IN FINDING NEVERLAND, KATE WINSLET PLAYS SYLVIA LLEWELYN DAVIES IN THE STORY OF J.M. BARRIE AND HIS CREATION PETER PAN. MARIANNE GRAY EXPLAINS HOW SHE CAME TO BE INVOLVED WITH THE FILM AND HOW THEY SET ABOUT CREATING NEVER LAND.

When Kate Winslet took the role in Finding Neverland of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, the mother of the (out boys who inspired J.M. Battle to write Peter Pan, she was no stranger to the teriitory. Winslet had played Wendy on stage when she was 15 and, being from an acting family. Peter Pan was always part of the tepertoty. But motheting a btood of boys was not part of her remit -at thai stage, she only had tier daughter, Mia. "I had played a scteen mother to two girls (tn Hideous Kinky) but never to boys, least of all lour of them." says Winslet. "But! had always been intrigued by the fantastical universe of Neverland that came as a result of Bsrrie meeting Sylvia and her boys by chance in Kensington Gardens one day."

Finding Neverlond is inspired by the writings of J.M Barrie, his friendship wilh the tecently widowed Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, her sons and the evolution of Peter Pan. It is not a factual retelling of when he wrote Peter Pan but the story of how he, as playwright and author of adult fare, became disappointed and frustrated by the same old themes of the adult world that surrounded him. Leaving the stuffy society of which he was part and his lovely but lonely society wife behind, the writer moved into a fantasy world of boys' games, filled with castles and kings, cowboys and Indians and fairies and whimsy, as he found inspiration through the four fatherless boys and their mother.

With them, Barne discovers that he can believe in something more enchanting than everyday life. Peter Pan is horn and Barrie's friend and backer, the American impresario Charles Frohman, finds that there ate audiences who want to watch people living on an enchanted isle, flying across the stage on wires and talking to fairies made out of light.

The film is directed by Marc Forster, responsible for Halle Berry's Oscar-winning turn in Monster's Ball, and co-stars Dustin Hoffman as Frohman. Julie Christie as Sylvia's mother, Radha Mitchell as Barrie's wife Mary. Ian Hait as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Kelly Macdonald as Peter Pan. "Making the film, we all tapped into the spontaneity and adventure of being a child again," recounts Winslet. "Especially Johnny [Depp, who plays Barrie], who was so able to be 3 child on the set, it was like working with five children! He made us laugh constantly with his cleverness, which is exactly what we needed to create the spirit of the story "

Finding Neverland director Marc Foster talks about how Depp has shown, by the toles he's chosen, how he has an accessible 'child inside' and how Winslel, as a mother, has the ability to embrace children and childhood, yet still be very down to earth. Winslet comments, "Sylvia captured me because in formal prim Edwardian England, an era where most people believed that children should be seen and not heard, she was modern and non-conformist. She encouraged her boys to be free spirits and I could relate to her. She's very involved in her children's upbringing and I am also a very hands-on mother. The most important thing in my liie is my children (she became a mother again, last year, with a son named Joe), that they are happy, well adjusted and secure. I lowed doing the Edwardian research. 1 really enjoy all this kind of research. This is a part of the job that comes as a real bonus - seeing how women were and how you can relate to them."

Johnny Depp, also a father of two with his partner, the French actress and model Vanessa Pafadis, related perhaps more to the author who never wanted to grow up. As an actor who has spent years running from his teen idol past in a series of enigmatic films such as Edward Scissorhonds and Sleepy Hollow, Depp forged himself a whole new image in the swashbuckling Pirates of the Caribbean and is soon to make Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (with Freddie Highmore). Playing Sir J.M. Barrie let him be caught between childhood and adulthood.

"He had a natural sense of mystery," says Depp, who uses a strong Scottish brogue as the Scottish Barrie, "and I was drawn by the magic of the Peter Pan story itself. The film never seems to go quite where you expect it. And some of the time it was my job to bring out the mischief hiding beneath the professional front of the four boys.

"You'd expect that these little boys would be climbing the wall on a movie set, but they had incredible focus and concentration - sometimes, we had to loosen them up. For the dinner party scene, for example, we planned that I could use my fart machine at certain moments. So, we hid the machine under the table and waited until the boys' close-ups... and it worked like a charm!"

While Depp was diverting cast members with his fart machine, Kelly Macdonald was wiring herself into her flying machine to play Peter Pan. "I was the lucky one because I would go in and dress up in a silly costume and fly around the stage for a while and everybody would go 'Ooooh!'," she recalls. "Harness work was uncomfortable but it was also really exhilarating. It's a bit like when you go on a roller-coaster and you feel almost unreal."

For Winslet, being in a silly costume might have come as a pleasure after a career that has been regularly punctuated by corsets, such as she is obliged to wear as the lovely Edwardian Sylvia. She may have thought that she'd got rid of the squidged-in waists for good after Quills, when she moved out of corsets for her films Iris and The Life of David Gale, but with Neverland, she sighs, "it's back into the winch..." i

"But I've got the corset to thank for a lot of good things," she laughs. "Ken (Branagh) had seen me in Sense and Sensibility and rang to ask me if I'd like to don a corsel again to be Ophelia to his Hamlet. I nearly passed out with excitement."

Winslet has been successfully sporting corsets for some time now, since 1996 in Sense and Sensibility. She is a curvy 5' 7", born October 5, 1975, and is an all-round fab girl. While she appears something of a scatterbrain on the outside, she has a mind as sharp as a steel trap and the frankness of a combat veteran. To meet, she is thoroughly modern and with a no-nonsense air about her. She talks rapidly, telling it like it is, and as if she's known you for years. Her mouth dominates her perenially expressive, rather radiant face and moves as she talks, as though it were savouring some succulent piece of fruit...

She was born to act. Her grandparents were Oliver and Linda Bridges who ran the Reading Repertory Company. Her father Roger and sisters Beth and Anna are actors and her mother would have been one but was too shy. Her father's aunts were in a vaudeville troupe and her uncle, the late Robert Bridges was known better as Mr Bumble in Oliver!

"I learnt early on that luck has a bigger part to play than talent - Insecurity Is what actors work with all the time."

"In our house, there was always lots of singing and putting on plays and tap dancing in the kitchen. I have seen enough of the other side of acting - being out of work and waiting for the phone to ring - to appreciate everything. I learnt early on that luck has a bigger part to play than talent. Insecurity is what actors work with all the time. Coming from an acting family has meant they have been really brilliant about my career."

Home is now split between England and America with her second husband, the theatre and film director Sam Mendes, daughter Mia, nearly four, from first husband/director Jim Threapleton, and her son Joe, still less than a year, with Mendes. A true Nylon (New York/London) couple, Richard Eyre, a former director of the National Theatre who directed Winslet as the young Iris Murdoch in Iris, is said to have played the role of Cupid to them.

The international celebrity that came to Winslet with Titanic has settled and we've seen her tread the harder path of tough rather than glamorous roles -the hippy mother in Hideous Kinky, the cult member in Holy Smoke, Quills, Enigma, Iris, David Gale, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind... "I have always been quite adventurous and go-getting, pretty fearless," she says. "But I never set out thinking to myself, 'I want to be a film star'."

Although J. M. Barrie once wrote, "Nothing that happens after we are 12 matters very much," plenty that matters has happened in the life of Kate Winslet since she has grown up from being the little girl in the Sugar Puffs commercial all those years ago. Her next film is a John Turturro musical Romance and Cigarettes, in which she plays James Gandolfini's lover and also sings. She has become an actress who dances to her own tune and doesn't mind flirting with Hollywood... but is always happy to come home and make a film in a corset.

* Finding Neveriand is released on 29 October

Source: Harper's Bazaar Magazine