Three-time Oscar nominee Kate Winslet has built an impressive career by mixing one huge Hollywood block buster with small, more intimate films. In her latest, the thriller The Life of David Gale she plays an ambitious magazine reporter trying to figure out whether a man should be executed for a murder he may or may not have committed.

Bitsey: He was seen leaving the house. His prints were all over the kitchen including one on a baG.

Zack: Half a thumb print.

Bitsey: That's enough.

Zack: He could have touched it before it was a murder weapon.

Bitsey: Do you fondle your friend's garbage bags?

Zack: Yeah, I get very touchy around household plastic. I'm particularly fond of tupperware.

Bitsey: Tupperware?

Zack: I'm just saying the bag could have been sitting up on the counter or something.

Bitsey: He did it. Now he's going to die. And you know something? Maybe that's exactly what he deserves.

Zack: But the murder's way too clumsy. This guy is a major intellectual. Top of his harvard class, rhodes scholar, two books published. He's an academic stud. Look at his wife. A regular grace kelly.

René: Kate Winslet, good morning.

Kate Winslet: Good morning.

René: First of all, I have to say, you did a great job mastering that East Coast dialect. With your british accent.

Kate: Thank you.

René: How did you do that?

Kate: Well, it was hard. I was just listening to it now, and I said including 'one on the bag'. I'm going bag, bag, going over it in my head thinking how did I say that. I did an American accent in Titanic. But in a way that kind of got lost in the mix of how enormous that film was because there were so many things in that movie that were bigger than just me. But it was a very different dialect that I was doing in Titanic. It's a period film. It was a period accent which is a lot more subtle than dialects are today.

René: Let's talk a little bit about the movie. This was a role you really, really wanted. And you picked up the phone and called Alan parker directly and said listen, I want this.

Kate: I did. I mean, most people -- Alan has made many, many movies and all of them have been incredible. Most people know Alan from the days of Bugsy Malone and Fame. I don't know about you or anyone else watching the show, but I wanted to dance on the top of a taxi cab and be a kid in Fame. And so I've watched his work from a very, very young age. And when I was sent this script I just could not believe how brilliant it was. It was such a clever story and such an exciting thriller and an amazing female role. I just thought well, you know, what have I got to lose? He's only going to say no, possibly. And then you know, if I'm lucky he's going to say yes. So I'm a tough girL. I've got a thick skin. So I thought why not and I picked up the phone and said look, do you think I could be in this film? What was I thinking? But anyway, thankfully, he said that I could.

René: And really, it is a thriller about the death penalty. Were you worried at all that this might become a message film in light of how controversial the death penalty is?

Kate: Well, I don't think I was really worried because actually the writing of the script was so good that, in fact, those political undertones really were undertones. And very much a backdrop for the story. In fact, all they do is they kind of up the intelligence level of the movie and make it even more of a thriller. And as I say, it's such highly skilled script. And a very clever idea in my mind. It didn't really concern me that much.

René: Let's talk about you and Kevin Spacey. There's incredible energy on-screen. In these scenes you get to interview him for three days prior to his scheduled execution. I don't want to give too much of the movie away. But there is this great energy between the two of you. How did you like working with him?

Kate: I loved working with Kevin. He is a fantastic actor and so highly respected and very professional. And the only sadness is that we didn't, in fact, have that much time together. The movie was really shot in different stages. He and Laura Linney who is in the movie shot all their stuff up first. And I didn't have any scenes with Laura at all. So they were kind of done in the first four weeks and then I came in and had about ten days with Kevin and that was it. And then he left and it was the bitsy bloom show from then on in. But it was great to work with Kevin. And very intensive work. Because when you're working with someone that you can't physically touch, you know, with a pane of glass between us all the time because he's a prisoner and I'm the journalist sitting on the other side of the glass, it's very, very hard and you have to really concentrate on what the actor is saying to you and what their eyes are conveying. And it was made so much easier by the fact that Kevin is, you know, simply brilliant.

René: I gotta ask you about this magazine thing. First of all I've got to say I just love the fact that you said hey, wait a minute, this is the cover of the magazine.

Kate: Not my legs.

René: And you went out and said hey look, I don't look like thiS. They reduced the size of your legs by a third?

Kate: About that. I look at it now and I think you'd actually never know. And that was the thing I think, I wasn't annoyed by it particularly, because I expect the magazines to do that. But that was the thing. The only thing that bothered me is that it does look real. It does look as if I suddenly had lost 30 pounds. And I don't want to be a hypocrite. And of course I would never do that. I'm perfectly happy with the way that I am.

René: I didn't understand that. When I heard about it I thought she looks fantastic.

Kate: Well, thank you. It was just, I mean, to be honest, I was really not bothered by it at all. And when I realized that the press back in the uk were making a whole thing about it, I thought oh, no, now I'm going to have to say something. So I just came out and said look actually they have been retouched. I don't look like that. And more importantly I don't have any desire to look like that. And plus I'm not six foot tall I'm 5'6".

René: If the press in the uk had not made a big deal about it would you have come out?

Kate: Probably not. I would have said look, I haven't lost tons of weight. I've always said that I don't agree with doing that. And that remains the case. I probably would have said that. But I certainly wasn't annoyed with the magazine. Because you know, at the end of the day, this is what magazines do. And it happened to me before. But it was pretty extreme in this case.

René: Kate winslet, you're an absolute joy to talk to.

Kate: Thank you.

René: Good luck and continued success.

Kate: Thank you very much.

Source: Transcription by Discover Kate.