Presenter Lorraine Kelly with guest Kate Winslet

Lorraine: Hello good morning welcome to the show we have got the scoop of the year I guess, Kate Winslet is here to tell us all about her new movie Iris, looking fantastic I have to say, how are you?

Kate: Thank you, I’m very well, very well.

Lorraine: And last night was the premiere, how did it go?

Kate: It was really good, it was a lovely evening, I had my brother who was my date, my brother Joss, he’s probably watching this actually bless him, and all my family were there, which was a big thing for me actually, I’ve not had all my family around me at a do like that and it was a lot of fun actually it went really well.

Lorraine: It’s a very good movie I’ve seen it and it’s really excellent and it’s had rave reviews hasn’t it? Absolutely great reviews.

Kate: It has, it has and it’s just nice, it is a low budget little British film and at the same time it seems to be getting all this acclaim, which is just great, and it sort of makes you kind of proud to be a Brit you know.

Lorraine: Was it scary because you are the young Iris. Judi Dench is the old Iris so that must have been a bit kind of frightening.

Kate: It was, it was frightening, and when Richard Eyre asked me to play the part, I thought God, I’m not going to say no to this. It is such a fantastic role and when you are asked to play the young Judi Dench, you don’t say no and I sort of got off the phone and I thought: can I really do this, and I just worked hard at it and hoped for the best, which is what you can always only ever do.

Lorraine: Indeed, indeed. I’ll tell you what though. Good shots of you swimming naked, because Iris used to do that. Iris and her husband used to just jump in the river.

Kate: I know. They did love water, they absolutely loved water and I do as well. I mean, you know. I know everybody will think that is funny but I genuinely do love water and I always have done but, when we shot those scenes, Richard Eyre afterwards said: “Any time you have to do any future nudity, you should ask them to do it in water” because it ended up looking really quite sort of poetic or something.

Lorraine: No it was good. I’ll tell you what though, I think you’ll maybe not frighten, but surprise some young people especially in America because your boobs are so good but they’re real.

Kate: (Laughs out loud and claps hands together) I love it!

Lorraine: No but they look real. You know how normally they just do that (sticks index fingers out) and they are completely spherical but yours are not. They were very good.

Kate: Yes, they are real. I have breast fed my child and, you know, it does all go a little bit this way (points downwards) but that’s quite alright.

Lorraine: Oh no that’s all right. You have got nothing to worry about at all. They are absolutely fine.

Kate: Oh bless you, thanks for saying that.

Lorraine: So, Iris Murdoch, what do you make of Iris then because obviously you have got to find out a lot about her. What was she like?

Kate: Well, she was just, you know, a bit of a loose cannon really and an incredible woman, highly intelligent. She was an intellectual and that was another thing to me that was so frightening because, you know, I’m not an intellectual at all and to find that and to make it real was really quite hard but she was a strong woman, she was a feisty woman and she was quite modern for her time and she was quite liberal and outspoken and just said what she believed in and behaved in ways that she believed to be true to her as well. She was a very genuine woman and very, very strong.

Lorraine: Well; now we’ve talked about it but let’s have a look at you in action. (Film clip of dance scene and falling down stairs from Iris).

Lorraine: You didn’t have a bruised bottom after that. That looked quite sore.

Kate: No I didn’t. I had quite a bit of padding on and there is a wonderful stunt guy who I have known from Titanic and various other things who created this funny little skate board rig that I slid down the stairs on. I am giving away all the illusions now but no, I didn’t have any bruises, thankfully.

Lorraine: Now, Iris, a bit of a challenge she would be for Trevor Sowerby, the hairdresser. The hair, bless her. I mean she had great character. That was a fright wig, wasn’t it.

Kate: Well, actually Judi and I got off lightly because we did have wigs, whereas poor Jim and Hugh, Jim Broadbent had to shave his head entirely in order to have little pieces laid on and poor Hugh had to shave the top of his head so he did look like a bit of a boiled egg but we did joke about how it wasn’t a pretty film for any of us because Iris didn’t wear any make up and she didn’t particularly care about what she looked like and, as a consequence, I was going “Just the eyelash curlers”, but no, none of that.

Lorraine: I must say, it was bad hair, it was bad hair. Everything else was great but the hair was bad. Now you know, after Titanic, you could have just coasted and you could have gone and done huge big Hollywood movies and, you know, walked through them and earned millions but you didn’t, you went and did Hideous Kinky after that and lots of smaller movies, meaning Iris. It’s a small film in that sense.

Kate: A small film, yes it is. There was no real agenda with that and I wasn’t trying to avoid doing the American thing but, you know, I am a Brit and British film is very important to me and Hideous Kinky came along and it was just simply the most exciting script that I had read at that time and it was low budget, just happened to be low budget, but there was something quite therapeutic, I think, to go from doing something so big to something that was just very little and we were filming in Morocco and it was just so free spirited and fun and, at the time, was actually very good for me, I think, because Titanic had been so very hard and it was, you know, great but it was an eight month shoot and Hideous Kinky was done in ten weeks. It is very important for me to do what I believe in and it is hard to sometimes do that because there is often pressure on to do, you know, the big things and all that but I don’t think there is any point really acting at all unless you are going to enjoy it and believe in it.

Lorraine: No that’s true. You are right. It should be the best one that comes through the door. It should be the best script and that is maybe the key to lasting long as well because you don’t just grab anything that comes through the door.

Kate: I hope so. I talk about Judi Dench’s career a lot in that sense because she has always absolutely stuck to her guns and I would hope to be always able to do the same things because that way people hopefully don’t get bored with you when everything is a little bit diverse and playing different roles all the time and not doing things that are necessarily predictable, you know, and I like to do things that are challenging and different so, hopefully, I will always be able to do that.

Lorraine: Well, Kate, stay with us. Loads more to talk about. Great to see you and you are looking very well. I want to talk to you about how you lost all your weight because you are looking very, very good.

Kate: Oh Okay. Part 2

Lorraine: Now she’s been hailed as the most talented twenty-something actress in the world, Kate Winslet is here we’ve been talking about lots of things including Iris the new film, it was premiered last night and great cast I have to say it really is and it must have been good fun to work with all these guys.

Kate: Fantastic cast, oh everyday it was like going to a party it really was, it was just so much fun. I mean it was a shame in a way that half of the story is the younger John Bayley and Iris Murdoch and half of it is the older John Bayley and Iris Murdoch so Jim Broadbent and Judi Dench were in one film in a way and Hugh Bonneville and myself were in another so we actually didn’t get to work together a lot and it was just a bit of a shame that but nevertheless we certainly had a lot of fun.

Lorraine: Good, good fun. Where was toots when all this was going on I mean Mia was she with you?

Kate: I was at home because it was literally a four and a half week shoot for me..

Lorraine: Oh that was brilliant.

Kate: It was great, it was really great and so I was at home every single day really and she’d come and visit me at lunch time and if I didn’t have a particularly difficult day (Daily Mail picture of Mia comes on monitor) oh there she is …

Lorraine: She’s a cutesy pie

Kate: Little monkey (laughs)

Lorraine: Great hat, I like her hat, must’ve been a cold day

Kate: Little hat, it was very chilly, aww!

Lorraine: Now has she started to walk now?

Kate: Yes she’s walk…well she’s practically running actually, yes running around everywhere and into everything, it’s just a big exciting world there at the moment

Lorraine: Did you do that thing, cause what I did was I crawled around the house looking for potential hazards, you know like corners of tables..

Kate: Yes, I have done a bit of that going ah! corners of tables, yes absolutely, and flexes from kettles and things like that

Lorraine: Because if they’re not supposed to touch it they will.

Kate: That’s right, she’s very good on the hot things, you say Mia hot, she goes (Kate makes blowing sounds) she understands that if it’s hot, you blow.

Lorraine: It’s the oldest cliché in the world but it doesn’t mean it’s not true in that they do change your life completely.

Kate: Completely, yes they completely do but it’s just the best thing in the world and even when you’re tired and things like that and when they’re really tetchy and the unbroken nights and everything I still loved it all, I really did and I’m loving it now and it just gets better and this is such a fun bit now with her walking and trying to form words and things like that and also really responding you know you can say to Mia ‘would you like some juice’ and she goes ‘no’, she actually responds to it.

Lorraine: Yes you can have a chat with them, and it gets better and better it really does, it’s really really good fun. Do you find though that you’re choosing jobs that mean that you are home, you know you were saying that worked very close to home and the job was quite short.

Kate: Well interestingly no, and I did walk into motherhood thinking right I’m gonna be at home and I’m gonna stay here and, but actually Mia is incredibly adaptable and also as she does become more aware, it is kind of great for her to travel and see other places, I mean obviously now she doesn’t really register it at the moment, but I did a film in Texas just before Christmas and I was there for two and a half months with her and she really did flourish there, she really did and I think she was aware that she was in a different place and meeting lots of different people and it was just so much fun and it was fine actually it was perfectly fine coping with her, the nanny’s fabulous and she was there all the time and I was there pretty much at the beginning and the end of every day and I’d see her during the day as well..

Lorraine: And you could put her to bed and read her stories

Kate: Yes and that’s all so very important isn’t it the bath time, and I love bath time

Lorraine: Very much so, very much so, you can be a kid again

Kate: Yes it’s gorgeous

Lorraine: Kate we were all awful shocked when your marriage split up we really were because you know what it’s like, people have got a sort of vested interest, particularly where you’re one of ours, you know that’s done so well in Hollywood, and it was a shock. How, you know obviously you’re going to have a relationship because you’ve got your wee girl, and you’ve said it’s all amicable. Is there such a thing though as an amicable split?

Kate: I can tell you it really is, and this is the thing that people have been speculating about because it is so hard to believe that it could possibly be a mutual decision but it really was and you know without talking about it too much because it’s been talked about so much but it was absolutely a decision that we both made together because it just wasn’t right anymore and I think particularly when you have a child you have to be concerned about them and they do pick up on things and they are so sharp and I just couldn’t bear the thought that our unhappiness would result in her being unhappy and we were both painfully aware of that and she is our priority because we are both her parents and that will never change and Jim is a great dad he really is a great dad, so yes it was very sad and it’s been really hard but you know, but it was definitely the right thing to do.

Lorraine: Were you worried though at the fact that there was this, you know, you’ve obviously been hailed as Kate who’s down to earth, which you are, I mean you never did the glossy magazine selling your wedding, you had a very down to earth time, you came out and everybody got their photograph and everybody was happy, but you did get a bit of stick with that, what got you through that?

Kate: Well I think you just have to remember that it’s not real at the end of the day, you know, the papers are printed everyday, there’s always something on the front page, you know I could be on it one day somebody else the next and life just goes on and for me, hanging on to a sense of normality and reality is the most important thing and as long as I know what’s true and what isn’t and the people around me and my family and those people that I love know who I am then that to me is all that really matters, and my child more than anything else. So that’s how I really deal with it, I just go ah, get on with it you know.

Lorraine: Well that’s very admirable because it’s hard to read stuff about yourself, do you tend not to read it?

Kate: No I don’t read it, I don’t even really read reviews of things I’ve done.

Lorraine: Do you not? You should read the reviews of Iris because they’re really good.

Kate: No I don’t, because I have this funny relationship with reading reviews, if I were to read something good said about something I’m in or specifically about a performance that I have given then I don’t want to sit there and go huh, you know, I’m clever, and then if you read something bad then you’re bound to get depressed so I think you can’t win either way, so I just choose to avoid them and I just let other people tell me or the people whose opinions I trust tell me what they think.

Lorraine: And that’s the main thing if you can rely on your family and I know you are very close, you’ve got a very close-knit family, you had Christmas there and all that.

Kate: Yes I did.

Lorraine: And that’s so so important, you need that to get you through anything I think. When you’re at home though you’re not Kate Winslet superstar when you’re home with your mum you’ve got to..

Kate: I’m not Kate Winslet superstar at all anyway (laughs) it’s so funny when people say oh superstar and movie star I go oh God no, it’s not real in the end..

Lorraine: Yeah, is that me or is that somebody else..

Kate: Yes it has always been very odd to me that, I don’t know why I always consider American actors and actresses to be, they’re superstars and movie stars and the British ones are, I don’t know we’re sort of different and always look like we should be doing our shopping (laughs) makes me laugh.

Lorraine: Are you allowed to lead a normal life I mean can you?

Kate: I just do! I just absolutely do, it’s really very very normal you know when I’m not working I’m just with Mia and it’s Mia and I doing all those great things like taking her to little music groups and walks and swimming and things like that and it’s all very normal, and we all do our own shopping and all those things.

Lorraine: And I suppose it’s an attitude thing as well that if you buy into the whole Hollywood thing and you wore the dark glasses and you had the bodyguards, you’d be noticed.

Kate: Well that is true you know, you can wear sunglasses when the sun is out, but if you wear sunglasses and a baseball cap and it’s clearly raining or it’s night time then it’s a bit of a give away, and so I just carry on being me and get on like normal you know

Lorraine: As I said you look fantastic it’s another thing that you’ve been…I remember getting so cross after you did Titanic you went to the premiere you looked brilliant, and people were saying oh how dare she, she’s gone up a dress size (Kate laughs) as if you were a kind of axe murderer.

Kate: It’s a crime!

Lorraine: But it’s terrible isn’t it, I mean it’s like mad

Kate: I know, it’s just so irritating you know the obsession with the female shape and what’s normal and what isn’t normal what’s fat and what’s thin and what people consider to be large these days is kind of skinny, I mean it’s very boring I think at the end of the day, but yes I had to do a bit of work after I had Mia you know I gained a lot of weight with her, I gained four stone actually which I shouldn’t really have done.

Lorraine: Oh I did it, in fact I think it was four and a half, I just ate

Kate: Oh I know.

Lorraine: And it was fab

Kate: Gorgeous!

Lorraine: But then you know well in the back of your mind while you’re eating that chocolate orange (Kate laughs) you know you’ve got to do something about it.

Kate: Should I go for that other bag of potato chips or not? I wonder? Yeah but I did have to work hard afterwards but I did manage to get back to where I was before and that was the thing that was a little bit annoying for me, people going ‘oh she’s suddenly shed all this weight’ and it was like ‘oh no I haven’t I’ve just gone back to where I was before I had the baby, which you know, you just want to get back to where you were. So I think I got there in the end.

Lorraine: Now there was all kinds of things, you did a diet about looking at your face or something or you ate lots of Brussel sprouts, what was all that about?

Kate: That Brussel sprouts one is absolutely hilarious God knows where that one came from.

Lorraine: I can imagine nothing worse, I hate them they’re horrible wee things

Kate: I tell you, I’ve always had this thing that I don’t believe in diets I really don’t believe in diets and I was doing Iris when Mia was five and a half, six months old, and I did think blimey I’ve got to get this weight off

Lorraine: And there were all those under water scenes to be taken into consideration

Kate: I know, I know I had to get things back together, so I did something that I’ve never done before and I went and I sat with a nutritionist who works by looking at your face and seeing things that you could be intolerant to in some way, and she just pointed out to me several things that I could eliminate from my diet, well my eating habits and the weight would come off and it dropped off, dropped off, and I was eating potatoes and I was eating butter, lots of it, unsalted butter, you know lots and lots of things that you would think you can’t eat if you’re on a diet or trying to lose weight but it was very much about just eliminating those things that would irritate my metabolism I suppose in some way and at first I thought God this isn’t going to work on me and it did and it was very very healthy and I was also still feeding Mia, I breast fed Mia until she was six months old, so you can’t diet you know you really have to get those calories in when you’re feeding, and so it was just important for me to do it very sensibly.

Lorraine: Well that’s it, there’s all the books, the videos, everything in the world, it’s just basically don’t eat as much and get up off your bottom

Kate: And that’s the other thing as well the thing you just said about exercise, it is so important but when you’re a mum, and you want to be with your child, there’s no time, and I keep thinking should I go for a run, well I’d rather go swimming with Mia, and swimming with a baby isn’t that, it’s just like dragging them around the pool a bit.

Lorraine: You know I saw a mad thing in America where they had their babies and their babies were being used as weights, so they were lying on the floor and they were actually using their babies! It was crazy!

Kate: Oh dear, oh whatever next.

Lorraine: Listen, I know you’ve got a new relationship, which you don’t want to talk about..

Kate: Nope!

Lorraine: ..but I’ll wish you all the best with it..

Kate: Thank you

Lorraine: And we’ve got you a wee present for Mia because she’s walking (Kate opens a box with some little shoes in)

Kate: Oh look at them

Lorraine: But you know what’s really good about them? They don’t come off

Kate: Oh they’re fantastic (puts them on fingers and walks them) look at these (sings) dee-di-dee!

Lorraine: What’s really good, you know how when they’re running around, they don’t come off they stay on

Kate: Oh that’s fantastic, but knowing her she’ll try to pick the stars off, the little monkey! Oh thank you very much, thank you!

Lorraine: Kate thanks for coming in, really good to talk to you and all the best with Iris

Kate: Thank you very much.

Source: Transcribed by Allan for dK. Thank you so very much!!