her manner is expansive, unpatronising. She sits down, orders some coffee and a cnicken Caesar salad, and expertly rolls up a lag. The conversation is fluid, non-stop insights into a hectic, giddy, full-throttle family existence that is half domestic, half glittering and starry, and goes a little bit like this. 'It's been quire busy recently. We went on holiday to Italy, came back, and four days later had to go to New York for five days, then we came back. And jet lag with the kids doesn't really mix, although Mia loves planes. She gets that from her dad's side.' Through it all, Sam is referenced with casual - but distinctly glowy - regularity.

'Are you blissfully happy with him?' I ask.

'I'm afraid so. Yeah, yeah, absolutory blissfully. Very, very much so. It's really fantastic. We've been married for about 16 months, and together for...' Wislet starts muttering under her brealh, counting off on her fingers, carefully accounting for the months. She doesn't want to gel herself into any trouble here. The rumours that she and Mendes got together before Winslet split from Threapleton still persist. She has always insisted that wasn't the case - and for what it's worth, I believe her.

'OK .. two . sort of three years, ish, later on in the year, that we've actually been together.'

'Was it love at first sight?'

She hesitates again.

'Ha! Hmmm. now this is where I get so nervous... and Sam doesn't like me talking about how it happened all the time, but we met because he was casting Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya at the Donmar (Warehouse, the London theatre in which Mendes rose to fame as artistic director) and he wanted me to be in them, so we met sort of through work, although we actually haven't worked together. I didn't want to do the plays. It was a huge commitment, and Mia was still quite young. And we bumped into each other socially, accidentally, and then it just kind of...' She clears her throat, embarrassed, anxious '.. happened! Hee hee. I am trying so hard not to give you any of the really fine details. But, OK, let's say this, it was pretty obvious to me that this was an enormous deal, and I had to behave like a real grown-up, because it was tha biggest thing I'd ever, ever felt.'

'It was comptetety unmistakable?'

'Absolutely unmistakable. Yeah And it was quite soon after Mia's dad and I had actually separated. I really wasn't looking. But you know what they say; it walks in the door when you're really not looking for it at all. And that was certainly what happened. But it was fantastic and overwhelming ..' and Winslet pauses again. She smiles. 'Just thank God, you know? Thank God '

She is shining; actually, properly, full-on cliche - inspiring transparent with love. It's all so incredibly removed from those fraught, distraught images of her in the weeks and months post-Threapleton. It's impossible not to be gratified by it, impossible not to be genuinely pleased for Winslet on a straightforward personal level, but also impossible not to be reassured - on a broader level - that life, everyone's life, has the potential to get good again

She smiles some more, knocks back some coffee, starts building another rollie and then makes what I'm beginning to recognise as classic Winslet segue irto something completely unrelated. She begins explaining the basic principles of tactical breast-feeding.

So, I'm filming Romance & Cigarettes, this wonderful John Turturro film' she says. 'It's only weeks after Joe was bom, no idea how I did it. But I play this hot-headed, red-headed strumpet. James Gandolfini's rnistress. Susan Sarandon's playing his wife. Anyway, most of the time I do scenes in this ridiculous filmy little skirt and Agent Provocateur bra and, let me tell you, the breast-feeding helped with the look! I was looking at the stills thinking, " My God! They are actually mine! They reed their own credit!".' This is more vintage Winslet. She has always been characterised by her pragmatic, unpretentious approach towards her job. From the beginning, she's struck me as a career transvestite. She has the soul attitude of a jobbing actress, trapped in the body of a movie star. Ask her about that, and Winslet explains that she never wanted to be famouse. Born into a family of actors, she associated the job with strugglin, resting, waitressing between roles, never having a lot of money, and muddling through with theatre and TV parts. 'I never even though about being in movies, and certainly not being a movie "star",' she says. Accordingly, her own fame took her by surprise. It still does. People will come up to me in Tesco and say, "Excuse me, but you are her,. aren't you?" And I have to take a minute and think, on, what are they asking? And then I say, "Ooh! Yes! I think so. I think I am who you think I am".'

Which is presumably why fame came reasonably effortlessly to her - it's only effortless if you're genuinely not trying for it. And her success trajectory has been smooth. Straight out of drama school, aged 17, such to her surprise, Winslet was cast in Peter Jackson's disturbing and beautiful Heavenly Creatures, which is where Ang Lee spotted her and selected her for the part of Marianne Dashwood in his adaptation of Sense and Senbility. She would later be nominated for an Oscar for that perforance. She went on to play Sue Bridehead in Jude and

Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. And then came Titanic and another Oscar nomination. Winslet was suddenly, fantastically, Hollywood hot.

'That felt dangerous,' she admits, now picking at her Caesar sauce-laden croutons. 'that film was trying to make me more famous than I wanted to be. I was aware of a potential for burnout. It was the closest I came to going off the rails. I remember thinking it would be so easy for me to stop liking my job, and if f didn't like my job anymore, I wouldn't be happy and, yes, I probably would have started taking loads of drugs and going out a lot, and not taking care o fmyself. I didn't want to dislike my job. I wanted to always love it.' So she ran away to Morocco to film Hideous Kinky, which was where she met Threapleton, who must have seemed very much like the ultimate rn a low-key, stabilising influence at that moment.

At the lime of Winslet's divorce from Threapleton. much was made of the disparity between the couple, in career terms. Kate thinks she came in for a great deal ol grief from the press precisely because they had loved 'this idea that I had this wonderful, perfect marriage to Mia's dad, who wasn't even an actor, who wasn't even... 'she trails off.but l get the point Who wasn't widely perceived as A list, glittenng and fabulous. "It didn't help that I kept my mouth shut. I didn't talk about what happened at the time, I still haven'tand I won't ever, actually,' she finishes.

Nonetheless, I wonder about her new existence with Sam, which must be different. I wonder about the nuts and bolts ol the wildy glam Winslet-Mendes lifestyle. Kate, of course, insists it's not glam, not glam at all. 'To keep a sense of stability, lightness and calm in the house, it doesn't pay lo be a neurotic celebrity running around the place with Dolce & Gabbana dresses in the wardrobe for all to see, and Manolo Blahnik heels all over the place. Those things are very much swept out of the way.' She admits, however, that they do go in private jets sometimes, 'And that's just greatl Really glam!'

She tells rne that they split their time between their homes in Lcndon and New York, which is a situation she, Mendes and Mia love, and Joe's completely unfazed by. Sam, of course, is a brilliant, brilliant dad, and totally in love. 'And that's the thing that's been wonderful about this year. Sam and I have both been around; it's really been the time of family. We didn't. have maternity nurses or any of that stuff because I've never been one for personal trainers or any of those extra bits that you imagine a celebrity would have.'

She's famously turned down a great deal of film roles over the past couple of years to be with Sam and the kids, although even that, she says, has been used against her by some factions of the press. Like pulling out of that Woody Allen film. I did it because I wanted to be at home,' she explains 'But that got turned into, "She wanted to spend more time with her family". Suggesting that I didn't spend enough time in the "first fucking place. And that pissed me off.'

It certainly helps the relationship, she says, that Mendes is involved in the same business as she is. "It means that I can come home and talk about my day, and he completely knows what I'm talking about. Or I can say, "Fucking hell, how can I say this bloody Iine?". And he'll say, "Howabout this?" And I'll try it. But we certainly don't talk about what we do all the time. Still, every so often I remember I am wilh someone who understands me creatively, and who I understand creatively. And that's great.'

You could have been a celebrity power couple, ' I suggest. There's still time, if you fancy it.' Winslet laughs almost hysterically.

'That's a preposterous suggestion, then?'

'Yes! Yeah, yeah, yeah1 That's not us at all.'

'So there are no sparkly, grand, fabulously buzzy dinner parties, then, attended by international luminaries of the film-making and theatre worlds?'

'I'm afraid not.' Winslet pulls a regretful face. 'Sorry. Although actually, when Joe was three months old, we were in LA for a while. I was doing press for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and we did actually have a couple of dinner parties with rnajor studio figures who Sam's worked with in the past - great, great figures. And Leo DiCaprio came to one of those dinners, and that was so fantastic because I haven't actually seen him in six years. We've spoken on the phone, but we haven't sat down and gone, "Oh my God, Do you remember what that was like?". And then, at one point, he turned around to me and said. "Sweetie, why did we get so fat?'' I said, ."I don't know!"r And he said. "Well. I know what I was doing. I just didn't give a fuck!".'

Winslet's spoken often and fondly of her Titanic co-star. 'It sounds naff, I know, but we really were like brother and sister,' she tells me.

'And you didn't fancy each other one little bit?'

'No!I Never! Much to my surprise.'

She admits, however, that she had prepared herself for the possibility.

Oh yes, I remember thinking, oh God. what if I really fancy him? What will I do? Then I met him, and went, oh, he's such a child!'

She didn't fancy Johnny Depp, either, who plays JM barrie, creator of Peter Pan and her almost-love interest, in the forthcoming Findng Neverland

'I mean, obviously he's devastatingly handsome which is just shocking and so annoying. Because, you know, he's in his early forties now, and he looks like he's 30. But he's a lovely, lovely guy.'

She's intensely proud of the film, she says. Finding Neverland a beautiful, whimsical, period number which, nonetheless, is pretty distinct in feel from the costume dramas Winslet was once uniquely associated with.

'It is contemporary in some ways, isn't it?' she says, delightedly. Finding Neverland is based loosely on Barrie's friendship with Winslet's Sylvia Llewelyn Davies - a friendship that never quite blossomed into a love affair, and which hinged on Barrie's relationship with her children, one of whom, Peter, inspired Peter Pan.

'Did you cry when you saw it?'' she asks me. I admit that I did.

'Oh my God! So did I! I wept! I was like what are you doing? That's you you are crying at!'

Inevitably, al some point during our meal, probably around the time the waitress brings the dessert menu over, or maybe just after she's related the Leo anecdote. Winslet begins to talk about her weight. For eight years or so, ever since she began to get famous, her decadent, sexy curves have been the subiect of intense public interest

'I know I've banged on about it a lot.' she says. 'But really.'

She's been vilified for being too big, then championed as the poster girl for anti-anorexia, then congratulated for losing weight.

'Even when I really hadn't'. Most famously, she's been stretched and Pholoshopped inio some approximation of supermodel parfection for the cover of a men's magazine.

'Im still angry about that," she snaps. She looks it. ' It suggests I'd want to look like that. Which I don't.'

Winslel says she's properly happy with her body now. I am proud, you know? It's hard work gelling your shape back after two kids, but I like the way I look '

She's also deliciously victoria about those girls who famously called her 'Blubber' when they were at stage school together. She has her 'Look at me now. bitches,' moments.

Ultimately, after a couple of hours in her company, which have played out like a crash course in how to be well-adjusted against the odds, I am lorced to conclude tliat Kate Winslet is pretty much the Kate Winslet she's always been. She is maybe a little bit more guarded at times. She certainly contradicts herself in her frantic desire to get things absolutely straight.

During her third roliie of the lunch, for example, she says, 'I don't normally smoke this much; it's just that I won't around the kids, so I'm grabbing the opportunity.'

Then later, when I ask her about any celebrity vices and she can't name any, she says. 'I'm not that nice and pure! Really! I do smoke, look!' We discuss hair products and she's worried she'll seem vain. 'What am I doing? I never talk about my fair. I never wear make-up. Oh, well. I am today, a bit, a lick of mazzy, a touch of lippie.'

But truly, the only odd, debatable and dark thing Kate Winslet persists on doing, is painstakingly circumnavigating all reference to her relationship with Jim Threapleton. She nevsr says his name/ She refers to him only as Mia's dad', or 'Mia's father', their marriage is merely 'when I was with Mia's father'.

This, remember, is a relationship she once described in these terms. 'I just love every single parr of it. I love the certainty of it. I love caring aboui someone that much. It's gorgeous.' But we all have coping tactics. And you can allow a girl - even this girl - a dysfunctional moment or two.

Source: Elle Magazine (UK Edition)

Scans contributed by Vampy.